Around the dinner table last night, our 13-year-old daughter told us about a program on Internet safety she'd attended at school.

It was led by a teacher who gave them the basics, and then a police officer who filled in the specifics. I'm sure whatever the teacher said is in my daughter's head somewhere, but she had lots of details about the police officer's portion of the talk.

"He said there was a 15-year-old girl who thought she was talking to another kid online but it turned out to be a 52-year-old man," my daughter recounted. "After she told on him, the man told her that he was going to track her down and kill her."

She then went on to say that the man was caught and brought to justice, currently serving 26 years in prison for whatever went on.

My husband and I were stuck on "track her down and kill her." We don't doubt that the predator said that or that it's important for kids to hear it. Still, it was jarring.

At this age, it's especially vital for kids to learn how they can become victims online. And if telling them that it might get them killed is the best way to make a case, then I guess I'm all for it.

You teach your kids about "stranger danger" starting at the younger ages, but moving it online gives it a new twist. Take the potential pool of strangers (AKA just about the whole world) and throw in this twist -- some of these people you don't know at all also are pretending to be someone that they're not.

And kids just reaching the point of realizing that there might be people in the world with less-than-honorable intentions now have to figure out what might be a multi-layered strategy to lure them in and trick them. Sad, but true. 

The police officer's words might have been a little raw, but it seems they did the job. I hope many, many more kids hear them.

Woke up this morning and decided I wanted to see a movie this weekend. Not a rental on the cable box or from the video store (DVD store?) but an honest-to-goodness movie at a theater with other people, popcorn and sticky floors.

The bad news? I can't find one movie I'm interested in seeing. A few months ago, when it was Oscar-nomination time, I hardly had time for all the movies I wanted to see.

"Rachel Getting Married" -- loved it. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" -- a little too "Forrest Gump"-like, but not bad. "Gran Torino" -- much better than I expected. "Slumdog Millionaire" -- brilliant.

Never got around to seeing "Doubt," though I wanted to, and there were a few others floating around then but I couldn't keep up.

Now, when I have the time and interest in seeing something really good, here are my choices:

"Fast & Furious" -- uh-uh.

"Knowing" -- no thanks.

"Duplicity" -- I've already seen "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."

"I Love You, Man" -- that screams rental.

"Observe & Report" -- another mall cop movie? C'mon, really?

I'd love to hear your opinion as to whether or not any of these is even worth seeing. But fair warning -- I probably won't believe you.

One thing I like about the Midwest is our stubborn resistance to adopting trends.

It took us decades to realize that we might need to lighten up on the meals a bit, and probably a good 75 percent of our population still isn't completely convinced.

The fashions on New York's runways must fly over us on their way to California, and we're not likely to be hip to the hot slang words until they've already run their course around the perimeter of the country.

So I gotta say, there's one trend showing up with celebrity parents, West Coast in particular, that I'm wondering about. It's the flowing locks -- on the boys.

Here's an example:

These lovely children belong to Cindy Crawford. I think the son (the blonde on the right) has longer hair than his sister. If Cindy Crawford's your mom, do they still tease you on the playground or do you get a pass?

And another one:

This time it's Kate Hudson and her son, Ryder. Dad is Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes.

This blonde beauty has been living the rock 'n' roll/movie star lifestyle since birth, so you can't blame him if he's never seen the inside of a barber shop or the business end of a Wahl home trimmer.

Other celebrity moms embracing the long-haired boy include the mom of Dylan and Cole Sprouse, the shaggy twins from Disney's "The Suite Life of Zach & Cody" and Keri Russell of "Felicity" fame, who once famously attracted attention to herself by cutting off her own curly locks.

Maybe she doesn't want to make the same mistake with her son?

Don't get me wrong; these are gorgeous kids. But as someone who spent the first three years of her daughter's life correcting people that her bald-headed baby was, in fact, a girl, not a boy, I can't imagine choosing this look for my son -- especially while he's still young enough that I can control it.

I haven't seen many -- or any, come to think of it -- long-haired little boys around town yet, but you never know. Put enough pictures of them in the celebrity mags and here in the Midwest, we just might get used to it.

One of these days.

Maybe.

If you haven't checked out our Kids & Pets photo gallery lately, there are a few that got me laughing today. Maybe they'll do the same for you!

This boy just looks too happy!

And this photo is just the "pet" end of the Kids & Pets, but it's hilarious.

Check out the rest of the photos in our gallery, and don't be shy -- add your own.

Walking down the aisle of Target, I could hear the squeals of happiness before I could see where they were coming from.

A little boy, probably around 2 to 2 1/2, came tearing around the corner into the aisle, a huge smile on his face. He was shrieking with laughter -- clearly enjoying himself.

Not six feet behind him was a woman I can only assume was his mom. With a big smile on her face too, she was in hot pursuit of this little Houdini.

Because I was in a unique position to stop him (and mom seemed to be having trouble catching up), I turned my cart toward the end of an aisle to corral him in. Seeing the blockade in front of him was enough to slow him down, and mom was able to catch up.

She threw me a grateful smile -- and then it happened. Nothing in the experience so far led me to believe it would turn this way, but it did.

She grabbed the little boy by one arm, and with her other free hand, she smacked him -- hard -- on the side of his head, enough to bounce his neck the other way. Then she reared back again and hit him on his back. At this point, those of us in the area -- shocked -- started to back away, and she quickly dragged the now screaming boy down the aisle toward the registers.

I could hear his cries for a few minutes more -- and then quiet. I'm assuming they left the store.

This happened last week, and I can't stop thinking about it. I know the boy's mom would have caught him eventually without my help, but it's just killing me that I had any role at all in it.  I trapped him in the aisle in what looked like a bit of crazy toddler antics with mom -- but certainly didn't end that way.

I understand that mom's frustration. My son, now 10, started walking at 9 months old and started running the day after he mastered walking. It seems he never walked anywhere for his first three or four years; it was always a full-out run. And as a mom, there were a million times I didn't appreciate it.

I remember being at my wit's end on the grade-school playground when we would drop off my older daughter for kindergarten and my toddler son would shoot off with his feet flying and I'd be trying to bob and weave through the crowd of kids and parents to catch him. Just about all the school staff and parents knew his name because I was forever screaming it across the packed playground.

Once he and a little friend (another runner) ran off and right into the school while we turned the playground upside-down looking for them. I was in a panic, as any mom would be, and when the pair of them came strolling out of the school together, my initial relief did turn to anger. I remember picking my boy up and carrying him home immediately where he got the time-out of his life in his crib and I took a time-out myself to calm down and breathe.

Still, I can't ever imagine doing what that mom did at Target. And I can't believe that I aided her in any way. It's days later now, and I can still hear the sound of that smack across the head and the cries getting fainter and fainter until they were gone.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about how I stopped a runaway toddler whose mom was trying to catch him at Target, which resulted in the mom taking out her aggression on the little boy by hitting him on his head and back.

It was such an unexpected end to what seemed like a routine situation that I was left standing there to watch as the incident took place and then she dragged the crying boy away.

This post sparked a thread on our discussion boards about situations like this and left several of us wondering what is the right way to respond.

This morning I called Jennifer Hammel, director of the Child Abuse Prevention Fund, to tap her expertise for some ideas. Of course every situation is different and has to be dealt with as such, but she did have some general advice on how to protect the child and possibly reach out to the parent.

"The first thing, and it's difficult to do but important to do, is to find the store manager and try to get them involved," Hammel said, acknowledging that not all stores are willing to do so.

If something is going on in a store, as it was in my case, and the parent and child are still in the store, a manager could call police to see if they can get there before the parent leaves. If the store has surveillance tape of the store and parking lot, that could be used to help police identify the parent and maybe do a follow-up call or send child-protective services agents over to the house.

The more immediate option, of course, is intervention, Hammel said.

"That's not a comfortable place for most people to be in, but you can try," she said.

Hammel suggested using a sympathetic approach to diffuse the parent.

"You can say, 'Hey, hey, I know how stressful it can be when your child runs off. Is there anything I can do to help you relieve your stress?' Acknowledge that you understand the frustration. Validate that you know that the adult is in a stressed state, and offer to help," she said.

How that parent will react to your intervention is another matter altogether. Hammel said that intervention is often very difficult because if an adult is willing to strike or beat a child in public, it isn't too much of stretch to think that the adult might lash out at the person trying to intervene.

If you don't get involved and can't get store management to respond, Hammel suggested calling the police on your own to suggest that they contact the store about potential surveillance tape. Noting the time and place of the incident should help police zero in on the incident, if they follow up.

Making that call just might start in motion the process for an abusive parent to get help -- and to help a child.

I'm really feeling sorry for the tween and teen girls these days because I'm just not sure that we moms know our place anymore.

Back in the day when I was growing up, better than 50 percent of our moms stayed home, tending to younger kids, cooking and cleaning, garden clubbing and all that business.

What they certainly weren't doing was doing what we were doing, which, back in the day, was riding our bikes past the houses of boys we liked (hoping to catch them outside, of course), watching "Grease" over and over until we had the whole thing memorized, and stretching the phone cord to the end of its limits for an attempt at privacy while gossiping with friends.

Today's tween and teen girls have some new stuff we would have killed for back then. The idea of your own phone with your own number and -- best of all -- no cord tying you to a six-foot radius in the kitchen was not even a glimmer in our lip gloss. We had no idea such bliss could ever exist.

Now it does, of course, and even better, there's texting, so you can continue to communicate with your friends even when you shouldn't be and your parents don't even know. With all this good, can you see the downside? If not, here it is: Your mom texts, too.

Ew. Gross.

Even something fun like Facebook, which used to be the exclusive domain of college kids, is now being all mucked up by parents. If you're a tween or teen with a Facebook page, chances are your mom has one too. And she probably insists on being your friend -- maybe even as a condition of you being allowed to have a Facebook page.

Now don't get me wrong, if your kids are going to have a Facebook page, I think it is a great idea to have one too and be your child's friend. But from your child's perspective?

Ew. Gross.

And here's the latest thing to be co-opted by moms, who just now seem to be coming out of the closet about it.

We think Zac Efron is cute. Yes, he of "High School Musical" fame, the prince of Disney. News flash: Your mom thinks he's hot.

Ew. Gross.

We went to see "17 Again" this weekend, and even though I've seen the "High School Musical" movies (two out of three, anyway), I didn't have much of an opinion about Zac Efron. He seemed like a "nice boy," which is a perfectly mom-like thing to say about an actor who's making movies aimed at girls who wear Uggs with shorts.

Then I saw "17 Again," and darn it if my opinion didn't change just a little bit.

He starts out the movie looking pretty dorky, trying out a Kevin Federline look that was totally unimpressive.

Then a friend convinces him to change up the look a bit and the next time you see him on screen, he's in a white T-shirt, jeans, black leather jacket and old-school aviator-style Ray-Bans (think Tom Cruise in "Top Gun").

"He looks pretty good now, don't you think?" I whispered to my 13-year-old daughter over the bag of popcorn.

"Yeah," she whispered back, eyes glued to the screen.

It took me a minute, and then I thought, "Ew. Gross." I am old enough to be his mother, and, even worse, I'm admitting that I think he's cute to the girl who is my daughter, who now surely thinks he's the sickest thing ever because her mom said that.

I made a big realization that day, and this is it: If I think Zac Efron is cute, and I do, I should say it only in the presence of other moms. (Who, by the way, also think he's cute. I asked.)

And then we all need to swear to never say it out loud in front of our girls so as not to spoil their fun. If we decide to text each other about it? Well, that's just our business.