When it comes to researching autism and other developmental disorders, it's been almost all about the moms. Her age. The age of her eggs. The risk of the birth. But a new study shows that older dads are more likely to have a child with autism or schizophrenia, and the mother's age may not have a role in the risk for those disorders.

The European study, published in the journal Nature, is being lauded by U.S. physicians as very well done and a breakthrough that may change how we research and try to curb the surge in autism. As the NYTimes reports: "The findings counter the longstanding assumption that the age of the mother is the most important factor in determining the odds of a child having developmental problems. The risk of chromosomal abnormalities, like Down syndrome, increases for older mothers, but when it comes to some complex developmental and psychiatric problems, the lion’s share of the genetic risk originates in the sperm, not the egg, the study found."

With Father's Day weekend approaching, this week’s news of the Texas father who beat to death his 4-year-old daughter’s alleged molester has spread like wildfire. No names have been released, but as the story goes, the 23-year-old father learned from his young son that his daughter had been led away on their property by a family acquaintance. The dad heard the daughter’s screams and discovered her and a 47-year-old acquaintance both partially naked in or near a horse barn. The father repeatedly beat the man in the head, leading to his death.

The father hasn’t been arrested because Texas law permits violence to defend oneself or a third party. But a grand jury will still examine the case to get all the facts straight. The dad has reportedly expressed remorse and said he didn’t intend to kill the alleged attacker. The public has widely rallied around the father – “good for him,” “father of the year,” “instant justice,” “I would’ve done the same!” – but a Texas civil rights leader is asking “where do we draw the line in self defense?” (i.e. – should someone repeatedly beat an attacker when a punch or two might have stopped the attack?).

The new movement du jour circulating around Facebook these past few days directs us to change our profile pictures to our favorite cartoon characters:

Change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood & invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday (Dec. 6), there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is for violence against children.

We've settled into a strange place with L. and this whole Santa business. He doesn't talk about Santa much, and we haven't revisited the conversation we had that afternoon at the craft store. We continue our traditions and L., for the most part, has been good about keeping a lid on his doubts.

I remember this evening so distinctly: L. was only two years old, and we were having pizza dinner at our favorite pizza place. It was a warm evening, and we were sitting outside, watching the traffic pass. Across the street from the restaurant was a school--we passed it many times on our way to work. I already knew a little about it, but only in that abstract way you might if your child was still only two and school seemed impossibly far, far away-a little pinprick spot on some map of the future.

I took the kids to Fossil Day at our local natural history museum on Saturday. T. was jumping up and down about this event because not long ago, she declared that she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up. She's always been interested in dinosaurs and fossils, even at a very young age. She loved all the dinosaur books L. rejected when he was her age. He was all about trains and trucks; she wanted nothing to do with those.

One Wednesday out of every month is a Whirlwind Wednesday. On this particular Wednesday, I always have two meetings: one in the early afternoon and one two hours later. Because of how these two meetings are sandwiched into the day, I have to leave work early, pick up L. early from school, then drive across town to pick up T. early from school. Then I take the kids to Scott's work, where they will bounce around his office while he teaches his last class of the day, and I turn around and head back to work, and back to that last meeting.

At last week's marathon IEP meeting, as we were talking about L.'s social skills and discussing all the teasing that's been going on, one of L.'s teachers made the suggestion--and she prefaced this with "I know this is going to be controversial but..."--that perhaps we could encourage L. to dress in ways that would make him stand-out less, just to smooth the path for him a little more.

Yesterday Scott and I got up at 5:45, got the kids up at 6:30, took T. to a neighbor-friend's house so she could take her to school, and we drove downtown with L. to have a VIM--Very Important Meeting. For some reason, IEP meetings of this nature always seem to be scheduled for terribly early times--we went to one once that was at 7:15. It's hard to be in a focused, calm, clear frame of mind at that hour of the morning--hard for everyone.