You know how motherhood is sometimes described as a mash-up of multiple jobs in one? We are teachers, nutritional counselors, chefs, therapists, social organizers, coaches, health-care coordinators, nurses, fashion consultants, general all-around assistants, and so much more. I'm tired just thinking about the list.

As we approach another Mother's Day, remember to give yourself a hand for all the things you do all year-round. Are there days when you may feel like you're not doing a good job? When you feel like it's all too overwhelming? When you and your children are cranky with each other? Trust me, we've all been there.

In a perfect world, we'd be getting a salary that matches the work we do (by my estimate, that should be, at minimum, six figures). But since that isn't likely to happen anytime soon, take comfort in this fact: You are building our future, and there are few jobs out there that are this important, or this tough. Oh, yeah, and there are the sloppy wet kisses and whole-body hugs from our little offspring. That's not bad either.

This post is part of the May All About Parenting Blog Carnival, which is about mothers. If you blog about kids and families, send your link to this month's host, Apryl Duncan, About's Guide to Stay at Home Moms, at stayathomemoms.guide@about.com. Submissions are due by May 1.

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Parents and educators may have a helpful new tool to help assess which kids might be either victims or perpetrators of bullying behavior: Frequent trips to the school nurse's office.

According to a new study in Pediatrics, children who are the target of bullies as well as children who bully other kids tend to go to the school nurse's office more frequently with complaints of illness or injury.

Researchers looked at a sample of 590 children from grades 3 to 5 and found that children who are affected by bullying -- as aggressors, victims, or both -- were more likely to go to the school nurse with health complaints.

While it's not surprising that bullying victims may be experiencing physical symptoms as a result of their psychological and emotional stress, the fact that bullies are also feeling ill left me wondering why that would be the case. Could it be that kids who are aggressors might be as affected by negative behavior as their victims are? Or that children who are aggressive are often themselves the target of bullying, both at home and at school?

Whatever the case may be, keeping track of which kids are frequenting the nurse's office may be one way parents and educators can help those affected by bullying.

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Kids who are spending too much time engaging in sedentary activities such as watching TV, using the computer, and playing videogames and not enough being physically active have narrower arteries in their eyes -- a sign of higher cardiovascular disease risk, says a new study.

Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia took retinal images of 1,492 children 6 to 7 years of age in 34 schools in Sydney and found that kids who spend more time engaging in outdoor physical activity had wider retinal arteriolar compared to sedentary children.

Researchers suggest measures such as replacing an hour of sedentary activity with outdoor exercise, making sure kids get enough free play time at school, and parents setting good physical activity examples at home.

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A homeless single mother was arrested recently in Connecticut for enrolling her son in a more-affluent school district even though she was living in a neighboring lower-income district at the time of enrollment, says a report in the Stamford Advocate. If convicted, the woman, Tanya McDowell, faces a 20-year jail sentence and an order to repay $15,000 to the city of Norwalk, where the school is located.

In her defense, McDowell has stated that she was not aware that enrolling your child in another district was a crime. She has also said that she does live part of the time in a Norwalk emergency shelter. McDowell enrolled her 5-year-old son in a Norwalk school using a friend's address at a public housing complex. (That friend has since been evicted for helping McDowell commit fraud.)

It is a heartbreaking case, with understandable arguments on both sides. An education lobbying group has started a can and bottle drive to help pay for any possible restitution McDowell may be ordered to produce. State officials, meanwhile, note that sending a child to a school that is not in his district is theft requiring legal action. Others, however, don't see the sense in turning such cases over to the police or prosecuting the parents, and say that the better way to handle them would be to simply remove the children from the school.

McDowell's story is hardly the only case of a parent lying about residency to get a child into a better school. Earlier this year, ABC News reported that Ohio mom Kelley Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in jail, 3 years of probation, and ordered to perform community service after she was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into what she says was a safer school district.

In Williams-Bolar's case, her father was a resident of the highly-ranked school district, and she says that they lived part-time with him. She has also argued that said she was a resident of that district not to get her three young daughters a better education, but to keep them safe; her home had been broken into, she said, and she wanted them to be in a safer home after school. The school hired a private investigator, who followed her as she drove out of the district; the school asked her to pay $30,000 in back tuition. When she refused, she was indicted and convicted. The conviction has put Williams-Bolar's teaching career in jeopardy; a teacher's aide who was close to getting her teacher's license, Williams-Bolar will now no longer be allowed to get a teaching degree under state law.

Parents' deception about residency -- and there are many cases like these, perhaps thousands, each year in school districts across the country, though there's little data that tracks them -- are rarely prosecuted; the parents are usually asked to pay a fine or simply remove their children from the schools.

The parents who are prosecuted, like Williams-Bolar and McDowell, engender extremely polarizing opinions, with some arguing that the punishment is too severe for the crime and other saying, essentially, that it is stealing and must be prosecuted.

One thing I know for sure: If we could fix our schools and somehow even out the extreme disparity that currently exists in poor and affluent districts, we would not need a way to figure out how to punish parents who are trying to help their children get a good education.

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