It can be tough to get busy school officials to pay attention to a child’s special needs, as parents of children with disabilities or medical conditions know. New federal legislation hands more leverage to parents.

Amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law recently by President Bush, will make more students eligible for accommodations. In the past, the ADA was often interpreted in a way that blocked classroom accommodations for children with conditions that could be remedied at least in part by medication, such as attention deficit disorder, allergies or diabetes. Although the law protects people with disabilities from discrimination, courts had ruled that if a person’s abilities could be brought up to average standards through “mitigating measures” such as medication, that person wouldn’t be eligible for accommodations.

In practice, this meant a small but significant number of students who might need, say, extended-time testing for ADHD, or looser attendance requirements to permit diabetes monitoring, were denied. The amendments change that by forbidding schools and employers from using the effect of mitigating measures as a reason for denying accommodations.

Many schools already bend over backward to help children with such conditions. In my experience as a parent of two children with special needs, most school administrators do their best to help. The new legislation may cause friction, though, among critics who resent the rising cost and resources channeled into accommodating the growing number of children with special-needs diagnoses. Teachers face a tough task in providing individual attention or tailor-made learning materials for one or two children when the classroom is bursting at the seams with several dozen.

What do you see happening on this issue at your school? Do you support wider protections for students with disabilities, medical conditions or learning differences? Or, in an era of mounting school-funding problems, have lawmakers already gone too far?

Chances are, if you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah at your house, you’ve started thinking about holiday shopping. December is a ways off, but efficient jugglers I know often aim to get their shopping done early.

Getty Images

Given the current economic environment, you might be thinking about cutting back this year. Retailers are certainly expecting a slower holiday season. As a story in yesterday’s Journal reported, toy sellers Wal-Mart Stores and KB Toys are slashing prices, emphasizing a list of perennial favorites such as Hot Wheels cars and Barbie dolls for $10. The move set off something of a price war involving big players Target and Amazon, too, so shoppers can likely expect more bargains.

But there will still be plenty of opportunities to splurge. The latest wave of high-tech toys will be a pricey bunch, including the new Elmo Live doll from Fisher-Price, which can sing, blow kisses and cross its legs — all for a cool $60. There are new robotic dogs and dinosaurs that will go for well over $100.

Readers, how will the global financial crisis affect your holiday plans this year? Is holiday gift-giving something you plan to hold the line on, and indulge the kids at the expense of other discretionary spending? Or will your shopping list be more modest? For those who are planning on cutting back, do you have any advice for fun but inexpensive ways to celebrate with your family?

We’re all in this together. At the risk of sounding sappy, that’s the feeling that my colleagues and I share when it comes to pitching in to get The Wall Street Journal out each night and keep on top of the news. Sometimes, that means stepping into the breach when someone else can’t be there and covering for them so all the work gets done.

Getty Images

In recent weeks, we have had a number of people taking time off for religious holidays, illness, family emergencies and school events. And no one squawks. The work is harder when fewer people are here, but we all help out, because each of us know that one day if we need time off, our colleagues will be there for us. It’s not just parents who need to duck out. Sometimes single and childless people need time off for elder care or their own illnesses. Or maybe they just need to take their car to the shop.

This works only because there is a tacit understanding that everyone reciprocates. I know this is easier in a small work group like mine, in which the co-workers have known each other for a long time and have earned each others’ trust. There are more-rigid workplaces where unscheduled or repeated absences aren’t tolerated, no matter how hard your juggle is. And in many workplaces, single or nonreligious people sometimes feel they are taken advantage of when others take time off for family or religious reasons.

Readers, how are absences handled in your workplace? Does the ad-hoc honor-system style work for you? Or are there inequities that you’d like to see remedied before the next time you need to stay home all day to wait for the cable guy?

Washington hasn’t made any major moves to alter employees’ juggling act since the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed in 1993. For the most part, trendsetting work-life policies have come from the private sector or the states.

Getty Images

Now, for the first time, the presidential candidates have laid out for comparison their platforms on work-life policy issues, including family leave and flexible scheduling. Ellen Galinsky, president of the nonprofit Families and Work Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, quizzed spokesmen for both candidates’ campaign organizations recently in a conference call with more than 100 corporate executives and advocates. Transcripts were published today on the institute’s Web site.

The transcripts pose some sharp contrasts. Sen. Obama supports expanding federal mandates for both paid and unpaid leave for employees, a spokeswoman said. He would move to require employers to provide seven paid sick days a year for employees who are ill, or who need to care for a sick family member. He backs expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover more employees, including those at businesses with 25 employees instead of 50, as the current law requires. He’d expand allowable purposes for family leave, including more elder-care duties and children’s school matters. He’d provide some federal funds to encourage more states to mandate paid leave. Sen. Obama also backs setting up a formal process for employees to petition their employers for flexible hours, with employers mandated to at least reply.

Sen. McCain wants to make labor laws more flexible, to allow employers to pay workers for overtime in compensatory time off, rather than money. He advocates creating a bipartisan commission on workplace flexibility, to figure out how to overhaul and update labor and tax laws to promote flexible hours and telecommuting. He wouldn’t back expanding the family-leave law or mandating paid family or sick leave. “Sen. McCain has not been one to issue mandates on what a business would choose to pay” for leave, a spokeswoman said. He does propose to bring down health care costs to give businesses more latitude to provide paid leave if they choose. The presence on the ticket of Sarah Palin, a working mother of five, would bring added perspective on work-family matters, a spokesman said.

In the wake of heavy publicity about Ms. Palin’s decisions as a working mother and other personal work-life choices by the candidates, Ms. Galinsky says the conference calls were intended to re-focus attention on policy matters that would affect everyone.

What would you like the federal government to do to help you achieve better balance? Would you like more paid leave and government-sponsored child care, as provided in some European nations? Or would you prefer that Washington back off and give private employers a freer hand?

Recently my computer fizzled out on me. It had been painfully slow for a few weeks and finally just ground to a halt. If I were back working in a corporate office, I’d call up my company’s help desk and they would send down a tech to fix it, while I stepped out for lunch or a cup of coffee and griped to my colleagues. But I telecommute from Texas and I’ve been assigned a tech guru in Michigan, so I had to UPS my computer up north for a couple of days before I got it back.

Getty Images

Being computer-less was a big blow to my productivity and at first I felt pretty paralyzed and powerless without it. As a journalist, I’ve grown extremely dependent on my machine. Sure, I could have conducted interviews the old fashioned way with a pen and paper, but I’m a much faster typist than I am hand-writer and most of my notes and sources are stored inside my computer.

While I couldn’t do some key assignments—like reporting and writing—I was able to deal with some other tasks. I cleaned out my office and my desk. I tackled an enormous pile of reading. I didn’t waste time surfing the Web or emailing my friends. It was actually kind of liberating.

Readers, what do you do when your computer or other key tech equipment breaks down? Telecommuters, how do you handle it? Do you have other “rainy day” tasks that you can tackle when you can’t use your computer?

In reporting today’s Healthy Consumer column on open enrollment, I found another interesting trend: Employers are increasingly divvying up health-plan costs so that people pay more if they have more dependents. The Georgia state health benefit plan that covers teachers, state employees and retirees will switch next year from a two-tiered system (employee and family) to a four-tiered system (employee, employee plus spouse, employee plus children, employee plus spouse plus children), with different premiums for each level.

Another trend: Employers are increasingly auditing employees to check if their dependents really qualify to be in their health plans. And if a worker’s spouse can get coverage through his or her own job, there may be a surcharge to put the spouse on the worker’s plan. Readers, have you encountered any of these issues? What do you think about the efforts to tie employees’ health-care costs more closely to their family makeups?

Do you want your children to spend more time in school? A growing number of educators say they should.

Getty Images

A consensus is building among educators and politicians that the school day, the school year or both need to be longer, Education Week reports. Educators say they’re under so much pressure to prepare students for standardized tests, college and careers, that the traditional schedule isn’t long enough.

Parents I’ve interviewed on the subject are deeply divided. Some working parents are hard-pressed to make schools’ five- to six-hour daily schedules mesh with workday hours stretching well into the double digits. They worry about a lack of after-school care for small children or dangerous risk-taking by unsupervised teens, and wish schools would extend the day.

But other parents resent what they regard as schools’ tendency to waste students’ time. Children spend too much of their day in roll-taking, classroom housekeeping, silent study, hanging out or listening to teachers ramble, say these parents. Until schools figure out how to focus students more tightly on learning tasks, these parents say they’d rather bring kids home earlier.

Nevertheless, in Massachusetts, 26 schools have added 30% more time to their schedules, Education Week reports. In New York City, a three-year demonstration project is extending the day by 30% at 11 schools. New Hampshire is testing a high-school extended-time setup intended to serve as a model for all high schools in the state. And in the District of Columbia, public schools are adding an extra “power hour” in most elementary and middle schools. One Toledo, Ohio, K-8 school has actually added the equivalent of 49 more school days to its year.

Would your child benefit from more time in school? Or would you regard such a change as yet another encroachment on valuable family time?

As job prospects for college grads darken, many parents are weighing bailouts or other support for young-adult children with heavy debt loads, as reported in today’s “Work & Family” column. Other parents are struggling to get teens and young adults to stick to a budget.

Getty Images

That’s not always easy in a culture where lavish televised “Sweet 16” parties and opulent rapper lifestyles suggest big spending is synonymous with hipness. College students away from home for the first time are especially vulnerable.

“Man, are they spenders!” says Vanessa Van Petten, 23, founder of OnTeensToday.com and a mentor to teens and their families. “They’ll work a job where they make maybe $10 an hour, and they’ll go online and buy a shirt for $39.99. That’s five hours’ work, with shipping. And they have no concept that, ‘That’s five hours of horrendous time on my job, which I hate going to do.’” Late-night pizza-and-sub deliveries add to the bills, she says.

Teens have begun to trim spending in recent months, market researchers say. Those cutbacks are being accomplished one teen at a time. When one Omaha, Neb., college student piled up more than $1,300 in revolving debt, his father insisted he call the credit-card company himself and negotiate a payment plan, teaching him not to ignore calls from creditors. In another route, parents lend teens or young adults just enough money to keep up with monthly payments — then hold them to a written repayment agreement with firm deadlines. Such a strategy, says Gail Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (www.nfcc.org), can be a good “middle-of-the-road solution.”

Also, when considering gifts for indebted teens, Ms. Van Petten suggests, give them one month’s credit-card payment rather than a new consumer item.

To teach teens to avoid such problems, credit counselors suggest giving high-school students lump-sum payments each semester, based on an agreed-upon budget for food, clothing and school supplies — then holding them to it. If he or she runs out of cash, the consequences are the teen’s to bear. This is a tactic I’m planning to try with my own teenage son.

What techniques have you found for teaching teens to stick to a budget or get out of debt?

Many professional workers are on salary, which typically means you work the hours needed to get the job done. But what about when you take on extra work in a coworker’s absence or if you are asked to handle a time-consuming project along with your regular work?

Getty Images

Granted, these days many of us feel lucky to have jobs — and taking on extra work that helps keep them may be the norm. But a friend of mine not long ago told me she was asked to work extra to compensate for a coworker who quit. Her employer would pay her extra according to an hourly rate. She boldly told her bosses she’d oblige, but that overtime for her sitter would eat up the pay; they agreed to bump up her pay to compensate until a replacement was found for the coworker.

I recently spent an extra $40 to $50 per week for several weeks on a sitter because of a special project (outside the scope of my normal work) I was spearheading. And that was after wrenching my husband’s schedule for a few weeks before that so I could work extra. Once a series of evening meetings cropped up for him, we had to call in paid reinforcements.

I thought of my friend and the extra cash in her pocket as I glanced at the clock, knowing I’d not only miss my son’s bedtime (again) but I was also on the clock. I’d rather have seen my son or parked the money in savings.

Does your company offer compensation? Should a company help foot the bill when childcare costs go over the top because of extra work? And if a company does offer compensation, is that fair to employees without children who are not receiving extra money for their extra time?

During the end of my pregnancy and for a few months after, my hands would fall asleep at odd moments. They’d become numb while driving, typing or riding a bike. My doctor said that I probably had carpal tunnel syndrome, which is often characterized by hands that feel tingly or fall asleep, and is common during and after pregnancy.

Luckily, I was on maternity leave when my hand problems were most pronounced, so I didn’t have to worry about not being able to type stories or drive to interviews. And, even luckier, it seemed to heal on its own without expensive therapy.

But I can only imagine how difficult it would be to juggle a tough job with a debilitating illness, such as carpal tunnel or migraines. When my husband gets migraines, the only things he can do are lie down or pace in a dark, quiet room. The pain is so intense he gets nauseous. Forget about tackling any urgent work deadlines or dealing with a crying child.

Readers, how have you handled chronic or debilitating illnesses, such as headaches or backaches, carpal tunnel or repetitive stress injuries? Do you take sick days? What coping mechanisms do you use? Are your colleagues and managers sympathetic or suspicious?