DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My friend has a three-year-old son and a nine-month-old daughter, who is just starting to pull herself up around the house. I have my own two-year-old, and long before he was walking, my boyfriend and I started childproofing our home and I think we did a pretty good job of it.

When my friend comes over with her kids for a playdate, she first does a safety inspection of my townhouse’s first floor, where we hang out. She is not at all shy about telling me everything we missed in our childproofing. Then she’ll say something like, “Why don’t we just stay right here, in the living room,” and it makes me feel like I am the world’s worst mom or something.

Am I overreacting, or is she? --- SAFE ENOUGH FOR MY OWN KID

DEAR SAFE ENOUGH FOR MY OWN KID: Since you feel like your friend isn’t comfortable with her kids in your home, maybe you should either stick to meeting at her place, or find other locations where the kids and the moms can get together and where you’re not in charge of making the area secure. If those suggestions don’t work, then when they come to your place, you should beat your friend to the punch and insist you all just stick to the pre-screened room of your choice.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I have been dating “Greg” for nearly a year and we share mostly everything about our pasts. But I have not been able to bring myself to tell him about how I was sexually assaulted at a family reunion the summer before I graduated high school. I have been in therapy and I am doing better with how I deal with it, but I just can’t tell how Greg would handle knowing his girlfriend had been raped. How soon would be too soon, or too late? --- AFRAID TO TELL

DEAR AFRAID TO TELL: There’s no quick and easy answer for how or when to open up a particularly painful part of your life to someone, no matter how well you know them.

If this is looking like a truly committed relationship, there will come a point when the revelation should be made, especially if it’s part of your healing.

Consulting with your therapist should help, since your provider knows your particular story and, hopefully, also some suggestions of what’s worked for others in your situation.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I’m still new at my job, but I keep seeing something that really bugs me.

It’s a healthcare center and my boss frequently leaves HIPAA-sensitive information laying around open on her desk even when she has outsiders in her office. She has left files and reports in the conference room, and once, in the lunch room.

I get that everyone slips sometimes, but this could get us all in trouble if a state agency shows up. I don’t know my boss’s boss, but I work closely with a very experienced woman, who is just above me, and just under our common boss. She is at another facility most of the time, so I don’t think she knows about what’s happening in ours. But she is in charge of the training for both buildings, so she is in our place fairly often.

Would it be wrong of me to tell her what my boss is doing? I don’t want my boss to be mad at me for going under her head, but I also don’t want to have everyone get in trouble. --- NEEDS TO PROTECT OTHERS’ PRIVACY

DEAR NEEDS TO PROTECT OTHERS’ PRIVACY: I’m guessing your boss is indeed in violation of at least company policies, not to mention good sense HIPAA practices.

It seems to me you would be perfectly justified in speaking to another employee who is in a position to take your concerns to the boss, provided she can do it without naming you as the source of the concern.