Maryellen Pado started talking to her son when he was in elementary school about the responsibilities and risks involved with drinking alcohol. She had conversations with her children periodically over the years, so they would be prepared to make good decisions as adults.

And yet, the call still came during his senior year of high school: The cops had raided a party at a friend’s house, where he had been drinking.

“I was glad he told us the truth,” Pado said. “But I wasn’t sure what to say to him or to the parent who hosted the party.” That parent had provided alcohol to the underage drinkers.

Pado, who lives in the St. Louis area and works for Anheuser-Busch, turned to M.J. Corcoran, the parent coach who designed the company’s “Family Talk about Drinking” program. Corcoran says these conversations need to begin when children are young and evolve as they grow up.

When kids are younger, the focus should be on explaining clear boundaries and rules. When they move into tween and early teen years, parents should start asking more open-ended questions, such as: If you go to a party, and people are drinking there, what will you do? Ask kids how they might handle certain specific scenarios and situations.

As children get into later teen years and have more independence, the conversations should still include information about where a teen will be, what the transportation will be and who else will be there. Parents should share ways in which they can support a child’s decisions. For instance, come up with a word or emoji that can be texted if a teen find himself in an uncomfortable or unsafe situation and needs to be picked up. He or she may not be able to offer details in a phone or text conversation in front of friends. But the emoji could trigger a call back from a parent, who then says they are coming to pick up the child. This could help a teenager save face, and possibly, save a life.

Corcoran also says that parents need to sit down with each other and make sure they are on the same page before talking to their child. If one parent offers firm rules, but the other softens that stance later, it give a child mixed messages.

“Be very clear about what your beliefs are,” Corcoran said. “That will come through.”

And avoid a lecture at all costs.

“That won’t work,” she said. “That just shuts kids down.”

In Pado’s situation with her son, who is now a college student, Corcoran suggested having him research how alcohol affects a teen’s mind and body, and report back to his mom. Corcoran also recommended backing off a conversation with the adult who had provided the alcohol.

Pado told her son that even though he broke the rules in this instance, the rules still applied. They don’t allow underage drinking and insist upon following the law.

Pado had forbidden both her son and daughter from attending parties where alcohol was served when they were in high school. By their junior year, they informed her this would restrict them from attending any parties at all.

“You are saying ‘don’t go to parties,’” her son told her. She appreciated their openness and talked to them about staying away from alcohol and watching out for the safety of their friends. Her biggest fear was of them getting into a car accident.

“Remember, if you make a mistake, don’t make a bigger mistake after it,” she said. Before her son left for college, she talked to him about the different types of alcohol and how it’s impossible to know the alcohol content when people are mixing drinks at a party.

“You can’t just put your head in the sand and keep them locked in the house,” she said.

There’s a group of people in our schools I never knew existed: adults who believe it’s OK to humiliate a hungry child who doesn’t have money for lunch.

These people came to public attention when New Mexico had to pass a law specifically banning “lunch shaming.”

“Lunch shaming” involves the adults in a school deciding that embarrassing a hungry child whose parents are behind on the bill is a good way of getting parents to pay up.

A report in the New York Times describes the ways some schools do this: In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In other schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt, or wear a wristband. Some schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it away if he can’t pay for it.

They throw a perfectly fine hot lunch in the trash and hand the child a sandwich with a single slice of cheese in it.

What a disgrace. What an utter failure on the part of any adult who would support such a policy. It’s an indictment of our collective sense of empathy if adults have to pass laws telling school workers not to shame a child in a lunch line.

How can anyone with a shred of human decency justify humiliating children -- who cannot get jobs and earn their own money -- for their parents’ inability to pay?

I’ve had two children in public schools for eight years, and I was an education reporter for many years prior to that. I’ve seen my share of inexplicable or misguided school policies, but I’ve never seen something so cruel devised by adults charged with educating or caring for children.

School principals like to talk about their school communities as “families,” but could they behave with such callousness toward a hungry child in their own family?

There are schools in our wealthy nation with an overabundance of food that have a “no money, no meal” policy. Cafeteria workers have quit over it.

Stacy Koltiska, a Pittsburgh-area cafeteria worker, had to take a hot lunch away from an elementary school child who had a negative balance on his account in the Canon-McMillan school district last fall. She resigned over the policy.

“As a Christian, I have an issue with this,” said Koltiska in news reports. “It’s sinful and shameful is what it is.”

I’m with Koltiska. Any Muslim, Jew, Christian or decent human being should have an issue with this.

Research shows that it’s harder for hungry kids to learn. That’s common sense, and some helpful policies do exist. Federal guidelines state that a family of four with an income of $31,590 or less qualifies for free school lunches, while families making up to $44,955 qualify for reduced-price lunches.

Some districts with high concentrations of poverty have moved to providing universal free lunch. But what about children in suburban districts where there are lower percentages of children eligible for free or reduced-price lunch? What about cases in which parents don’t know how to apply, or are too embarrassed to admit they are struggling financially? Or families who fall just above the cutoff?

There are adults who believe these children should be denied a lunch and humiliated in front of their peers.

I didn’t know lunch shaming existed. I didn’t know we needed a law to tell adults these practices are deplorable. And I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know how my own school district handled situations where students’ lunch balances went unpaid.

I called my district’s communications office to find out, and learned that parents receive an email and a letter when their child’s lunch balance drops below $5. Our schools allow three charges against an account that hasn’t been paid. After that, cafeteria workers are told to call the principal, who can access an emergency fund to pay for the lunch and contact the parents to see if they need help filling out eligibility paperwork for reduced pricing. If the principal determines there isn’t a financial hardship, and the bill is still unpaid, the child will get a sack lunch -- cheese sandwich, a piece of fruit, and milk or juice -- instead of the hot lunch. No child is denied food completely.

This is likely a typical procedure in many districts. It’s not overt shaming, but it’s still the child with the sack lunch who bears the consequences for a parent’s behavior.

I thought about what home circumstances might lead to a parent ignoring repeated emails, letters and calls about an unpaid lunch balance. I don’t know what that child had for breakfast, nor do I know what he or she will eat for dinner. Yet, as a school community, as a so-called “family,” can we really not ensure that any child who wants a hot lunch in our school gets one?

Well, then, shame on us.

It always seemed safe to assume that the vast majority of men understood -- just as well as women -- how babies are made.

Not so fast, it seems. A new survey has forced us to reconsider what we thought we knew. Apparently, 52 percent of men say they haven’t benefited personally from women having access to affordable birth control. This was a widely reported finding from a recent survey by nonpartisan polling group PerryUndem. Nine percent of the men surveyed weren’t sure if they had benefited, and 3 percent refused to answer the question.

The remaining third, who recognize a personal benefit when they see one, may be just as perplexed by their cohort as many women who saw this report.

Did more than half of men skip a vital part of middle school health class?

Nearly all women have used some kind of contraception at some point, and the majority of women of reproductive age do. About 62 percent of women of reproductive age are currently using a contraceptive method, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization. The birth control pill and female sterilization are the most commonly used methods.

It seems odd to have to connect the dots here, but this is for the 52 percent: If women didn’t have access to birth control, there would be far more unplanned pregnancies. Men would have, at bare minimum, an 18-year-long financial obligation to any child they had fathered. Any man who has relied on a woman’s contraceptive use, ever, to avoid pregnancy has personally benefited from her access to it.

This cause-and-effect relationship seems fairly straightforward. When I asked my husband to explain what the 52 percent may have been thinking, he questioned the survey methodology.

“Did they just survey teenagers?” he asked. (I wondered myself if celibacy rates are higher than anyone ever guessed.)

Nope. The researchers called a representative sample of voters, so the respondents were 18 or older.

The men most likely to say they had benefited from women’s access to birth control were 18 to 44 years old -- perhaps not coincidentally, those in closest proximity to women of childbearing age. Those most likely to deny any benefit were 60 years and older. (Maybe memories have dimmed of activities from more virile years. Helpful hint: Even if it was years ago, you still benefited.)

I wonder how this same demographic of men would respond if they had been asked if women benefited from men having access to Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs. Might they see their sexual health as mutually beneficial to their partners?

The details of this survey revealed a few other interesting perceptions. Research shows 99 percent of women will use birth control in their lifetimes, and married women are more likely to use prescription birth control than unmarried women. But the majority of respondents underestimated birth control usage and believed unmarried and married women used birth control equally.

These perceptions can affect policy, as we’ve seen in the national debate over health care and what should be covered by insurance companies.

The vast majority of women recognize that having access to birth control is an important part of women’s equality and affects a woman’s ability to be financially stable. But the survey also found majorities of men agreeing that access to affordable birth control affects the financial situation of families, impacts stress in relationships and helps the economy.

It was a hypothetical question that was most telling, however. Surveyed voters were asked: If men were the ones who got pregnant and gave birth, would Congress still want to get rid of birth control benefits?

In that case, 68 percent of men said male politicians would keep birth control benefits.

It’s funny how the perception of personal benefit can flip with the perception of personal risk.