Parents try to shape who we are in their own image. Producer Neil Drumming spoke to Adam Mansbach, who tried to make his daughter fall in love with hip-hop.

An endocrinologist wrote the show about a wave of parents coming to her to treat their short (but otherwise healthy) children with human growth hormone. Contributor Scott Brown investigates.

A private basketball coach teaches a young student some things his parents don't agree with. David Kestenbaum has the story.

One night Rosie’s father, busy working, told Rosie, then 9, to stop distracting him with her questions. She should write them all down, he said.

Kids are everywhere in the camps, they’re a third of the refugees. You see them around, improvising stuff to play with.

Lulu tells the story of Daniel Kish, who’s blind, but can navigate the world by clicking with his tongue. This gives him so much information about what’s around him, he does all sorts of things most blind people don’t.

Producer Ben Calhoun talks about the moment when the cool teacher at school told the girls they should pay attention to Ben, and they did. Then Ira Glass interviews actress Molly Ringwald about what happened when she watched one of her own movies, The Breakfast Club, with her daughter.

Ira plays tape from an interview that he did more than 20 years ago, with the author Doris Lessing, about her novel The Fifth Child, which tells the story of a woman who gives birth to a goblin-like baby. The archival audio appears courtesy of National Public Radio, Inc.Then Ira's conversation with Cheryl, from the top of the show, continues.

Ira talks to 15 year old Jada who, when she was in third grade, moved from Akron Public Schools in Ohio, to the nearby Copley-Fairlawn schools in the suburbs. After two years, Jada was kicked out by administrators who discovered that her mother was using Jada's grandfather's address in Copley, instead of her own in Akron.

Comedian Jackie Clarke tells this story, about parents pretending to be parents.

Ryan Knighton, who was interviewed in the prologue, tells this story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. Ryan is the author of the memoir Cockeyed.

Reporter Ruth Padawer tells the story of a woman goes to her neighbors with an incredible request—to help care for her son after she dies—and is shocked by their response. Ruth Padawer writes for the New York Times Magazine and teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Producer Jane Feltes talks with her parents about staying up at night with a sick child—specifically, after Jane had a serious injury when she was six.

Reporter Ted Gesing interviews Mike Nyberg about adopting a little girl from Samoa, only to learn over time that her Samoan family had no intention of giving her up for adoption. The US adoption agency had told the Nybergs that their adoption would be closed, and that their little girl Elleia had been living in a foster home waiting for adoptive parents; but in Samoa, Elleia's parents were told that their daughter could come to the US and receive a better education, and that the adoptive family would send money and regular updates on their daughter's progress.

Measles cases are higher in the U.S. than they've been in a decade, mostly because more and more nervous parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. Contributing Editor Susan Burton tells the story of what happened recently in San Diego, when an unvaccinated 7-year-old boy returned home from a trip to Switzerland, bringing with him the measles.

When David Ellis Dickerson was 12, he got a new bike, and his father decided to use the occasion to teach David a lesson. But the lesson David learned wasn't the one his father intended.

Elna Baker reads her story about the time she worked at the giant toy store, FAO Schwartz. Her job was to sell these lifelike "newborns" which were displayed in a "nursery" inside the store.

Dr. David Kalenberger is the head of a fertility clinic in Oklahoma City.

Ira talks to the teen editors of Sex, Etc., a national magazine for teenagers, about the mistakes parents make when talking—or not talking—to their kids about sex. Then, the story of what happened when one anonymous mother learned that her daughter was having sex. All the names in this essay have been changed, and it's read on the air by producer Julie Snyder.