People talked about being a parent, or being a mother or a father. We don't talk about "wiving" our husbands or "friending" our friends, or "childing" our parents. We just talk about being in a relationship with those people. You don't measure whether your marriage was good based on whether or not your husband is better now than he was 10 years ago, or whether your friend is richer than when they first became your friend. The relationships between parents and children is a kind of love, rather than a kind of work.

Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: how should this society work? How should relationships among people work? The exploration is: who am I, what am I doing?

Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.

We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment.

Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.

Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

We don't measure the quality of our other relationships by how well the other person turns out, for instance whether my husband is a better person after 10 years than he was when I first met him.