I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none. When asked what I made of blogs like my own, blogs written by parents about their children, I said, 'A blog like this is narcissism in its most obscene flowering.'

There is an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of a bathroom and my 3-year-old daughter's need to move her bowels.

I love my husband more than I love my children.

My kids are incredibly secure. More and more of their friends' parents are divorcing, but my kids have absolute confidence that we'll stay together forever. That goes a long, long way.

The thing about youthful offenders is that no one seems to care about them. Most people don't like adolescents - even the good ones can be snarky and unpleasant. Combine the antipathy we feel toward the average teenager with the fear inspired by youth violence, and you have a population that no one wants to deal with.

The first inkling my husband had that I was thinking about suicide was when he checked my blog.

Despite the fact that in America we incarcerate more juveniles for life terms than in any other country in the world, the truth is that the vast majority of youth offenders will one day be released. The question is simple and stark. Do we want to help them change or do we want to help them become even more violent and dangerous?