The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process.

Our children are counting on us to provide two things: consistency and structure. Children need parents who say what they mean, mean what they say, and do what they say they are going to do.

Given the choice, children who don't want for anything will not save... We have an obligation as parents to give our children what they need. What they want we can give them as a special gift, or they can save their money for it.

I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively andnonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.

If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.

Our children need to be able to see us take a stand for a value and against injustices, be those values and injustices in the family room, the boardroom, the classroom, or on the city streets.

Our goal as a parent is to give life to our children's learning--to instruct, to teach, to help them develop self-discipline--an ordering of the self from the inside, not imposition from the outside. Any technique that does not give life to a child's learning and leave a child's dignity intact cannot be called discipline--it is punishment, no matter what language it is clothed in.