It takes awareness that it's not only not a bad thing to let others do things their own way, it is in fact an improvement. It makes life richer and more interesting.

Don't freight your answers with any notions of what you're "supposed" to do, and just see where your feelings point you. It can feel weird to be so formal about it, but if you're not used to doing it, then there's no shame in retraining yourself.

And if you're a parent who thinks you're okay because your kid doesn't have a phone or iPod yet, and/or you've used all the parent controls to filter out explicit material, you're not okay. The filters are tissue paper and your kid without a phone is on a school bus or in a locker room or at a public park with phone-equipped kids every day. And they're like all kids in exploring - by whatever means available to them - exactly what their parents are treating as too embarrassing or taboo to talk about.

People who make babies surrender their right to behave like them.

Instead of talking at each other about the non-business-related contact, talk to each other about your concerns about marriage. Listen a lot, too.

I think we'd all hate to be the one who gets declared undateable by one's entire grad-school population based on a couple of told and retold stories.

For me, the greatest source of frustration was trying to work with a willful child when there was something else I wanted - say, to get the child to go to bed so I could have my own time. Just the promise of the time, and feeling that promise slip away, was enough to introduce a whole other element of stress into the encounter.