Separating is not divorcing. Please keep that in mind. It is, instead, the second step in seeing if there's a better way to manage your family.

If you're not sure what you want, then hold back from making plans or responding to invitations until you have a chance to think about it.

You can't make someone agree with you, not even when you're 100 percent sure you're right.

Make sure you have legal cover for what you're doing.

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.

Attractions are things we all should be good at saying no to, because our Department of Attraction is arguably the least reliable and productive office in our entire brain.

If the guests want to wrest the check away from the host, because the host is also the guest of honor, then the guest who volunteers has to cover the whole thing. A guest can't volunteer -all- of the guests to pay for the host/honoree.