It's probably good for your body and brain to get moving occasionally.

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.

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.

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.

I think a person who arranges the event and orders the food also picks up the check - even the birthday person, even when people at the table insist on paying for the birthday person.

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

Unfortunately, I think the expectation is that birthday girls don't pay.