Carolyn Hax Quotes

Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.

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

You can't make people like you under the best of circumstances, and you certainly can't make them like you while you're actively badgering them on what you perceive to be their failures of conscience.

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.

Of course the thoughts and awareness are there, but it's all incomplete and often fanciful - kids know there's something to know, and they fill in a bunch of the blanks with their imaginations if their parents haven't had the conversations and/or established themselves as sources of information. It's rare that the kids know nothing at all, and the somethings they do know are often only partially right or flat-out wrong.

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.

It's okay to forgive yourself immediately and for good.

There's nothing like a good family when you're really up a tree.

One helpful thing to keep in mind as a retort-stopper is that you won't "win," you won't change anyone's mind, you won't change any votes, you won't make the atmosphere in the room any better, YOU won't feel any better.

Being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life.

Separation is where you see if it works better with the adults in two different homes.

Sometimes the pain outweighs the good things.

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.

When in doubt, respond to what you witness, not what you hear secondhand.

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.

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

For some people, the better route for finding like-minded parents is just to get out of your house with your baby and frequent baby-friendly places.

Live in the moment, this moment, your moment. That is by far and without meaningful rival The Best Position to put yourself in to discover and delight in who your children turn out to be, whoever they turn out to be.

You don't want someone who can't tell the difference between having a different opinion and dismissing your opinion.

You don't want to be with someone who is already not getting from you what he needs emotionally.

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.

I realize that people fly with small children all the time, and that babies are easier in some ways because all they do is sit/lie around anyway, but damn it's hard to keep a baby comfortable on any flight, much less a long one, particularly amid the looks of horror they will get from fellow passengers as it dawns on them that their 10- to 13-hour flight might come with a soundtrack of screaming baby.

Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn't: It's just wanting exactly what you have. Wanting something else is dispiriting.

Your friends will need you, too, someday. Maybe not in the same way, maybe not in cash and shelter, but they'll need you - to listen without judging, to invite them over when they're lonely, to show up for their events, to register in whatever way matters to them that they matter to you. Be on the lookout for these opportunities to give back, and do whatever is in your power not to miss many of them.