You can make lots of mistakes, but if you give children avenues for creativity and joy, they will have resources to carry them through. For example, if cooking together, reading, listening to music, coloring, participating in sports, or taking a walk in the woods are paired with pleasure and closeness, throughout life doing these things will kindle old feelings of happiness an/or comfort.

One of my fondest memories from childhood is of looking at a globe with my father. "What's the biggest country?" he'd ask me and my sister. We'd spin the globe around and guess. . . . The globe brought me a sense of wonder and adventure. I wanted to go to those other places and see how people did things differently. And, many years later, when I did visit other countries, I took my father's interest and fascination with me. When we plant the seeds of fascination and respect for other people, we are teaching tolerance and peace.

Prepare for joy - speak your truth, care for yourself, expand your knowledge, nurture your friendships, let people love you, take on new adventures, go where your heart leads you.

Listen to your beliefs, think about how you learned them, and realize that they are not genetic, nor are they the "only way." You are free to acquire new perspectives, to absorb new ideas, and to question everything you were taught to believe. As your mind opens to exploration and change, you'll feel a new lightness and more joy.

My father once told me of a trick question he used in a college class on forest fire control. If there was a fire coming from a certain direction and wind was coming from another, what was the best thing to do? The right answer was, "Run like hell and pray for rain," but few students ever got it. So allow yourself the freedom of knowing there are times to bail out, quit, run, leave the struggle, and have more time for joy.

Sometimes we adopt certain beliefs when we're children and use them automatically when we become adults, without ever checking them out against reality. This brings to mind the story of the woman who always cut off the end of the turkey when she put it in the oven. Her daughter asked her why, and her mother responded, "I don't know. My mother always did it." Then she went and asked her mother, who said, "I don't know. My mother always did it." The she went and asked her grandmother, who said, "The oven wasn't big enough."

Caring for children is a dance between setting appropriate limits as caretakers and avoiding unnecessary power struggles that result in unhappiness.