Love is not shown by giving your toddler a car. It's better demonstrated by clapping as she bangs on pots or singing to her while she plays with her cheap little bath toys in the tub.

Not many people could juggle graduate school and two jobs.

Setting up a college fund would be a great way to redirect the tangible evidence of Daddy's love.

My inbox [showed me] how much pain there is in the world. I appreciated hearing from people, but it was hard to know I couldn't do anything.

Accept the fact that life presents us with opportunities to find more than one "one", and that you have learned a mighty life lesson when the next one comes along.

The only solution seems to be for government to toughen the vaccination laws and close the loopholes that allow people to opt out for philosophical and so-called religious reasons. The laws need to make clear: no shot, no school.

I do feel haunted by some of the letters and the suffering people have endured. But I keep in mind that the people who write to me know that I am a journalist and an on-line advice columnist, not a social service professional.