Parents don't come full bloom at the birth of the first baby. In fact parenting is about growing. It's about our own growing as much as it is about our children's growing and that kind of growing happens little by little.

Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments you'll ever be given.

The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is.

I believe it's a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have. The same holds true for families: It's not how many people there are in a family that counts, but rather the feelings among the people who are there.

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.

Parents find many different ways to work their way through the assertiveness of their two-year-olds, but seeing that assertiveness as positive energy being directed toward growth as a competent individual may open up some new possibilities.

It's important to know when we need to stop, reflect, and receive. In our competitive world, that might be called a waste of time.