To be a different kind of parent, you don't just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

By your 40s, you don't want to be with the cool people; you want to be with your people.

If you worry less about what people think of you, you can pick up an astonishing amount of information about them. You no longer leave conversations wondering what just happened. Other people's minds and motives are finally revealed.

To be a different kind of parent, you don't just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

Your first attempt will be terrible.... Remember that everything great you see started out as someone else's bad first draft..... Whenever someone sends me a manuscript and says, 'It just flowed out of me,' I usually think: Let it flow back into you for a while.

There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.

When you're wondering whether she's his daughter or his girlfriend, she's his girlfriend.