A sense of worthiness is a child's most important need.

The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.

We cannot spare our children the influence of harmful values by turning off the television any more than we can keep them home forever or revamp the world before they get there. Merely keeping them in the dark is no protection and, in fact, can make them vulnerable and immature.

A sense of worthiness is a child's most important need.

Never miss an opportunity to allow a child to do something she can and wants to on her own. Sometimes we're in too much of a rush--and she might spill something, or do it wrong. But whenever possible she needs to learn, error by error, lesson by lesson, to do better. And the more she is able to learn by herself the more she gets the message that she's a kid who can.

More than what we say or do, the way we are expresses what we think it means to be alive. So the articulate parent is less a telling than a listening individual.

Parenthood always comes as a shock. Postpartum blues? Postpartum panic is more like it. We set out to have a baby; what we get is a total take-over of our lives.