If your children see that you are seeking, they will seek-the finding part is up to God.

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

As parents it is well to be aware of the tendency to equate energetic activity with contest. Our children's worth does not dependon their ability to trounce one another. And surely we can find ways of frolicking and being healthy and active together in some joyful, free way that is not an adversary relationship.

Once we begin to appreciate that the apparent destructiveness of the toddler in taking apart a flower or knocking down sand castles is in fact a constructive effort to understand unity, we are able to revise our view of the situation, moving from reprimand and prohibition to the intelligent channeling of his efforts and the fostering of discovery.

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.

Especially with our first child, we tend to take too much responsibility--both credit and blame--for everything. The more we wantto be good parents, the more we tend to see ourselves as making or breaking our children.

Suddenly we have a baby who poops and cries, and we are trying to calm, clean up, and pin things together all at once. Then as fast as we learn to cope--so soon--it is hard to recall why diapers ever seemed so important. The frontiers change, and now perhaps we have a teenager we can't reach.