Families need families. Parents need to be parented. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles are back in fashion because they are necessary. Stresses on many families are out of proportion to anything two parents can handle.

A grandchild is a miracle, but a renewed relationship with your own children is even a greater one.

You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes.

A family's responses to crisis or to a new situation mirror those of a child. That is to say, the way a small child deals with a new challenge (for instance, learning to walk) has certain predictable stages: regression, anxiety, mastery, new energy, growth, and feedback for future achievement. These stages can also be seen in adults coping with new life events, whether positive or negative.

Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them - all of these further a child's brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months.

Parents don't make mistakes because they don't care, but because they care so deeply.

Grandparents who want to be truly helpful will do well to keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves until these are requested.