Rearing a family is probably the most difficult job in the world. It resembles two business firms merging their respective resources to make a single product. All the potential headaches of that operation are present when an adult male and an adult female join to steer a child from infancy to adulthood.

Parents teach in the toughest school in the world - The School for Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, the classroom teacher, and the janitor.

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.

It is O. K. for me to feel angry and to express it in responsible ways.

Negotiating the adolescent stage is neither quick nor easy. . . . I have often said to parents, "If it isn't illegal, immoral, orfattening, give it your blessing." We do much better . . . if we find and support all the places we can appropriately say yes, and say only the no's that really matter.

The message sent is not always the message received.

I have talked about choosing rather than acting from compulsion. When you feel that you have to live according to someone else's direction or live so that you never disappoint or hurt anybody, then your life is a continual assessment of whether or not you please other people.