This is what teenagers do. They rebel. They offend. They push boundaries. They challenge convention and they question the beliefs of their parents. And as they expand their world, they are attracted to art and artists and symbols and people who help them do this. It was not surprising then, that as the child of…

It’s important. It’s prestigious. It pays the bills. You like your job—you chose it after all. At the very least, you decided to commit countless hours of your life to making it a career. Certainly there are many people who would kill for what you have, would trade their miserable windowless office for where you…

Your kids get bored. They want to get where you’re going. They just can’t wait until they can get their driver’s license, until they can move out, until Christmas comes. Impatient. Frustrated. That feeling in Springsteen’s “Born to Run“—gotta get out while you’re young. We still have a bit of that feeling ourselves. We can’t…

As a parent, there is no word you hear more than Why? Why not? Why can’t I? Why do I have to? Why does it work like that? Why? Why? Why? While this constant questioning can be tiresome, we must never discourage it. As we said before, much of what we take for granted as…

Maybe it’s our favorite movie from when we were kids. Maybe it’s the sport we excelled at in high school. Maybe it’s visiting that hole in the wall in our hometown that we loved growing up. As parents, we can’t wait to share the things with our kids. We get excited imagining their faces lighting…

You thought you’d get a successor—to your business, to your calling. You assumed they would be an athlete…or at the very least, a sports fan. You dreamed of sharing books or movies together. You imagined traveling through the outdoors and all around the world. But your daughter is dyslexic and your son can’t stand football….

We give them so much. We spend so much on them. We are with them so much. Yet almost all of us, if we actually did an accounting of it, fall short in one area. We just don’t give them all of us very often. That is to say, that when we are with our…

Every night for so many nights, it was the same. You started the process. You got them into the bathroom. You got them into bed. You read to them. Then they fell asleep. And then one day, you didn’t. Or one day—if you’re still in it—you won’t. We know this is how it goes, but…

Children have always been cruel to each other. In fact, people have always been cruel to each other. And they always will be. This is a tough pill for any parent to swallow. We would do anything to spare our children from the kind of suffering that bullying and unwarranted cruelty produce. We would go…

These tough little kids. They fall down. They get back up. They skin their knees and bleed. They are growing, constantly, pushing through and out of their clothes. Wearing out their shoes, burning through backpacks and bikes, and an endless parade of toys. It can be easy to miss, you know. How fragile and ephemeral…