If we focus mostly on how we might have been partly or wholly to blame for what might have been less than a perfect, problem- free... childhood, our guilt will overwhelm their pain. It becomes a story about us, not them. . . . When we listen, accept, and acknowledge, we feel regret instead, which is simply guilt without neurosis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The twenties are tryout years and what motivates young people are two contradictory impulses. The urge to create a structure that ...will serve their needs into the (barely) foreseeable future and the fear of being locked into a life pattern that will ultimately prove unsatisfying or limited.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our [adult] children have an adult's right to make their own choices and have the responsibility of living with the consequences. ...If we make their problems ours, they avoid that responsibility, and we are faced with problems we can't and shouldn't solve.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's a rare parent who can see his or her child clearly and objectively. At a school board meeting I attended . . . the only defin...ition of a gifted child on which everyone in the audience could agree was "mine."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »