Spend Time With Your Child Quotes

I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. Although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as a starfish loves a coral reef and as a kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. i will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and as an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as the taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.

What are you doing following me around the back streets of London, you little idiot?” Will demanded, giving her arm a light shake. Cecily’s eyes narrowed. “This morning it was cariad (note: Welsh endearment, like ‘darling’ or ‘love’), now it’s idiot.” “Oh, you’re using a Glamour rune. There’s one thing to declare, you are not afraid of anything when you live in the country. But this is London.” “I’m not afraid of London,” Cecily said defiantly. Will leaned closer, almost hissing in her ear *and said something very complicated in Welsh* She laughed. “No, it wouldn’t do you any good to tell me to go home. You are my brother, and I want to go with you.” Will blinked at her words. You are my brother, and I want to go with you. It was the sort of thing he was used to hearing Jem say. Although Cecily was unlike Jem in every other conceivable possible way, she did share one quality with him. Stubbornness. When Cecily said she wanted something, it did not express an idle desire, but an iron determination. “Do you even care where I’m going?” he said. “What if I were going to hell?” “I’ve always wanted to see hell,” Cecily said. “Doesn’t everyone?” “Most of us spend our time trying to stay out of it, Cecily. I’m going to an ifrit den, if you must know, to purchase drugs from vile, dissolute criminals. They may clap eyes on you, and decide to sell you.” “Wouldn’t you stop them?” “I suppose it would depend on whether they cut me a part of the profit.” She shook her head. “Jem is your parabatai,” she said. “He is your brother, given to you by the Clave, but I am your sister by blood. Why would you do anything for him, but you only want me to go home?” “How do you know the drugs are for Jem?” Will said. “I’m not an idiot, Will.” “No, more’s the pity. Jem- Jem is like the better part of me. I would not expect you to understand. I owe him. I owe him this.” “So what am I?” Cecily said. Will exhaled, too desperate to check himself. “You are my weakness.” “And Tessa is your heart,” she said, not angrily, but thoughtfully. “I am not fooled. As I told you, I’m not an idiot. And more’s the pity for you, although I suppose we all want things we can’t have.” “Oh,” said Will, “and what do you want?” “I want you to come home.” A strand of black hair was stuck to her cheek by the dampness, and Will fought the urge to pull her cloak closer about her, to make her safe as he had when she was a child. “The Institute is my home,” Will sighed, and leaned his head against the stone wall. “I can’t stand out her arguing with you all evening, Cecily. If you’re determined to follow me into hell, I can’t stop you.” “Finally,” she said provingly. “You’ve seen sense. I knew you would, you’re related to me.” Will fought the urge to shake her. “Are you ready?” She nodded, and he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I'd never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with longing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I'd spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Cho gets a book deal, every time I learn that some young up-and-comer is living the life I should be living. Writing has formed the core of my identity since I was a child. After Dad died, after Mom withdrew into herself, and after Rory decided to forge a life without me, writing gave me a reason to stay alive. And as miserable as it makes me, I'll cling to that magic for as long as I live.

Divorce is difficult. I knew it would be, but it’s so much harder than I anticipated. And navigating divorce with a child in the mix is a million times trickier. You’re stuck interacting with that person for the remainder of your life. You have to either figure out a way to plan birthday parties together or figure out a way to be okay with having separate celebrations. You have to plan on which holidays each of you get to spend with your child, which days of the week, down to which hours of the day sometimes. You can’t snap your fingers and be done with the person you married and divorced. You’re stuck with them. Forever.

Grigorii spared a single glance in his brother’s direction. If looks were daggers, that one would’ve sliced straight through the volhv’s heart. “Here it comes. ‘My oldest son . . .’” “Is a doctor,” Evdokia finished in a singsong voice. “And my daughter is an attorney.” Vasiliy raised his chin. “Jealousy is bad for you. Poisons the heart.” “Aha!” Evdokia slapped the table. “How about your youngest, the musician? How is he doing?” “Yes, what is Vyacheslav doing lately?” Grigorii asked. “Didn’t I see him with a black eye yesterday? Did he whistle a tree onto himself?” Oh boy. Curran opened his mouth. Next to him Jim shook his head. His expression looked suspiciously like fear. “He is young,” Vasiliy said. “He is spoiled rotten,” Evdokia barked. “He spends all his time trying to kill my cat. One child is a doctor, the other is an attorney, the third is a serial killer in training.

Each one of us has a three-year-old child within us, and we often spend most of our time yelling at that kid in ourselves. Then we wonder why our lives don’t work.

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

She was one of those exceptional children who do still spend time outside, in solitude. In her case nature represented beauty - and refuge. "It's so peaceful out there and the air smells so good. I mean, it's polluted, but not as much as the city air. For me, it's completely different there," she said. "It's like you're free when you go out there. It's your own time. Sometimes I go there when I'm mad - and then, just with the peacefulness, I'm better. I can come back home happy, and my mom doesn't even know why."      The she described her special part of the woods.      "I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lie down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes I'd fall asleep back there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day."      The young poet's face flushed. Her voice thickened.      "And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me.

Once you familiarize yourself with your tools, you should forget about them. It will only throw you off-balance. In all these ‘rolling shit into little balls’ types who spend hours of time and reams of paper saying nothing, literary masturbators, they concentrate on the vehicle more than what they want to produce. That impedes the end result and defeats the purpose. You must lose consciousness of the medium or mechanics to do the impossible. Like Nijinsky who explained how he gave the impression of hovering in mid-air – ‘I just pause when I get there.’ In a child-like way, real magicians innocently do the simplest thing. The objective is all they think about. I just want to make music the way I hear it. The ends justify the means, and the means become inconsequential.

Since Sienna was in an unusually cooperative mood, the session went well. He was returning from it midmorning - after a short detour - when a small naked body barreled into him in one of the main corridors. Steadying the boy with Tk, he looked down. The child lifted a finger to his lips. "Shh. I'm hiding." With that, he went behind Judd and scrambled into a small alcove. "Quickly! Not sure why he obeyed the order, Judd backed up to stand in front of the alcove, arms crossed. A flustered Lara came running around the corner a few seconds later. "Have you seen Ben? Four-year-old. Naked as a jaybird?" "How tall is he?" Judd asked in his most overbearing Psy manner. Lara stared. "He's four. How tall do you think he is? Have you seen him or not?" "Let me think...did you say he was naked?" "He was about to be bathed. Slippery little monkey." A giggle from behind Judd. Lara's eyes widened and then her lips twitched. "So you haven't seen him?" "Without a proper description, I can't be sure." The healer was obviously trying not to laugh. "You shouldn't encourage him - he's incorrigible as it is." Judd felt childish hands on his left calf and then Ben poked his head out. "I'm incorwigeable, did ya hear?" Judd nodded. "I do believe you've been found. Why don't you go have your bath?" "Come on, munchkin." Lara held out a hand. Surprisingly strong baby arms and legs wrapped around Judd's leg. "No. I wanna stay with Uncle Judd." Lara anticipated his question. "Ben spends a lot of time with Marlee." "I spend a lot of time with Marlee," a small voice piped up.

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else, your co-star perhaps, or Y, or even O, or anyone Z through A, even R. Although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.

Even a moment's reflection will help you see that the problem of using your time well is not a problem of the mind but of the heart. It will only yield to a change in the very way we feel about time. The value of time must change for us. And then the way we think about it will change, naturally and wisely. That change in feeling and in thinking is combined in the words of a prophet of God in this dispensation. It was Brigham Young, and the year was 1877, and he was speaking at April general conference. He wasn't talking about time or schedules or frustrations with too many demands upon us. Rather, he was trying to teach the members of the Church how to unite themselves in what was called the united order. The Saints were grappling with the question of how property should be distributed if they were to live the celestial law. In his usual direct style, he taught the people that they were having trouble finding solutions because they misunderstood the problem. Particularly, he told them they didn't understand either property or the distribution of wealth. Here is what he said: With regard to our property, as I have told you many times, the property which we inherit from our Heavenly Father is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of the same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by our Heavenly Father; all the rest is what he may be pleased to add unto us. To direct, to counsel and to advise in the disposition of our time, pertains to our calling as God's servants, according to the wisdom which he has given and will continue to give unto us as we seek it. [JD 18:354] Time is the property we inherit from God, along with the power to choose what we will do with it. President Young calls the gift of life, which is time and the power to dispose of it, so great an inheritance that we should feel it is our capital. The early Yankee families in America taught their children and grandchildren some rules about an inheritance. They were always to invest the capital they inherited and live only on part of the earnings. One rule was "Never spend your capital." And those families had confidence the rule would be followed because of an attitude of responsibility toward those who would follow in later generations. It didn't always work, but the hope was that inherited wealth would be felt a trust so important that no descendent would put pleasure ahead of obligation to those who would follow. Now, I can see and hear Brigham Young, who was as flinty a New Englander as the Adams or the Cabots ever hoped to be, as if he were leaning over this pulpit tonight. He would say something like this, with a directness and power I wish I could approach: "Your inheritance is time. It is capital far more precious than any lands or stocks or houses you will ever get. Spend it foolishly, and you will bankrupt yourself and cheapen the inheritance of those that follow you. Invest it wisely, and you will bless generations to come. “A Child of Promise”, BYU Speeches, 4 May 1986

Imagine a peaceful river running through the countryside. That’s your river of well-being. Whenever you’re in the water, peacefully floating along in your canoe, you feel like you’re generally in a good relationship with the world around you. You have a clear understanding of yourself, other people, and your life. You can be flexible and adjust when situations change. You’re stable and at peace. Sometimes, though, as you float along, you veer too close to one of the river’s two banks. This causes different problems, depending on which bank you approach. One bank represents chaos, where you feel out of control. Instead of floating in the peaceful river, you are caught up in the pull of tumultuous rapids, and confusion and turmoil rule the day. You need to move away from the bank of chaos and get back into the gentle flow of the river. But don’t go too far, because the other bank presents its own dangers. It’s the bank of rigidity, which is the opposite of chaos. As opposed to being out of control, rigidity is when you are imposing control on everything and everyone around you. You become completely unwilling to adapt, compromise, or negotiate. Near the bank of rigidity, the water smells stagnant, and reeds and tree branches prevent your canoe from flowing in the river of well-being. So one extreme is chaos, where there’s a total lack of control. The other extreme is rigidity, where there’s too much control, leading to a lack of flexibility and adaptability. We all move back and forth between these two banks as we go through our days—especially as we’re trying to survive parenting. When we’re closest to the banks of chaos or rigidity, we’re farthest from mental and emotional health. The longer we can avoid either bank, the more time we spend enjoying the river of well-being. Much of our lives as adults can be seen as moving along these paths—sometimes in the harmony of the flow of well-being, but sometimes in chaos, in rigidity, or zigzagging back and forth between the two. Harmony emerges from integration. Chaos and rigidity arise when integration is blocked.

If you look at the best research on parenting, it comes down to one thing and one thing only. Not what you teach your children or how much time you spend with them, or if you read to them or not. What it comes down to is who you are, because we teach who we are. You read, your child will read. You watch too much TV, your child will. You do service in the world, your child will do service in the world. So the best way to get past all the worries is to be the best you that you can be. And forgive yourself when you are not. And not to hold unrealistic expectations of your children when you are in no way showing them the behavior you demand from them. Be an example to yourself that your child can be proud of.

Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing.

Shut up and listen. Research shows that people who interrupt are three times more likely to die of a heart attack than those who don’t and that marital relationships usually fail because of too much communication, not too little. Couples who spend a lot of time being quiet together stay together.

Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing? I've long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia. It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child, the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better spent putting out that cigarette.

Because it hardly ends with falling in love. Just the opposite. I don't need to tell you, Your Honor, I sense that you understand true loneliness. How you fall in love and it's there that the work begins: day after day, year after year, you must dig yourself up, exhume the contents of your mind and sould for the other to sift through so that you might be known to him, and you, too, must spend days and years wading through all that he excavates for you alone, the archaeology of his being, how exhausting it became, the digging up and the wading through, while my own work, my true work, lay waiting for me. Yes, I always thought there would be more time left for me, more time left for us, and for the child we might one day have, but I never felt that my work could be put aside as they could, my husband and the idea of our child, a little boy or girl that I sometimes even tried to imagine, but always only vaguely enough that he or she remained a ghostly emissary of our future, just her back while she sat playing with her blocks on the floor, or just his feet sticking out of the blanket on our bed, a tiny pair of feet. What of it, there would be time for them, for the life they stood for, the one I was not yet prepared to live because I had not yet done what I had meant to do in this one.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

Arbitrary rules teach kids discipline: If every rule made sense, they wouldn't be learning respect for authority, they'd be learning logic. So go crazy with the rules―the time your child spends trying to figure them out is time he won't be stapling firecrackers to the neighbor's dog.

But the time we spend together as a family will root them deeply in values that matter and dreams that inspire.

As a parent, a great way to support them is simply to spend a lot of time outside, ask open-ended questions, and encourage your child’s innate curiosity and willingness to investigate.

Until about age ten or so, a child thrives on spending special quiet time with a parent before bed. Reading books, talking, giving back rubs, and simply being together quietly are all important prebed rituals. Actually, I find that most parents who do not have a formal bedtime routine typically spend that last hour before bed fighting with their children about going to bed—now that is unpleasant and unnecessary.

You came to develop an open heart. You chose to be in all the circumstances that closed your heart in the past. You chose parents who did not know how to love you, criticized you often, lacked time to spend with you, and acted in ways you had judged impossible to love in other lifetimes. Yet, because they were your parents and you were their child, you found it in your heart to love them, and thus grew spiritually by learning to love behaviors you had previously judged unlovable.

I’m surprised a person with your experience in telling elaborate fables should have difficulty in thinking up such a simple tale, but I suppose it’s a different issue when you have to think quickly rather than spend time thoroughly developing your story.” “I’m sure that’s it,” she replied blithely, cutting her bacon into small bits.“I’m also sure that my skills will grow over time. I just need to practice, practice, practice. Did I ever tell you about the dragon I owned when I was a child?

series of studies over the past seven years has demonstrated clearly and unambiguously that the more time your child spends playing video games, the less likely he is to do well in school—whether he is in elementary school, middle school, high school, or college. This

If you and your woman both work, it is better to make arrangements with other families to “timeshare” childcaring, or to hire someone to help with your children, than to permanently compromise your deepest purpose and truth because you feel you must do so to spend more time with your children. It is not the amount of time but the quality of the interaction that most influences a child’s growth. Children are exquisitely sensitive to emotional tone. If you are not full in your core, aligned with your deepest purpose and living a life of authentic commitment, your children will feel it.

We live not for ourselves… it’s what my father always said to justify the sacrifices he had to make, like not spending enough time with me and Mom… or not marrying the woman he loved. But I never knew they had a child together.” [...] The dark outlines of the trees, the patches of star-filled sky, Clarke’s stunned expression, the nervous face of the kid Bellamy had once thought he hated, but now seemed to be… something else entirely. “So that makes you…” “Your half brother.” Wells let the final word hang in the air, as if giving both of them time to examine the shape of it before they claimed it for their own. “I guess you and Octavia aren’t the only siblings in the Colony anymore.” A laugh escaped from Bellamy’s lips before he had time to stop it. “Half brothers,” he repeated. “This is insane.” He shook his head, and with a grin, extended his arm and reached for Wells’s hand. “Brothers.

You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a daughter is? You have no idea what a daughter is. You think you know what this country is? You have no idea what this country is. You have a false image of everything. All you know is what a fucking glove is. This country is frightening. Of course she was raped. What kind of company do you think she was keeping? Of course out there she was going to get raped. This isn't Old Rimrock, old buddy - she's out there, old buddy, in the USA. She enters that world, that loopy world out there, with whats going on out there - what do you expect? A kid from Rimrock, NJ, of course she didn't know how to behave out there, of course the shit hits the fan. What could she know? She's like a wild child out there in the world. She can't get enough of it - she's still acting up. A room off McCarter Highway. And why not? Who wouldn't? You prepare her for life milking the cows? For what kind of life? Unnatural, all artificial, all of it. Those assumptions you live with. You're still in your olf man's dream-world, Seymour, still up there with Lou Levov in glove heaven. A household tyrannized by gloves, bludgeoned by gloves, the only thing in life - ladies' gloves! Does he still tell the one about the woman who sells the gloves washing her hands in a sink between each color? Oh where oh where is that outmoded America, that decorous America where a woman had twenty-five pairs of gloves? Your kid blows your norms to kingdom come, Seymour, and you still think you know what life is?" Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive. Meredith Levov, 1964. "You wanted Ms. America? Well, you've got her, with a vengeance - she's your daughter! You wanted to be a real American jock, a real American marine, a real American hotshot with a beautiful Gentile babe on your arm? You longed to belong like everybody else to the United States of America? Well, you do now, big boy, thanks to your daughter. The reality of this place is right up in your kisser now. With the help of your daughter you're as deep in the sit as a man can get, the real American crazy shit. America amok! America amuck! Goddamn it, Seymour, goddamn you, if you were a father who loved his daughter," thunders Jerry into the phone - and the hell with the convalescent patients waiting in the corridor for him to check out their new valves and new arteries, to tell how grateful they are to him for their new lease on life, Jerry shouts away, shouts all he wants if it's shouting he wants to do, and the hell with the rules of hte hospital. He is one of the surgeons who shouts; if you disagree with him he shouts, if you cross him he shouts, if you just stand there and do nothing he shouts. He does not do what hospitals tell him to do or fathers expect him to do or wives want him to do, he does what he wants to do, does as he pleases, tells people just who and what he is every minute of the day so that nothing about him is a secret, not his opinions, his frustrations, his urges, neither his appetite nor his hatred. In the sphere of the will, he is unequivocating, uncompromising; he is king. He does not spend time regretting what he has or has not done or justifying to others how loathsome he can be. The message is simple: You will take me as I come - there is no choice. He cannot endure swallowing anything. He just lets loose. And these are two brothers, the same parents' sons, one for whom the aggression's been bred out, the other for whom the aggression's been bred in. "If you were a father who loved your daughter," Jerry shouts at the Swede, "you would never have left her in that room! You would have never let her out of your sight!

So you’re spending more than you’re making? What did I tell you about being responsible? Damn it, Camille! How many times have I told you not to get the credit cards?” He wiped his mouth and threw his napkin on the table. “I didn’t whip your ass enough as a child! If I had, you might listen to me once in a goddamn while!” Trenton

O my poor child. I bore you for sorrow, Nursed you for grief. Why? You should be Spending your time here by your ships Happily and untroubled by tears, Since life is short for you, all too brief. Now you're destined for both an early death And misery beyond compare. It was for this I gave birth to you in your father's palace Under an evil star.

Since we had religion in the classroom, my Sunday-school caper was an add-on. As usual, I was propelled by curiosity: wouldn’t I find out more about religious knowledge in a Sunday school than I could in an ordinary school? Not likely, as it turned out the most interesting parts of the Bible, those dealing with sex, rape, child sacrifice, mutilations, massacres, the gathering up in baskets of the lopped-off heads of your enemy’s kids, and the cutting up of concubines’ bodies and sending them around as invitations-to-a-war were studiously avoided, though I did spend a lot of time colouring in angels and sheep and robes, and singing hymns about letting my little candle shine in my own small, dark corner.

Have you bought into the lie that “You are what you tweet”? Spend forty days discovering who God says you are. Your identity is not found in how witty or pithy your 280 characters can be. You are a child of God, made in His likeness. Shut down Twitter and open up your Bible. Spend your time digging into the Word and discover who you are there, based on God’s opinion.

One of the reasons veteran parents don’t focus on the hardness of having babies is that “hard” is not the whole story. It’s not even the major part. The time you will actually spend with your kids is breathtakingly short. They will change very quickly. Eventually, your child will find a sleep schedule, turn to you for comfort, and learn from you both what to do and what not to do.

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don’t have a partner. They were right. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled “Make Your Partner a Real Partner” about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms who live with 100/0. My understanding and expectation of what a family looks like has shifted closer to reality. Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent—84 percent of whom are women. I

If you think you're important, if you feel that your life matters, all you need to do is spend some time in nature, Hannah thought. Stand before an ocean. Climb a mountain. Stare out over a canyon. Creation--wild and untamed--reminded her of her size in this universe. But feeling small did not send her into despair. She was like a child, trusting her Father when he said the storm would pass.

...a final word to "the children": do you want to get suckered like your big brothers and sisters? Those saps who spent 2008 standing behind the Obamessiah swaying and chanting, "We are the dawning of the Hopeychange" like brainwashed cult extras? Sooner or later you guys have to crawl out from under the social engineering and rediscover the contrarian spirit for which youth was once known...This will be the great battle of the next generation--to reclaim your birthright from those who spent it. If you don't, the entire global order will teeter and fall. But, if you do, you will have won a great victory. Every time a politician proposes new spending, tell him he's already spent your money, get his hand out of your pocket. Every time a politician says you can stay a child until your twenty-seventh birthday, tell him, "No, you're the big baby, not me--you've spent irresponsibly, and me and my pals are the ones who are gonna have to be the adults and clean up your mess. Don't treat met like a kid when your immaturity got us into this hole." This is a battle for the American idea, and it's an epic one, but--to reprise the lamest of lame-o-lines--you can do anything you want to do. So do it.

The prescription for spiritual transformation has often been too individualistically oriented. We are encouraged to engage in spiritual disciplines so that we might have the power to do what we can’t do by will power alone. But what happens when people don’t have the “will power” to engage spiritual disciples on a consistent basis? Our character is left untended. “In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You’ll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy, and you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else.”[1] So what are we to do?

Do not settle for living a version of your life designed by another. You are not meant to be gatekeeper or the holder of secrets and shame. You are here to live free and clear and into your own wide open truth. If you are spending too much time around people who expect otherwise you will begin to notice a feeling of constriction. Sometimes the life we create can be come a cage of our own making. Sometimes we stifle our truths to make others comfortable. Do not sacrifice your own comfort and freedom for that of another. The price you pay for this is too high. Define your own space. Remember your own divinity. You have a responsibility to this existence to live in fullness of your truth and art and purpose. Do not be diminished by circumstance or opinion or judgement. Your story is your own; nobody can write it but you. You hold the paper, you choose the pen, and you write your life story the way only you can. So, if someone tries to build you a box, rip that fucker apart and use the wood to build yourself a stage, then ditch your indoor voice and sing it loud. People are not meant to live quietly in small containers no matter how beautiful. A gilded cage is still confinement. You are a wild child – only the open air of freedom will do.

Now imagine that we offer you a highly subsidized daycare program. What exactly are you getting for it? Surely, we are saving you time shuttling your kids back and forth. We might be saving you money as well...But we would be giving you something else, even more precious. Something you could spend on many things. We would be giving you back all that mental bandwidth that you currently use to fret, worry, and juggle these arrangements. We'd be taking a cognitive load off. As we've seen, this would help your executive control, your self-control more broadly, even your parenting. It would increase your general cognitive capacity, your ability to focus, the quality of your work, or whatever else you chose to turn your mind to. From this perspective, help with child care is much more than that. It is a way to build human capital of the deepest kind: it creates bandwidth.

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don’t have a partner. They were right. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled “Make Your Partner a Real Partner” about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms

But young children, whose prefrontal cortexes have barely begun to ripen, can’t conceive of a future, which means they spend their lives in the permanent present, a forever feeling of right now. At times, this is a desirable state of consciousness; indeed, for meditators, it’s the ultimate aspiration. But living in the permanent present is not a practical parenting strategy. “Everybody would like to be in the present,” says Daniel Gilbert, a social psychologist at Harvard and author of the 2006 best-seller Stumbling on Happiness. “Certainly it’s true that there is an important role for being present in our lives. All the data say that. My own research says that.” The difference is that children, by definition, only live in the present, which means that you, as a parent, don’t get much of a chance. “Everyone is moving at the same speed toward the future,” he says. “But your children are moving at that same speed with their eyes closed. So you’re the ones who’ve got to steer.” He thinks about this for a moment. “You know, back in the early seventies, I hung out with a lot of people who wanted to live in the present. And it meant that no one paid the rent.” In effect, parents and small children have two completely different temporal outlooks. Parents can project into the future; their young children, anchored in the present, have a much harder time of it. This difference can be a formula for heartbreak for a small child.

When people dream something as a child, it doesn’t always come true. But my childhood dream of what kind of man I would marry and spend the rest of my life with did come true. I always knew my husband would be tall, dark, and handsome, but he also had to have a rugged look, as if he’d just walked out of the wilderness. He had to love the outdoors and be able to survive there if needed. I also wanted him to be able to take command of any situation when needed. I wanted him to be a leader but with a sense of humor, too. I wanted him to work and make a living. I wanted him to be a man’s man, but with gentleness and love for me and his children, and be ready to defend us at all times. More than anything else, I wanted to feel loved and protected. What I didn’t know when I found the man who filled my dreams was that I had found a diamond in the rough. It would take a lifetime to perfect that diamond on the long journey of life. Phil and I have had many good years, some hard years, a few sad years, and a lot of struggling years to get where we are now. God put us in each other’s paths. It has always been a wonderful ride for me. I have a husband who is my best buddy and friend, my lover, my Christian brother, my champion, and the person who will always be there through thick and thin. There is no greater love than your love for God, but right under that is your love for your husband, your partner in life. One of the greatest tragedies I see is people not putting every effort into the foundation of their marriage. My grandmother told me that it’s one man and one woman for life and that your marriage is worth fighting for. We had a few hard and bumpy years, but prayer, patience, and some suffering and hope-plus remembering an old lady’s words-were what got me through the difficult times. We have given it our all for our marriage and family, and my dreams did come true. Phil is and will always be my hero!

married with a child or two, wanted to own his own house, the only choice was to live in the suburbs and spend that much time getting to work and back. So two to three hours out of every twenty-four would be spent simply in the act of commuting. If you were lucky, you might be able to read the newspaper or a paperback in the train. Maybe you could listen to your iPod, to a Haydn symphony or a conversational Spanish lesson. Some people might even close their eyes, lost in deep metaphysical speculation. Still, it would be hard to call these two or

A simple way to start is to sit down with your child, or, if you’re an adult, sit down with your spouse or some other adult (it’s best to do this with another person, as the interaction makes for more creative, spontaneous, playful, and thorough answers), and respond to the following questions. Have the person asking the questions write down your answers, because this is an important document to save: What three or four things are you best at doing? What three or four things do you like doing the most? What three or four activities or achievements have brought you the most praise in your life? What are your three or four most cherished goals? What three or four things would you most like to get better at? What do others praise you for but you take for granted? What, if anything, is easy for you but hard for others? What do you spend a lot of time doing that you are really bad at? What could your teacher or supervisor do so that your time could be spent more productively? If you weren’t afraid of getting in trouble, what would you tell your teacher or supervisor that he or she doesn’t understand about you?

There is nothing that the media could say to me that would justify the way they’ve acted. You can hound me. You can follow me, but in no way should you frighten those around me. To harm my wife and potentially harm my daughter—there is no excuse that could put any of you on the right side of morality. I met Rose when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and through what she would call fate and I’d call circumstance of our hobbies, we’d cross paths dozens of times over the course of a decade. At seventeen, I attended the same national Model UN conference as Rose, and a delegate for Greenland locked us in a janitorial closet. He also stole our phones. He had to beat us dishonorably because he couldn’t beat us any other way. Rose said being locked in a confined space with me was the worst two hours of her life" They look bemused, brows furrowing. I can’t help but smile. “You’re confused because you don’t know whether she was exaggerating or whether she was being truthful. But the truth is that we are complex people with the ability to love to hate and to hate to love, and I wouldn’t trade her for any other person. So that day, stuck beside mops and dirtied towels, I could’ve picked the lock five minutes in and let her go. Instead, I purposefully spent two hours with a girl who wore passion like a dress made of diamonds and hair made of flames. Every day of my life, I am enamored. Every day of my life, I am bewitched. And every day of my life, I spend it with her.” My chest swells with more power, lifting me higher. “I’ve slept with many different kinds of people, and yes, the three that spoke to the press are among them. Rose is the only person I’ve ever loved, and through that love, we married and started a family. There is no other meaning behind this, and for you to conjure one is nothing less than a malicious attack against my marriage and my child. Anything else has no relevance. I can’t be what you need me to be. So you’ll have to accept this version or waste your time questioning something that has no answer. I know acceptance isn’t easy when you’re unsure of what you’re accepting, but all I can say is that you’re accepting me as me. I leave them with a quote from Sylvia Plath. “‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.’” My lips pull higher, into a livelier smile. “‘I am, I am, I am.’” With this, I step away from the podium, and I exit to a cacophony of journalists shouting and asking me to clarify. Adapt to me. I’m satisfied, more than I even predicted. Some people will rewind this conference on their television, to listen closely and try to understand me. I don’t need their understanding, but my daughter will—and I hope the minds of her peers are wide open with vibrant hues of passion. I hope they all paint the world with color.

What does that mean, 'deserve'?" Wren squinted at her, as though she truly wanted and answer. "Will you spend your entire life feeling guilty for what you did? Or will you try to redeem yourself with actions and deeds? healing takes time." Wren glanced at Marlena, whose back was still to them, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. "Forgiveness takes time. but none of it will happen until you allow it to." Wren twisted a lock of fiery hair around her finger. "you told me to ask for what I wanted. And I want to stay. i hid from my magic for so long, fought against the pieces of me that weren't easy to explain. I want to know, now, who I am and what what I can be. I don't want to hold myself back." She laughed a little through shining eyes. "I wish I could tell my father. i wish I could show him who I truly am. all those years I gave myself up to be what I thought he wanted. But this is the truth. This is me." She reached forward to brush Tamsin's cheek with her thumb. "And this is you. You were a child. Lost and desperate and afraid. You made a mistake. but if you don't forgive yourself, no one else will either.

I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me. It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish brown here and there. When I started to walk away, it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat," I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat," one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon," I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew everything essential about me. We walked on. A police- man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire. "It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning." The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked. "Touching this goat will change your life," I said. "It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute, and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you, Officer," I said. "And we understand why you, more than anybody, should never touch the Prince." The goat and I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning to wonder where we would spend the night.

There is nothing cute or lovable about a whining “brat.” To allow a child to whine and disobey is to mold a personality and character that you will eventually find hard to like. By taking control and teaching them to control their emotions and to instantly obey, your children will be cheerful and pleasant. Then you will not only love your children, but like them as well. The child reciprocates the parent’s delight by loving and honoring them even more. They can both enjoy each other’s company. The parents are rested and refreshed by spending time with their children.

For example, say you have a child whose peers’ parents routinely bake homemade cookies for class fund-raisers. Cookies with little icing smiley faces and a separate batch of gluten-free ones for the pussies. Well, maybe you have neither the TIME nor the ENERGY to bake homemade cookies. And maybe you do have twenty dollars but you’re worried about what the other parents will think if you contribute store-bought Oreos to the bake sale. You see where I’m going with this, right? You need to (a) stop worrying about what other people think and (b) budget your fucks accordingly. No time and no energy? Oreos it is!

How can you feel this way about her already?” I ask. “You love her.” “She’s my daughter.” “But . . . you only just found out.” Holden shifts to face me better. “When they placed her in your arms after you gave birth, did it take days or a moment to love that child?” I answer instantly. “Not even a moment.” “The moment I saw her, I knew she was mine, and I felt the same way. I don’t need weeks or months to love that child. She’s mine . . . ours. I am her father, whether she knows it or not, and all I want is to protect her from the horrors of this world. Now I get to spend time learning who she is and loving her even more.

by have a home in the first place? Good question! When I have a tea party for my grandchildren, I'm passing on to them the things my mama passed on to me-the value of manners and the joy of spending quiet time together. When Bob reads a Bible story to those little ones, he's passing along his deep faith. When we watch videos together, play games, work on projects-we're building a chain of memories for the future. These aren't lessons that can be taught in lecture form. They're taught through the way we live. What we teach our children-or any child who shares our lives-they will teach to their children. What we share with our children, they will share with generations to come. friend of mine loves the water, the out doors, and the California sunshine. She says they're a constant reminder of God's incredible creativity. Do you may have a patio or a deck or a small balcony? Bob and I have never regretted the time and expense of creating outdoor areas to spend time in. And when we sit outside, we enhance our experience with a cool salad of homegrown tomatoes and lettuce, a tall glass of lemonade, and beautiful flowers in a basket. Use this wonderful time to contemplate all God is doing in your life. ecome an answer to prayer! • Call and encourage someone today.

GOD'S TIMING As God's obedient child, you are in a love relationship with Him. In His timing, He will show you where He is working so you can join Him. Don't be in a hurry to be constantly engaged in activities for God. He may spend years preparing your character or developing your love relationship with Him before He gives you a large assignment. Don't get discouraged if the task or “call” does not come immediately. Remain faithful in what He has told you to do, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it may appear. God knows what He is doing. Focus on deepening your communion with God, and out of that fellowship will inevitably flow effective service for God.

Damn it, Jacob, I’m freezing my butt off.” “I came as fast as I could, considering I thought it would be wise to walk the last few yards.” Isabella whirled around, her smiling face lighting up the silvery night with more ease than the fullest of moons. She leapt up into his embrace, eagerly drinking in his body heat and affection. “I can see it now. ‘Daddy, tell me about your wedding day.’ ‘Well, son,’” she mocked, deepening her voice to his timbre and reflecting his accent uncannily, “’The first words out of your mother’s mouth were I’m freezing my butt off!’” “Very romantic, don’t you think?” he teased. “So, you think it will be a boy, then? Our first child?” “Well, I’m fifty percent sure.” “Wise odds. Come, little flower, I intend to marry you before the hour is up.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and carried her high against his chest. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do this hike the hard way.” “As Legna tells it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” “Yeah, well, I assure you a great many grooms have fudged that a little.” He reached to tuck her chilled face into the warm crook of his neck. “Surely the guests would know. It takes longer to walk than it does to fly . . . or whatever . . . out of the woods.” “This is true, little flower. But passing time in the solitude of the woods is not necessarily a difficult task for a man and woman about to be married.” “Jacob!” she gasped, laughing. “Some traditions are not necessarily publicized,” he teased. “You people are outrageous.” “Mmm, and if I had the ability to turn to dust right now, would you tell me no if I asked to . . . pass time with you?” Isabella shivered, but it was the warmth of his whisper and intent, not the cold, that made her do so. “Have I ever said no to you?” “No, but now would be a good time to start, or we will be late to our own wedding,” he chuckled. “How about no . . . for now?” she asked silkily, pressing her lips to the column on his neck beneath his long, loose hair. His fingers flexed on her flesh, his arms drawing her tighter to himself. He tried to concentrate on where he was putting his feet. “If that is going to be your response, Bella, then I suggest you stop teasing me with that wicked little mouth of yours before I trip and land us both in the dirt.” “Okay,” she agreed, her tongue touching his pulse. “Bella . . .” “Jacob, I want to spend the entire night making love to you,” she murmured. Jacob stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Okay, why is it I always thought it was the groom who was supposed to be having lewd thoughts about the wedding night while the bride took the ceremony more seriously?” “You started it,” she reminded him, laughing softly. “I am begging you, Isabella, to allow me to leave these woods with a little of my dignity intact.” He sighed deeply, turning his head to brush his face over her hair. “It does not take much effort from you to turn me inside out and rouse my hunger for you. If there is much more of your wanton taunting, you will be flushed warm and rosy by the time we reach that altar, and our guests will not have to be Mind Demons in order to figure out why.” “I’m sorry, you’re right.” She turned her face away from his neck. Jacob resumed his ritual walk for all of thirty seconds before he stopped again. “Bella . . .” he warned dangerously. “I’m sorry! It just popped into my head!” “What am I getting myself into?” he asked aloud, sighing dramatically as he resumed his pace. “Well, in about an hour, I hope it will be me.

Conversely, high-reactive children may be more likely to develop into artists and writers and scientists and thinkers because their aversion to novelty causes them to spend time inside the familiar—and intellectually fertile—environment of their own heads. “The university is filled with introverts,” observes the psychologist Jerry Miller, director of the Center for the Child and the Family at the University of Michigan. “The stereotype of the university professor is accurate for so many people on campus. They like to read; for them there’s nothing more exciting than ideas. And some of this has to do with how they spent their time when they were growing up. If you spend a lot of time charging around, then you have less time for reading and learning. There’s only so much time in your life.

He looked directly at Grant: “I will tell them that I think you are guilty of the murder of three people and that you were the sponsor of the child-pornography smear, and that I think a person of your brand of social pathology—I believe you are a psychopath, and I will tell them that—has no place in the Senate. And I will continue to argue that here in Minnesota for the full six years of your term, and do everything I can to wreck any possible political career that you might otherwise have had.” Grant smiled at him and said, “Fuck you.” The governor said, “Okay, okay, Porter. Now, Taryn, do you have anything for us?” “No, not really. I’ll be the best senator I can be, I reject any notion that I was involved in this craziness.” She looked at Smalls: “As for you, bring it on. If you want to spend six years fighting over this, by the time we’re done, you’ll be unemployable and broke. I would have no problem setting aside, say, a hundred million dollars for a media campaign to defend myself.” “Fuck you,” Smalls said. And, “By the way, I’d like to thank Agent Davenport for his work on this. I thought he did a brilliant job, even if I wound up losing.” Grant jumped in: “And I’d like to say that I think Davenport created the conditions that unnecessarily led to the deaths in this case, that if he’d been a little more circumspect, we might still have Helen Roman and Carver and Dannon alive, and might be able to actually prove what happened, so that I’d be definitively cleared.” Smalls made a noise that sounded like a fart, and Henderson said, “Thank you for that comment, Porter.

Circuitry for self-confidence depends on a child’s ability to locate identity over observable behavior; this comes from growing up in a family that focuses more on what’s “inside” a child (enduring qualities, feelings, ideas) than what is “outside” (accomplishments, outcomes, labels). In regard to your child’s sports team, for example, inside stuff might be her effort in practice, her attitude when winning and losing, and her willingness to try new things; outside stuff might be her number of goals or home runs, or labels like “most valuable player.” When it comes to academics, inside stuff might be willingness to try a bonus math problem, spending time on studying, and showing enthusiasm about a subject; outside stuff might be a grade, a test score, or a label like “smartest kid in class.

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

What happens when insatiability dominates a person's emotional functioning? The process of maturation is preempted by an obsession or an addiction, in this case for peer connection. Peer contact whets the appetite without nourishing. It titillates without satisfying. The end result of peer contact is usually an urgent desire for more. The more the child gets, the more he craves. The mother of an eight-year-old girl mused, “I don't get it — the more time my daughter spends with her friends, the more demanding she becomes to get together with them. How much time does she really need for social interaction, anyway?” Likewise, the parents of a young adolescent complained that “as soon as our son comes home from camp, he gets on the phone right away to call the kids he's just been with. Yet it's the family he hasn't seen for two weeks.” The obsession with peer contact is always worse after exposure to peers, whether it is at school or in playtimes, sleepovers, class retreats, outings, or camps. If peer contact satiated, times of peer interaction would lead automatically to increased self-generated play, creative solitude, or individual reflection. Many parents confuse this insatiable behavior with a valid need for peer interaction. Over and over I hear some variation of “but my child is absolutely obsessed with getting together with friends. It would be cruel to deprive him.” Actually, it would be more cruel and irresponsible to indulge what so clearly fuels the obsession. The only attachment that children truly need is the kind that nurtures and satisfies them and can bring them to rest. The more demanding the child is, the more he is indicating a runaway obsession. It is not strength that the child manifests but the desperation of a hunger that only increases with more peer contact.

The danger was not gone—Helen knew that. Each day spent together, the existence of this tiny charge was in her hands. It suddenly seemed the most perplexing fact of life—it was up to flawed, bruised, broken adults to bring up angels. Helen wanted to offer the child a place of safety, but no matter where Lyric went, that could not be found. Not for sure. If she stayed, they would each risk hurt, loss, and suffering. But it was no more than anyone else could offer. Helen realized, as she brushed a strand from the girl’s face and tucked it behind her small ear, that if she didn’t take that risk, she could be risking even more. For both of them. Lyric blinked, yet the look in her eyes never left. Helen closed her own eyes and leaned forward, placing a soft kiss on the child’s forehead. I will fail. She knew. I will fail you thousands of times more. But if we stay together, I will spend every day we have doing all I can to keep you from losing that look in your eyes. She nodded slowly to herself, to the unspoken words inside her. When you see me, I hope you always see a home.

To that point, I remember when visiting my parents’ years later, I happened to catch an old episode of The French Chef. Because my interest in food had grown, I watched it with even more attentiveness than I had when I was young. But on this particular occasion, I was taken aback by my reaction when Mrs Child bid US her ubiquitous farewell, ‘This is Julia Child, bon appétit!’ My eyes suddenly welded up and I had to stop myself from crying: why was I suddenly experiencing a powerful rush of emotion because a black and white moving image of a chef was saying goodbye to me in French? After a few moments, I realised that I was moved by Mrs Child not only because she brought back happy boyhood memories of spending time with my mom but also because Julia herself was so genuinely happy to be doing what she was doing. I saw in that moment the embodiment of what I, and so many of us, aspire to. To spend your life doing what you love and doing it well. To achieve this is a rare thing, but for those who can, real joy is theirs, as is the ability to bring that joy to others through their chosen vacation.

At nine o'clock every morning you will read aloud one half-hour to me. Before that you will use the time to put this room in order. Wednesday and Saturday forenoons, after half-past nine, you will spend with Nancy in the kitchen, learning to cook. Other mornings you will sew with me. That will leave the afternoons for your music. I shall, of course, procure a teacher at once for you," she finished decisively, as she arose from her chair. Pollyanna cried out in dismay. "Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to to live." "To live, child! What do you mean? As if you weren't living all the time!" "Oh, of course I'd be breathing all the time I was doing those things, Aunt Polly, but I wouldn't be living. You breathe all the time you're asleep, but you aren't living. I mean living doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading (to myself, of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr. Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That's what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn't living!

The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year?  We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization?  The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.”  After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.

Jyo offered Isae a fried feathergrass stalk with a big smile, but Akos snatched it before she could take it. “You don’t want to eat that,” he said. “Unless you want to spend the next six hours hallucinating.” “Last time Jyo slipped someone one of those, they wandered around this house talking about giant dancing babies,” Jorek said. “Yeah, yeah,” Teka said. “Laugh all you want, but you would be scared too if you hallucinated giant babies.” “It was worth it, whether I will ever be forgiven or not,” Jyo said, winking. He had a soft, slippery way of talking. “Do they work on you?” Cisi asked Akos, nodding to the stalk in his hand. In answer, Akos bit into the stalk, which tasted like earth and salt and sour. “Your gift is odd,” Cisi said. “I’m sure Mom would have some kind of vague, wise thing to say about that.” “Ooh. What was he like as a child?” Jorek said, folding his hands and learning close to Akos’s sister. “Was he actually a child, or did he just sort of appear one day as a fully grown adult, full of angst?” Akos glared at him. “He was short and chubby,” Cisi said. “Irritable. Very particular about his socks.” “My socks?” Akos said. “Yeah!” she said. “Eijeh told me you always arranged them in order of preference from left to right. Your favorite ones were yellow.

Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance

Arms still crossed, Lindsay's clogs tapped on the sidewalk. “So Sam didn’t tell you I was a desperate orphan child with no life outside of work? This isn’t some kind of intervention, some kind of lame attempt to cheer me up?” He grinned.“Why would she do that?” “Because that’s how it sounded.” Nudging her shoulder, he grinning down at her. “You don’t look desperate, Dr. Lindsay, not by a long shot." “That’s because you don’t know me.” Lindsay bit her lower lip, arms still crossed, clogs still tap-tap-tapping. Her chest heaved. “My parent’s died in a car accident almost two years ago. It’s a difficult thing to get over. I’m still not exactly right. I guess she worries about me.” Ty sucked in his breath, thinking fast. “I’m really sorry about your parents, Linds.” As he put an arm around her shoulder, she broke into a self-conscious smile and shook her head. “Spend any time with me at all and you’ll find that Sam’s right. I’m a desperate orphan child, completely paranoid and irrepressibly horny.” “Whoa!” She looked so cute, but vulnerable, too. He closed the arm around her shoulder, squeezing her sideways to his chest. Embarrassed, she smiled as she elbowed his rib. Then she dropped her arms and stayed put, tucked close against him. It felt right, having her there.

tuff. Almost all of us have it in abundance. What can we do with it? One of my favorite hideaways is an old faithful: the cardboard box. Cover it with festive Contact paper and stuff away. Or hang a shelf about a foot from the ceiling, and use it to store items you don't want sitting around. It's also great in a child's room for toys that aren't played with often. Get old school lockers or trunks, paint them, and use them for storage. Clutter around your house can cause clutter in your emotional and spiritual life too, so clean up and spend your best time enjoying life. re you reluctant to share your home with others? Maybe it's not your dream house or you don't have the money right now to decorate the way you'd like to. But you know what? It's not about having a perfect home. It's about your spirit of hospitality, your willingness to share your home and your life with others. Don't wait until everything is perfect because that will never happen. Focus on making your home cozy and comfortable. Your place will always be at its most beautiful when you use it to warm hearts. aking time for your husband doesn't have to be difficult or a hassle. With a little imagination and the desire to make him happy, you can make him feel loved. Are you thinking, Oh great, now Emilie 's telling me what I'm doing wrong with my husband. Not at all! I just want to give you a few ideas to help you let your

Baines told his son that children always got in the way of a marriage. Finding a state boarding school in England for Roland was good for everyone ‘all round’. Rosalind Baines, neé Morley, army wife, child of her times, did not chafe or rage against her powerlessness or sulk about it. She and Robert had left school at fourteen. He became a butcher’s boy in Glasgow, she was a chambermaid in a middle-class house near Farnham. A clean and ordered home remained her passion. Robert and Rosalind wanted for Roland the education they had been denied. This was the story she told herself. That he might have attended a day school and stayed with her was an idea she must have dutifully banished. She was a small nervous woman, a worrier, very pretty, everyone agreed. Easily intimidated, fearful of Robert when he drank, which was every day. She was at her best, her most relaxed, in a long heart-to-heart with a close friend. Then she told stories and laughed easily, a light and liquid sound that Captain Baines himself rarely heard. Roland was one of her close friends. In the holidays, when they did the housework together, she told stories of her childhood in the village of Ash, near the garrison town of Aldershot. She and her brothers and sisters used to brush their teeth with twigs. Her employer gave her her first toothbrush. Like so many of her generation she lost all her teeth in her early twenties. In newspaper cartoons people in bed were often shown with their false teeth in a glass of water on the bedside table. She was the oldest of five and spent much of her childhood minding her sisters and brothers. She was closest to her sister Joy who still lived near Ash. Where was their mother when Rosalind was minding the children? Her reply was always the same, a child’s view unrevised in adulthood: your granny would take the bus to Aldershot and spend the day window-shopping. Rosalind’s mother fiercely disapproved of make-up. In her teens, on rare nights out, Rosalind would meet her friend Sybil and together they

Bharata, do not think that I have no sympathy for you in this your predicament. I understand it fully. But, then, my child, no man is allowed to do as he pleases. Man has no freedom. Fate tosses him about in all directions. The game which Fate plays is unpredictable. Nothing lasts in this world. What has been gathered is scattered about. What was once at the top soon reaches the lowest position. Meetings only end in separations and, as for life, it only ends in death. Ripe fruits have but one fear, that of falling down. And even so, man has no fear other than death. Think of a house built sturdily with strong pillars. Even that, in course of time, becomes weak and ancient. Men too become old, lose their power of thinking and death claims them. The night which passes will never come back and the waters of the Yamuna which flow fast, when in flood, towards the sea, will never return. In this world, Bharata, just as the waters on the surface of the earth get less and less, dried constantly by the rays of the sun, man’s life also gets lessened day by day. Your life and mine are fast ebbing away. Think on the Lord, my child. Do not spend your time in the contemplation of another’s life. Death walks with us: and he accompanies us on the longest journey we undertake. The skin gets wrinkled. Hair grows white. Old age makes man weak and helpless. Man delights at the sight of the sun rising and again, the setting sun is pleasing to the eye. But man forgets that every sunrise and every sunset has lessened one’s life on earth by another day. The seasons come and go and each season has a charm of its own. But they come and when they go, they take with them large slices of our lives every time. On the large expanse of the sea two pieces of wood come together. They float together for a while and then they are parted. Even so it is with man and his relationship with life, child, kinsmen, wealth and other possessions. Meetings end only in separation. It is the law of nature. No one is capable of altering the course of Fate. Weeping for one who is dead will not bring him back to life.

Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who teaches creative-writing workshops for kids and teens as director of Writopia Lab in New York City, says that the students who sign up for her classes “are often not the kids who are willing to talk for hours about fashion and celebrity. Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions. If your child is prone to overstimulation, then it’s also a good idea for her to pick activities like art or long-distance running, that depend less on performing under pressure. If she’s drawn to activities that require performance, though, you can help her thrive. When I was a kid, I loved figure skating. I could spend hours on the rink, tracing figure eights, spinning happily, or flying through the air. But on the day of my competitions, I was a wreck. I hadn’t slept the night before and would often fall during moves that I had sailed through in practice. At first I believed what people told me—that I had the jitters, just like everybody else. But then I saw a TV interview with the Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt. She said that pre-competition nerves gave her the adrenaline she needed to win the gold. I knew then that Katarina and I were utterly different creatures, but it took me decades to figure out why. Her nerves were so mild that they simply energized her, while mine were constricting enough to make me choke. At the time, my very supportive mother quizzed the other skating moms about how their own daughters handled pre-competition anxiety, and came back with insights that she hoped would make me feel better. Kristen’s nervous too, she reported. Renée’s mom says she’s scared the night before a competition. But I knew Kristen and Renée well, and I was certain that they weren’t as frightened as I was

IN HIS 2005 COLLECTION of essays Going Sane, Adam Phillips makes a keen observation. “Babies may be sweet, babies may be beautiful, babies may be adored,” he writes, “but they have all the characteristics that are identified as mad when they are found too brazenly in adults.” He lists those characteristics: Babies are incontinent. They don’t speak our language. They require constant monitoring to prevent self-harm. “They seem to live the excessively wishful lives,” he notes, “of those who assume that they are the only person in the world.” The same is true, Phillips goes on to argue, of young children, who want so much and possess so little self-control. “The modern child,” he observes. “Too much desire; too little organization.” Children are pashas of excess. If you’ve spent most of your adult life in the company of other adults—especially in the workplace, where social niceties are observed and rational discourse is generally the coin of the realm—it requires some adjusting to spend so much time in the company of people who feel more than think. (When I first read Phillips’s observations about the parallels between children and madmen, it so happened that my son, three at the time, was screaming from his room, “I. Don’t. Want. To. Wear. PANTS.”) Yet children do not see themselves as excessive. “Children would be very surprised,” Phillips writes, “to discover just how mad we think they are.” The real danger, in his view, is that children can drive their parents crazy. The extravagance of children’s wishes, behaviors, and energies all become a threat to their parents’ well-ordered lives. “All the modern prescriptive childrearing literature,” he concludes, “is about how not to drive someone (the child) mad and how not to be driven mad (by the child).” This insight helps clarify why parents so often feel powerless around their young children, even though they’re putatively in charge. To a preschooler, all rumpus room calisthenics—whether it’s bouncing from couch cushion to couch cushion, banging on tables, or heaving bowls of spaghetti onto the floor—feel normal. But to adults, the child looks as though he or she has suddenly slipped into one of Maurice Sendak’s wolf suits. The grown-up response is to put a stop to the child’s mischief, because that’s the adult’s job, and that’s what civilized living is all about. Yet parents intuit, on some level, that children are meant to make messes, to be noisy, to test boundaries. “All parents at some time feel overwhelmed by their children; feel that their children ask more of them than they can provide,” writes Phillips in another essay. “One of the most difficult things about being a parent is that you have to bear the fact that you have to frustrate your child.

No, she couldn’t blame this one on him. This one was entirely hers. She’d sent him running away. Everyone knew it, too, which was nowhere more apparent than in the carriage once they were all settled in and headed off. Lisette was unusually silent. The duke’s wooden expression said that he wished he could be anywhere else but here. And Tristan was studying her with a cold gaze. He did that for a mile or so before he spoke. “You’re a cruel woman, Jane Vernon.” “Tristan!” Lisette chided. “Don’t be rude.” “I’ll be as rude as I please to her,” he told his sister, with a jerk of his head toward Jane. “That man is mad for her, and she just keeps toying with him.” Guilt swamped Jane. And she’d thought that spending half a day trapped with Dom would be bad? She must have been dreaming. “It’s none of our concern,” Lisette murmured. “The hell it isn’t.” Tristan stared hard at Jane. “Is this about Nancy? About the fact that if she has a child, Dom will lose the title and the estate?” “No, of course not!” How dared he! “Tristan, please--” Lisette began. “That’s why you jilted him years ago, isn’t it?” Tristan persisted. “Because he no longer had any money, and you’d lose your fortune if you married him?” “I did not jilt him!” Jane shouted. An unnatural silence fell in the carriage, and she cursed her quick tongue. But really, this was all Dom’s fault for never telling his family the truth. She was tired of being made to look the villainess when she’d done nothing wrong. “What do you mean?” Lisette asked. Jane released an exasperated breath. “I mean, I did jilt him. But only because he tricked me into it.” When that brought a smug smile to Tristan’s face, she narrowed her eyes on him. “You knew.” “Not the details. I just knew something wasn’t right. But since it was clear that neither you nor my idiot brother were going to say anything without being prodded into it, I…er…did a bit of prodding.” He smirked at her. “You do tend to speak your mind when you get angry.” Jane scowled at him. “You’re just like him, manipulative and arrogant and--” “I beg to differ,” Tristan said jovially. “He’s just like me. I taught him everything he knows.” “Yes, indeed,” Lisette said with a snort. “You taught him to be as much an idiot as you.” She glanced from Tristan to Jane. “So, is one of you going to tell me what is going on? About the jilting, I mean?” Tristan cocked an eyebrow at Jane. “Well?” She sighed. The cat was out of the bag now. Might as well reveal the rest. So she related the whole tale, from Dom’s plotting with Nancy at the ball to George’s involvement to how she’d finally discovered the truth. When she finished, Tristan let out a low whistle. “Hell and thunder. My big brother has a better talent for deception than I realized.” “Not as good as you’d think,” Jane muttered. “If I hadn’t been so wounded and angry at the time, I would have noticed how…manufactured the whole thing felt.” Lisette patted her hand. “You were young. We were all more volatile then.” Her voice hardened. “And he hit you just where it hurt, the curst devil. No wonder you want to strangle him half the time. I would have strung him up by his toes if he’d done such a thing to me!

It’s not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp. I, too, was once in this position. I enjoyed practicing corporate law, and for a while I convinced myself that I was an attorney at heart. I badly wanted to believe it, since I had already invested years in law school and on-the-job training, and much about Wall Street law was alluring. My colleagues were intellectual, kind, and considerate (mostly). I made a good living. I had an office on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper with views of the Statue of Liberty. I enjoyed the idea that I could flourish in such a high-powered environment. And I was pretty good at asking the “but” and “what if” questions that are central to the thought processes of most lawyers. It took me almost a decade to understand that the law was never my personal project, not even close. Today I can tell you unhesitatingly what is: my husband and sons; writing; promoting the values of this book. Once I realized this, I had to make a change. I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country. It was absorbing, it was exciting, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people whom I never would have known otherwise. But I was always an expatriate. Having spent so much time navigating my own career transition and counseling others through theirs, I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire. I met my own envy after some of my former law school classmates got together and compared notes on alumni career tracks. They spoke with admiration and, yes, jealousy, of a classmate who argued regularly before the Supreme Court. At first I felt critical. More power to that classmate! I thought, congratulating myself on my magnanimity. Then I realized that my largesse came cheap, because I didn’t aspire to argue a case before the Supreme Court, or to any of the other accolades of lawyering. When I asked myself whom I did envy, the answer came back instantly. My college classmates who’d grown up to be writers or psychologists. Today I’m pursuing my own version of both those roles.

You don’t like feeling powerless? Then change your definition of power. Do not fix unfixable problems. Do not devote yourself to things you cannot control. You cannot make this world respect you. You cannot make it dignify you. It will never bend to you. This world does not belong to door. She tied her long hair away from her face, meticulously turning on specific track lights and not others, perhaps to highlight the beauty of her Scandinavian-style furniture choices or the incomparable city view. Then she poured herself a glass of wine from a previously opened bottle, joining Reina on the sofa with an air of hospitably withheld dread. “I was born here in Tokyo,” Reina commented. “Not far from here, actually. There was a fire the day I was born. People died. My grandmother always thought it meant something that I was—” She broke off. “What I was.” “People often search for meaning where there is none,” said Aiya placidly. Perhaps in a tone of sympathy, though Reina wasn’t sure what to think anymore. “Just because you can see two points does not mean anything exists between them.” “In other words, fate is a lie we tell ourselves?” asked Reina drolly. Aiya shrugged. Despite the careful curation of her lighting, she looked tired. “We tell ourselves many stories. But I don’t think you came here just to tell me yours.” No. Reina did not know why she was there, not really. She had simply wanted to go home, and when she realized home was an English manor house, she had railed against the idea so hard it brought her here, to the place she’d once done everything in her power to escape. “I want,” Reina began slowly, “to do good. Not because I love the world, but because I hate it. And not because I can,” she added. “But because everyone else won’t.” Aiya sighed, perhaps with amusement. “The Society doesn’t promise you a better world, Reina. It doesn’t because it can’t.” “Why not? I was promised everything I could ever dream of. I was offered power, and yet I have never felt so powerless.” The words left her like a kick to the chest, a hard stomp. She hadn’t realized that was the problem until now, sitting with a woman who so clearly lived alone. Who had everything, and yet at the same time, Reina did not see anything in Aiya Sato’s museum of a life that she would covet for her own. Aiya sipped her wine quietly, in a way that made Reina feel sure that Aiya saw her as a child, a lost little lamb. She was too polite to ask her to leave, of course. That wasn’t the way of things and Reina ought to know it. Until then, Aiya would simply hold the thought in her head. “So,” Aiya said with an air of teacherly patience. “You are disappointed in the world. Why should the Society be any better? It is part of the same world.” “But I should be able to fix things. Change things.” “Why?” “Because I should.” Reina felt restless. “Because if the world cannot be fixed by me, then how can it be fixed at all?” “These sound like questions for the Forum,” Aiya said with a shrug. “If you want to spend your life banging down doors that will never open, try their tactics instead, see how it goes. See if the mob can learn to love you, Reina Mori, without consuming or destroying you first.” Another reflective sip. “The Society is no democracy. In fact, it chose you because you are selfish.” She looked demurely at Reina. “It promised you glory, not salvation. They never said you could save others. Only yourself.” “And that is power to you?” Aiya’s smile was so polite that Reina felt it like the edge of a weapon. “You don’t like feeling powerless? Then change your definition of power. Do not fix unfixable problems. Do not devote yourself to things you cannot control. You cannot make this world respect you. You cannot make it dignify you. It will never bend to you. This world does not belong to you, Reina Mori, you belong to it, and perhaps when it is ready for a revolution it will look to you for leadership.

The good news is that family dysfunction is not new. If you want to feel better about your own upbringing, spend some time in the Old Testament. Adam’s son Cain killed his brother, Abel. Noah got drunk and disgraced his family. Abraham slept with his wife’s servant in order to have a child, defying God’s promise that his wife would bear his son. Isaac played favorites with his twin boys, turning them against each other. Jacob’s sons were so dysfunctional that they sold one brother into slavery and then led their dad to believe he’d been murdered.

Learned and lovely,” he said. “I see now why you’ve been spending time with her, Falco. Just because she cannot be your bride doesn’t mean she cannot be your muse.” Cass’s good mood faded instantly. Even in the dingy taverna, the reality was obvious to everyone. She and Falco could never be together. “Let’s get out of here, my lovely muse,” Falco said, as if sensing that Paolo’s words had upset her. He pulled her chair back for her, and she stood and adjusted her skirts. Cass bid the other artists good night and let Falco lead her to the door. “Falco.” Paolo’s sharp voice cut through the hazy darkness. Falco turned around. “Yes?” “I trust she knows little of your line of work?” Cass felt Falco’s body tense up momentarily, and then relax. “We’ve spoken briefly about the work I do for Tommaso, if that’s what you mean.” Paolo stared at Falco without speaking. Nicolas and Etienne looked up as well. Cass could have sworn they were having an entire conversation without words. “Let’s go.” Falco broke the spell by turning away. He pulled Cass through the door and out into the night. “What was that about?” she asked, shivering in the damp air. Falco put an arm around her and pulled her close. “Who knows,” he said. “Paolo feels the need to make himself a pain to everybody. I just let him pretend he’s in charge.” Falco led Cass behind the bakery where a small batèla was tied. “Are you ready for our next adventure?” he asked, untying the ropes of the wooden rowboat as though he stole boats every night of his life. “Skulking about the outskirts of a few wealthy palazzos should be child’s play compared with some of the work we’ve done.

One of the greatest ways to invest and spend time together as a family is by serving God together. Perhaps you would partner with your child in reaching a soul for Christ or making a visit to someone enduring a trial. Perhaps you could minister together in some weekend program or ministry. There’s no better place to raise up the next generation than around Bible-believing, God-honoring Christian friends and ministry.

While it is beneficial for a child to feel bad when anticipating a loss of connection with those who are devoted to him and his well-being and development, it is crucially important for parents to understand that it is unwise to ever exploit this conscience. We must never intentionally make a child feel bad, guilty, or ashamed in order to get him to be good. Abusing the attachment conscience evokes deep insecurities in the child and may induce him to shut it right down for fear of being hurt. The consequences are not worth any short-term gains in behavioral goals. If we find ourselves shocked by the behavioral changes that come in the wake of peer orientation, it is because what is acceptable to peers is vastly different from what is acceptable to parents. Likewise, what alienates peers is a far cry from what alienates parents. The attachment conscience is serving a new master. When a child tries to find favor with peers instead of parents, the motivation to be good for the parents drops significantly. If the values of the peers differ from those of the parents, the child's behavior will also change accordingly. This change in behavior reveals that the values of the parents had never been truly internalized, genuinely made the child's own. They functioned mostly as instruments of finding favor. Children do not internalize values — make them their own — until adolescence. Thus the changes in a peer-oriented child's behavior do not mean that his values have changed, only that the direction of his attachment instinct has altered course. Parental values such as studying, working toward a goal, the pursuit of excellence, respect for society, the realization of potential, the development of talent, the pursuit of a passion, the appreciation of culture are often replaced with peer values that are much more immediate and short term. Appearance, entertainment, peer loyalty, spending time together, fitting into the subculture, and getting along with each other will be prized above education and the realization of personal potential. Parents often find themselves arguing about values, not realizing that for their peer-oriented children values are nothing more than the standards that they, the children, must meet in order to gain the acceptance of the peer group. So it happens that we lose our influence just at the time in our children's lives when it is most appropriate and necessary for us to articulate our values to them and to encourage the internalization of what we believe in. The nurturing of values takes time and discourse. Peer orientation robs parents of that opportunity. In this way peer orientation arrests moral development.

The money was such an obvious problem that I didn't even get to thinking about any of the others most of the time. It seemed wrong to me, that money should be the difference between a baby and not-a-baby. I had a thing inside of me that I could not afford, and Laura had things inside of her that she couldn't afford not to sell, and on the other end of it there were women spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy them because they felt their own bodies had betrayed them. Any way you looked at it, where there should have been a child, there was a math problem.

We are responsible for helping and encouraging others, for guiding them further along. But we are not responsible for their choices. You cannot force a good attitude upon someone. If they want to live in the pits, unhappy, discouraged, and in self-pity, that’s their choice. Do not allow them to drag you into the pit with them. If you spend all your time trying to encourage others, trying to make them do what’s right, trying to keep them cheered up, they’ll drain all the life and energy out of you. You cannot bloom if you spend all your time trying to keep others happy. That is not your responsibility. I learned long ago that not everyone wants to be happy. Some people want to live in the pits. They like the attention it brings them. Make the decision to say: “If you don’t want to be happy, that’s fine, but you can’t keep me from being happy. If you want to live in the pits, that’s your choice, but I’m not diving in there with you. If you want to be a weed, you can be a weed, but I’m a flower. I’m blooming. I’m choosing a good attitude. I’m smiling. I’m happy despite my circumstances.” When you bloom in the midst of weeds, you sow a seed to inspire and challenge the people around you to come up higher, and that’s a seed for God to take you higher. You may be in a negative environment right now. The people in your life may not be going places. They may lack goals, dreams, vision, enthusiasm. You may not see how you could ever rise above. It might be easy to just accept and settle where you are and think this is your destiny. Let me challenge you. This is not your destiny. You were made for more. God has incredible things planned for your future, but you have to do your part and bloom where you’re planted. What does that mean? Develop your gifts and talents. Whatever you do, whatever your occupation is, do your best to be the best. Improve your skills. Read books. Take training courses. Go back to school if you need to. But don’t you dare just sit back and think, I’ll never rise any higher. I’ll never get out of this neighborhood. I guess this is just my lot in life. Your lot in life is to excel. It’s to go further. It’s to make a difference in this world. Take a stand and say, “I will not settle where I am. I was made for more. I’m a child of the Most High God. I have seeds of greatness on the inside. So I am rising up to be the best I can be right here, knowing God will take me where I’m supposed to go.

I am noticing that my relationship with (write name) is going more and more smoothly. I am becoming more and more patient. I am creating a positive relationship with (write name). I am feeling closer to (write name). I am learning positive parenting skills. I am listening and observing without reacting. I am being clear, firm, and loving with (write child’s name). I am behaving in a warm and loving manner with (write partner’s name). I am spending quality time with (write name) on a regular basis. I am verbalizing caring and loving feelings to (write partner’s name). I am displaying physical affection to (write partner’s name). I am doing something for (write partner’s name) that I know will please (him/her). Practice creating Cognitive Workout statements that deal with specific relationship issues or concerns that you are currently experiencing. You can use the above list of statements to guide you.

You’re not your daughter’s playmate,” she said, and I nearly burst out in tears, because I needed to hear that so badly. I loved my child and liked to watch her be happy. While I wasn’t so much a “player,” I did love spending time with her. I also loved taking care of her, protecting her, and setting up her future. But playing, eh.

The following questions must now be answered: How do I, as the child or caretaker, find an activity that will be challenging without being demeaning? How can I spend my time with her in the most meaningful way?

What did you want to do when you were a child, before anybody told you what you were supposed to do? What was it you wanted to become? What did you want to do more than anything else? “If Peter Diamandis or Tim Ferriss gave you $1 billion, how would you spend it besides the parties and the Ferraris and so forth? If I asked you to spend $1 billion improving the world, solving a problem, what would you pursue? “Where can you put yourself into an environment that gives maximum exposure to new ideas, problems, and people? Exposure to things that capture your ‘shower time’ [those things you can’t stop thinking about in the shower]?” [Peter recommends environments like Singularity University.] TF: Still struggling with a sense of purpose or mission? Roughly half a dozen people in this book (e.g., Robert Rodriguez) have suggested the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

There are two very different ways to view time with your family. One way is to see it as a compartment of your life to which you allocate time. If you spend time with your family in this way, you will never avoid the constant frustration that your family time is taking away from other important activities or that other important activities are taking away from family time. For working moms and dads, this involves long seasons where the family loses their best time and attention and those times can never be recaptured. We need to seriously consider another way. What if you decide to live in, with and through your family? What if you reject family as one of the compartments of your life and see family instead as the environment in which you experience as much of your life as possible? The more I began to identify myself with my family, the more this felt like the natural way to live. But be aware, virtually all elements of western culture are set up to separate individuals from their families. Rejecting this requires building a very different kind of culture. However, when I consider God’s design for the family and who he has called me to be as a father, I no longer believe treating family like a compartment is an option. Family is not a part of my life. My family is in me and I am in them and so we need to be deeply interconnected. To live like separate individuals is to deny this reality. How is this possible in today’s society? What does this look like? It begins by taking the elements of life that are compartments—work, worship, friendships, hobbies, learning etc.—and doing as many as possible with, in, through and as a family. Perhaps every day should be “take your child to work day.” Maybe it means you don’t separate and go into different groups to worship. You worship together, and even more importantly, you worship as a family in your home. Maybe it means your friends are friends of your family and that when you give your love and loyalty to a friend, you are giving that love and loyalty to their family. Maybe it means you either find ways to enjoy your hobbies with your family or you find new hobbies that your family can enjoy with you. Maybe it means that whenever someone in your family acquires a new skill, you complete the learning experience by sharing it with your family. But whenever possible you learn together.

DECLARATIONS FOR COMMANDING THE MORNING The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1). I too open my mouth and declare God’s glory. I volunteer “in the day of Your power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning” (Ps. 110:3). As I command the morning, You cause the dawn to know its place that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and the wicked will be shaken out of it (Job 38:12–13). “To You I have cried out, O Lord, and in the morning my prayer comes before You” (Ps. 88:13). Note: Every time we rise, we enter into a day that the Lord has made, and we are commanded to rejoice and be glad in it. “This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24). I am Your child, and I shall spend my days in prosperity and my years in pleasures (Job 36:11). “Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You. Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us” (Ps. 67:5–6). “The lines (inheritance or lot in life) have fallen to me in pleasant (sweet and agreeable) places; yes, I have a good (legitimate and conforming to the established rules that God has laid out for me in the heavens) inheritance” (Ps. 16:6, AMPC). The Lord has given me the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever I bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever I loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19).

Exercise 1: A Happy Moment First of all, make sure you are in a quiet place, with no distractions.  Put your phone away, switch the TV off, and give this a shot. What I want you to do is to close your eyes and think back to a time you were positive, relaxed or optimistic. A happy moment. Maybe you were spending time with a loved one, or on holiday. It doesn't matter how long ago it was; yesterday, last week, or 20 years ago. Perhaps it was a time when you were a child. No matter how long ago it was, try to remember exactly how you felt, physically and emotionally. Don't put too much thought into how you feel – just relax in reliving this happy moment. Feel free to smile or laugh out loud as you do it, and at the same time don't worry if your mind wanders a little; slowly and gently bring your thoughts back to this sheer sense of bliss. Try this for just five minutes. When you have finished turn the page and try the next step. Finished? Great! So, after that five minutes, how do you feel? Take your notebook (or at the very least a sheet of paper if you can't find a book) and write down the answer to the following question. If you could sum up your emotions during those five minutes, what three words would you use? (i.e. happy, confident, relaxed.) Use whatever words you feel are most appropriate. Sometimes words may be hard to come by; if you can't think of any words you might decide to draw or sketch how you felt. That's okay too. Don't spend too long on writing this down – a minute or two should be fine. Once you're done, let's move on to the next exercise.

You are mine, today, tomorrow and as long as I breathe and walk on this damn earth. And if there’s life after this, I’ll find you and claim you as mine again.” . “I missed this, you. Nothing makes sense without you. I am so in love with you. Nothing matters to me, but you, Ellia. Just you.” He turns me over and bites into my bottom, then grips it with both hands and slams inside me. I bury my face in the pillow, but he smacks my ass cheek. “Those moans belong to me. Let me hear how good my cock ravages your tight pussy.” You are you, perfectly imperfect, kind, and loyal. I have no doubt you will shower our child with so much love. You need to hear him out.” “You are lovable and so damn strong. Despite everything, you became a great man.” “I love to fuck you, I could also spend the rest of my life making love to you.” His words spark a fire in my chest I doubt will be extinguished. “I love you, and one day, there won’t be a flicker of doubt in your heart and what a glorious day it will be. But until then I’ll love you so hard and deep and long, you’ll never remember a time it wasn’t like this. You and I, we are inexorably linked in our souls.

Welcome to Holland.” Written by Emily Perl Kingsley, the parent of a child with Down syndrome, it’s about the experience of having your life’s expectations turned upside down: When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.

the time we spend together as a family will root them deeply in values that matter and dreams that inspire.

I married Chris because he was the father of my child, and I wanted to make it work. I did love him,” I add. “And I’ll always love Jenny too. But you’re the first and only person in this world I’ve ever loved without some reasoning or justification behind it. I just love you because I can’t help it, and it feels good to love you. The idea of getting to raise Elijah with you makes me happy. And I know before we made love for the first time, I told you I’d regret it, but I’ve never been more wrong. I didn’t regret it that night, and I don’t regret it now. I’m confident that I’ll never spend a single second of my life regretting you.

REMEMBER THIS •​Don’t underestimate your child’s ability to precommit and follow through. Even young children can learn to use precommitments as long as they set the rules and know how to use a timer or some other binding system. •​Consumer skepticism is healthy. Understanding that companies are motivated to keep kids spending time watching or playing is an important part of teaching media literacy. •​Put the kids in charge. It’s only when kids practice monitoring their own behavior that they learn how to manage their own time and attention.

We have to stop spending our life waiting to be set free from this “prison” called singleness so we can finally join the ranks of celebrated coupledom. If society won’t throw the party for us, let’s throw it ourselves! Our unfinished, unwritten, imperfect lives deserve to be honored. Our life choices deserve to be recognized. And our singleness should be celebrated. We’re doing this life thing just fine alone, and if that isn’t brave and admirable and confetti-worthy, then I don’t know what is. I urge you to find a way to celebrate yourself and your singleness on a regular basis. Decide that you are going to be happy no matter what. Decide that you are going to make your dreams come true no matter what. And if those dreams include things like adopting a child and buying a house and doing things that people usually wait to do ’til they’re married . . . I want you to do them anyway. I want you to stop waiting and start living. Stop waiting for love, stop waiting for marriage, stop waiting for Prince Charming to come along and rescue you, and start designing a life you don’t wish to be rescued from. Life is short, and it’s high time to decide that, alone or accompanied, you are going to build the most beautiful life you can, and then you are going to revel in it. Because, guess what? You are the one you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can make your dreams come true. You are the one, the only one, you will 100 percent definitely spend the rest of your life with . . . and it’s time to start making you happy. Not as a New Year’s resolution or at some lofty date in the future but right now. Because you are worthy of a beautiful life, and that beautiful life starts and ends with you. Don’t just accept your singleness—honor it! Appreciate it. Revel in it. Throw a shower for yourself and register at Target and Starbucks if you want to. But don’t keep wishing it away because you’re hoping and praying and longing for marriage. Stop letting the swipe rule your life. And don’t for one second allow society to cause you to believe that you don’t lead a life that’s worthy of celebrating. Whether your singleness is for a season or for a lifetime, there is great beauty, adventure, magic, love, laughter, and happiness right here in the middle of this moment. And I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s worth a celebration or two.

It's not always ho ho ho on the high, high highway. Extended time in the car reveals human frailties. Dad's refuse to stop. They hearken back to the examples of their forefathers. Did the pioneers spend the night at a Holiday Inn? Did Lewis and Clark ask for directions? Did Joseph allow Mary to stroll through a souvenir shop on the road to Bethlehem? By no means. Men drive as if they have a biblical mandate to travel far and fast, stopping only for gasoline. And children? Road trips do to kids what a full moon does to the wolf man. If one child says, "I like that song," you might expect the other to say, "That's nice." Won't happen. Instead the other child will reply, "It stinks and so do your feet." There is also the issue of JBA---juvenile bladder activity. A child can go weeks without going to the bathroom at home. But once on the road, the kid starts leaking like secrets in Washington. On one drive to Colorado, my daughters visited every toilet in New Mexico. The best advice for traveling with young children is to be thankful they aren't teenagers. Teens are embarrassed by what their parents say, think, wear, eat, and sing. So for their sakes (and if you ever want to see your future grandchildren), don't smile at the waitstaff, don't breathe, and don't sing with the window down or up. It's wiser to postpone traveling with children until they are a more reasonable age---like forty-two.

Most animals in the wild spend their entire lives interacting with other animals without EVER knowing what they themselves look like. Unfortunately, we aren't too different. All our life, we play characters - the child, the student, the employee, the friend, the partner, the parent, the professional etc. We have assumed these to be our real identity because we have only been taught to interact with the world around us, but never with ourselves. Start giving time to yourself or your entire life will go by without knowing the actual actor behind these characters.

But every parent will know that it makes perfect sense. After his birth, the logic is different. Instantly it became clear that the life of the child has infinite dignity. Of course it is worth the grief, even if the candle is only lit for such a short time. Once a kid is born you’ve been seized by a commitment, the strength of which you couldn’t even have imagined beforehand. It brings you to the doorstep of disciplined service. When a parent falls in love with a child, the love arouses amazing energy levels; we lose sleep caring for the infant. The love impels us to make vows to the thing we love; parents vow to always be there for their kid. Fulfilling those vows requires us to perform specific self-sacrificial practices; we push the baby in a stroller when maybe we’d rather go out alone for a run. Over time those practices become habits, and those habits engrave a certain disposition; by the time the kid is three, the habit of putting the child’s needs first has become second nature to most parents. Slowly, slowly, by steady dedication, you’ve transformed a central part of yourself into something a little more giving, more in harmony with others and more in harmony with what is good than it was before. Gradually the big loves overshadow the little ones: Why would I spend my weekends playing golf when I could spend my weekends playing ball with my children? In my experience, people repress bad desires only when they are able to turn their attention to a better desire. When you’re deep in a commitment, the distinction between altruism and selfishness begins to fade away. When you serve your child it feels like you are serving a piece of yourself. That disposition to do good is what having good character is all about. In this way, moral formation is not individual; it is relational. Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments—temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. Commitments are the school for moral formation.

support them is simply to spend a lot of time outside, ask open-ended questions, and encourage your child’s innate curiosity and willingness to investigate.

Do we want to spend the short time we have with our kids managing technology limits, monitoring screen time, battling over parental controls? Do we want to run the likely risk that our child will be exposed to something they can’t—and shouldn’t—yet handle? Do we want to place a wedge between our kids and ourselves, positioning ourselves as tech overlords who grant access to their phones like some sort of behavior-driven candy dispenser? I don’t think we do.