Your college freshmen are coming home for the holidays. For their first, long visit since entering college. Semester breaks that usually range from two weeks to five weeks.

I've counseled many parents who worried about what these long, holiday returns home might bring, their concerns largely fueled by tales of...

What does your family stand for?

I don't mean whether you vote Republican or Democrat. I'm talking about what values, character traits and sense of purpose define your family. What virtues do you embrace? What principles guide your behavior? What's your mission? Do your children know -- and more importantly...

They were engaged in animated conversation, laughing often, and clearly enjoying each other's company. They staged a mock fight with their chopsticks for a contested egg roll. A mother and her teenage son were feasting on the midweek, Chinese buffet special at Mandarin Garden. I assumed that they had come...

You've packed your children off to camp for a couple of weeks, maybe the entire summer. Looking forward to enjoying a lifestyle that doesn't revolve solely around your kids. No more carpooling. No fighting commuter traffic to get to her afterschool program before it closes. No daily checking to see...

The last dance, last pep rally, last yearbook... Senior year in high school is a long series of farewells, most of them highly emotional. As unsettling as it may be to leave their 13-year jobs as students, seniors' most wrenching farewells are usually their goodbyes to friends.

If they're leaving...

Maiden Voyage

"Eggs over easy, English and coffee light, please...eggs over easy, English and coffee light, please..."

I'd been rehearsing my breakfast order for two weeks, trying to make it sound as if I had spoken it hundreds of times before, like the regulars at Nick's Lunch. I had...

Moonstruck

Last month's March 19 moon hung huge and low, appearing closer to earth than anytime in the past two decades.They called it Supermoon. Big Moon. It filled the sky. Sat on treetops. So close. Hypnotic. On that evening, I hoped my children were moonstruck, like me, and that they...

"We're Just Going to Chat for a While."

I was a Harvard alumnus interviewer for seventeen years. I never could have attended Harvard without its scholarship and campus paid work opportunities. I was the first in my family to attend college. Volunteering to interview students applying to...

Howard Carlin* and Linda Richards* sat motionless at their third-grade desks, heads and shoulders bowed, eyes downcast, wishing they could disappear

It was Valentine's Day card exchange time in Miss Peterson's class. Howard and Linda were pretending they didn't care about having received only two Valentine's cards...

In his poignant and moving eulogy for those senselessly murdered in Tucson, Arizona, President Obama asked us to "listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy," to show "more civility in our public discourse."

As families, as parents, how do we best answer...