Encourage your children to go to college. If you can, save a little -- or a lot -- to help them with the financial burden that being a student brings. Make sure they know that you value a college degree from early on.

From my children's earliest years, on through my divorce and years as a single parent, we would gather together for a small party to decorate the tree. We'd join again to take it down on New Year's Day, sort of like bookends to the holiday season; a transition into the new calendar year.

When did lying to a child in order to foster confidence become more important than teaching him coping skills and how to accept weakness or manage failure? When did babying a child become more imperative than teaching her the lesson that not all kids are winners all the time and in every arena?

The danger, the real danger, was never in food or movies or video games, and it was not in the people they would meet online.

This year, my son learned more than he ever has about what it means to seek forgiveness after he does something wrong.

Last month my daughter, Michele, left our home in San Diego for jolly ole' Oxford, England where she'll participate in a semester abroad program for the next three months. I was a wreck.

It is ironic that the individuals who champion family values and cry it from mountain tops left and right (mostly right) are the ones that are conspicuously absent when it comes to providing families with such an important provision as a decent parental leave.

The Talk isn't a one-shot deal -- it's an ongoing conversation that you work into daily life in small ways.