Failure is a very powerful force. It's in experiencing failure that we all learn, and if we are resilient and recognize the role failure has in our lives, we ultimately become the person we are meant to be, doing what we are meant to do. Failure is the path to wisdom.

There are many moments when I have no idea how I'm going to make it until their bedtime. The constant demands, the needs and the fighting are fingernails across the chalkboard every single day.

Senior year of high school is a mixed bag. It's not Santa's gift bag, but is instead a bag full of emotional joys, disappointments, separations and boredom. Yes, boredom.

Parenthood just keeps getting harder and harder and I'm not sure how prepared I am for the James Dean portion of the gig. I have no doubt in my mind that when he's 16, I'll be dying for the days of Thomas the Tank Engine and his insipid brethren.

I think about the next female that might look over at him in a car. A faceless girlfriend. He is too adorable for words, with his dimples, endless brown eyes and that shaggy surfer hair that curls just right. He is no longer the fat baby who hated being in his car seat.

These days, their adventures rarely include me, and my job as mom isn't to hold their hands. My job now is to feel their acceleration, their hunger for flight... and let go.

Having kids is not all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, you have a tiny human being in your house. This is almost as bizarre as having an animal in your house, but at least animals have fur. All my son has is tons and tons of drool.

I believe that parents get overly-enthusiastic about monitoring their kids' grades to the exclusion of what goes on in their technological worlds.

Remember, how you talk to and respond to your son's physical appearance has a profound impact on what he thinks and feel about himself.

I watched the woman at the airport security checkpoint as she silently counted my three sons with her eyes. I knew the question was coming.

When I was a pup of 6 years experience in this world, I made a promise I honestly believed I had the ability to keep. I promised my father that I'd stay 6 forever. Until the end of days, a 6-year-old boy; wide-eyed and pudgy-faced.

Oh dear. Our young tween and teen girls are being targeted again. And this time, it's a relatively new video game called "Disney's City Girl"

Is the difference that teasing can be concealed and described as harmless whereas bullying is clearly harmful?

I'm the mom that sits at Taekwondo tournaments and hopes for the first place that doesn't come. I'm the mom that's been at soccer games and ached inside, wishing that the sheer will of my love for this kid could make a ball float effortlessly from his foot or hand into the goal or hoop.

A funny thing happened when I met my son -- I started to realize how destructive girl power can be to boys.

I have a confession to make. I have gone to one of my sons' dorms and done his laundry. Just when I thought I had taken my overparenting to a new level, his roommate's mother took out a lint roller and began to roll their entire carpet on her hands and knees. Was I out-parented?

Gone are the days when I was chasing my three active boys around the playground or wiping their chocolatey mouths. There are times when I long for the days when I could pick them up and kiss their pudgy cheeks. Yet, I've recently discovered that being a mom to teen boys has its benefits.

At some point down the road, there will be a girl they love more than me. Or maybe just differently. And over the next few years, my job as a parent is to shepherd them through that process, all the while with my heart tethered to theirs.

My love for my boys isn't "equal" in height, weight or circumference. The love I feel for my second is absolutely incomparable to the love I feel for my first. As if it's a different color, a different language, a different texture or a different tonality.

My girly daughter, previous lover of all things pink, ruffled, soft and sweet, had no girls, only boys. Two of them. Along with their dad, the household filled with wrestling, racing, truck and car and emergency vehicle driving, as well as the requisite sound effects for all of the above.