Carolyn Hax Quotes
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Your job is to be you, which includes being the chief beneficiary of all things you do right, the chief victim of all you do wrong, and the one person on Earth who has to live with every choice you make. As gatekeeper to your life, you’re it.
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It takes awareness that it's not only not a bad thing to let others do things their own way, it is in fact an improvement. It makes life richer and more interesting.
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Moving is hard. Staying is easy. Logistically speaking, at least. And this is true whether you're doing or undoing something.
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No matter what else comes, your courage will be your companion for life.
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There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you.
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When you fail to see something, that doesn't mean I'm hiding it.
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Plan your own vacations when you want to, and plan a suitable combined vacation with this other family when you want to. If they freak out at your planning your own vacations as you see fit, then let them. Bowing to unreasonable demands because someone will make you pay emotionally if you don't is not a healthy option.
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If you're not sure what you want, then hold back from making plans or responding to invitations until you have a chance to think about it.
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Separation is where you see if it works better with the adults in two different homes.
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If the guests want to wrest the check away from the host, because the host is also the guest of honor, then the guest who volunteers has to cover the whole thing. A guest can't volunteer -all- of the guests to pay for the host/honoree.
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I believe in innocence until there's proof of guilt and all that.
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If you take the time to listen to an upset child's story with empathy, and guide the child toward figuring out the root of the problem, then the result is often that the child not only calms down, but also in the future is less likely to get so upset.
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I do crosswords when I have time to kill somewhere, and am 100 percent successful on filling in the spots I get stuck on - after I close up, do something else, and then go back to it.
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Unfortunately, I think the expectation is that birthday girls don't pay.
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The only answer that has any chance against against the information saturation kids face these days is to talk openly with kids, early enough and often enough and unflinchingly enough that you set the precedent of being the safe place they can go to ask their difficult questions. It has to happen starting when they're 2 or 3, and they ask you where babies come from and instead of freaking out and deflecting, you give facts commensurate with their ability to understand.
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Separating is not divorcing. Please keep that in mind. It is, instead, the second step in seeing if there's a better way to manage your family.
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Don't freight your answers with any notions of what you're "supposed" to do, and just see where your feelings point you. It can feel weird to be so formal about it, but if you're not used to doing it, then there's no shame in retraining yourself.
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You can't make someone agree with you, not even when you're 100 percent sure you're right.
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We all make deals with ourselves when it comes to the difficult people in our lives.
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And if you're a parent who thinks you're okay because your kid doesn't have a phone or iPod yet, and/or you've used all the parent controls to filter out explicit material, you're not okay. The filters are tissue paper and your kid without a phone is on a school bus or in a locker room or at a public park with phone-equipped kids every day. And they're like all kids in exploring - by whatever means available to them - exactly what their parents are treating as too embarrassing or taboo to talk about.
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Being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life.
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Attractions are things we all should be good at saying no to, because our Department of Attraction is arguably the least reliable and productive office in our entire brain.
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If you are being shuffled around, then you should feel shuffled around.
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You don't want someone who can't tell the difference between having a different opinion and dismissing your opinion.