You are his first love. Take advantage of it.

You are the one he ran to with a skinned knee.  You got the unabridged version of the mean teacher, the unjust grade, the fight on the school bus. Your job is to make it right again. It's part of the mothering deal. And it doesn't end, ever. You are the mender, the arbiter of justice. Dispenser of peace. Sometimes it isn't easy. Then there are the soul wounds.

Soon after my son started middle school, I started missing the cheery boy who always told me the lurid details of the day. Was this part of the new land of adolescence? Should I let the change go without remark? I decided to tell him what I'd noticed and he burst into tears. A friend had turned on him, called him a name he didn't know how to deal with. The school guidance office had a strict protocol for just such cases. Very quickly, not one boy but two got the healing they needed.

One of my favorite sayings is: Don't let the sun set on your anger. Problems need dealing with. Right away. If you don't deal with them, who will?

Don't waste energy being angry.

Our daughter, Emily, 14, came downstairs after having dyed a bright red streak in her hair. My wife's concern wasn't that the streak necessarily looked awful (it did) but that it was a look that a group of known pot smokers at school sported. Not the look of the athletic crowd Emily normally hung out with.

I could have started out with Now listen to me, young lady. But I didn't.
I totally ignored it.

In the end, Emily couldn't stand it and asked, What do you think of my hair, Dad?

O.K., I said slowly, but it's a bit old fashioned. That look went out in the early eighties. And it wasn't particularly cool then.

The next day, the streak was gone.