Every year about this time, many parents ask: "For spring break my teen-ager wants to spend a week at the beach with a group of his/her friends without any adults around. We are not sure we should let them do this. What do you think?"

My response is an attempt to set things in perspective: Would you let your kid spend an unchaperoned week on Bourbon Street in New Orleans with a group of friends? What's the difference?

When you find yourself, as a parent, wondering if and how you should deal with a problem attitude or behavior in a child under age 10, ask yourself: What will this look like in 10 years?

You begin to create teen-agers when they are children.

Speaking of the teen years, many experts in the area of family development are beginning to note that the adolescent stage can last until age 25 in our society. This means that 18 is only a chronological and legal number, not a number that reflects maturity and/or character development.

One of the really strange but good reasons to not fight with your spouse is that it can become addictive. Couples actually get addicted to the juice of fighting, and then stay stuck in that pattern. This sets up an atmosphere of conflict, hostility and antagonism.

Not everyone who asks a question is really looking for an answer. Sometimes the questioner wants to show off what he knows, make a point, or trap you into giving an answer he can use for his personal agenda.

What a child's house looks like on the outside isn't nearly as important as what it feels like on the inside. We can get so caught up in providing a bigger yard, larger house, nicer cars and lots of stuff for our kids that we forget to provide the most important thing _ ourselves.

Many couples with whom I work say the same thing: "No one would believe we are here. Everyone thinks we are the perfect couple."

There are many things we can get out of that. One of the more useful things is that everyone struggles to do the work of marriage. Your marriage does not have to be falling apart in order to get some help in making it better.

This from a reader: "The Australians have a wonderful attitude toward life. One example, the weather report. Where here we would say that a day will be 'partly cloudy' - the weather report in Australia states that the day will be 'mostly fine.'

Making good distinctions makes the difference in where we put our focus - on the clouds or on the sun.

Three things we most need to know in life that we are rarely taught in school: how to have a successful marriage; how to be a successful parent; how to make and manage money. The inability and lack of knowledge about these three things leads to so much misery.

The problem with worrying too much is that in our mind we go into the future to some awful event, feel the emotions as if they were real, and then bring them back with us into the present.

None of us would set a goal to do poorly at a task or to fail, but that is exactly what worrying too much, and/or worrying without taking any action does.

Some men have a certain fear when they come in with their spouse for couples counseling. They fear being changed into someone they don't want to be, as if they are going to be asked to commit personality suicide. That's really not how it works. The two main things that can take place are: adding more tools to your relationship tool bag and a turning of your heart toward your spouse. Nothing scary there.

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