Not long ago a friend of mine had a baby. As I stared into the window at the rows of infants lying in their bassinettes, I was struck with how similar they looked. Yes, some had dark hair, some curly hair, and some had no hair at all. Some were larger or weighed a bit more than others, but mostly they were all pretty much the same. What would they be like, I asked myself, if they came back as adults for a reunion? What would we find?

Both research and commonsense tells us that we'd find that some people took life by its tail and made the most of it. Some would be successes in business or art. Others would be exceptional parents, teachers, lawyers, nurses, etc. Statistics also tell us that we'd find others whose futures had taken quite a different turn. Some would have addictions to drugs or alcohol. Others somehow would just be unable to make their lives work.

I started to think about what caused these incredibly varied outcomes: How could all these children who started out so equal have ended up so differently? Oh, I suppose some of the discrepancy could be passed off to genetics, but what about the rest? Did a fairy fly through the room with magic dust and sprinkle some but not others? No, not unless reality was created by Walt Disney.

In the last 25 years of my working with people in my therapy practice and as a parent educator, I