My guiding philosophies are that:

• parents parent with the best of intentions.
• there are many "right ways" that can lead to desired results.
• we need to change things up - our communication, our reactions, our approaches - to yield different results or outcomes.
• when something bothers us we must examine our role in changing it.
• we parent better when we can anticipate likely challenges and think through the role we would like to have.
• while we want our children to succeed we know, deep down, the dangers of denying our children important developmental opportunities to move toward greater independence.