Have you ever heard of a decision tree?  At the top, the question "Who owns the problem?" is asked.  The three branches are Parents, Children, and shared.  When parents are dealing with issues with their children, they really need to be calm and clear about how they handle it.  Parents need to respond instead of react.  If parents react, the children won't feel very comfortable coming to them with questions or problems they are having.  When we talked about this in class, a scene from a movie crossed my mind.  It's a movie called Bringing Down the House, with Steve Martin and Queen Latifa.  In the scene, Steve Martin's daughter went to a party and got into trouble, and when she got home Steve was furious.  Queen Latifa told him to keep calm and just listen to her and not over-react.  When he did this she said "I have so much more to tell you."  Since he stayed calm and didn't 'react', she felt more comfortable to tell him more.  And I think that goes along great with this topic.  If we respond caring and thoughtfully, our children will have confidence in coming to us with things they need help with.  We need to be active parents, especially in the world we live in today. Being a strong part of our children's lives and being there for them is so important.