Having held the distinction of being the father of four teenagers for a period of about three years, I think the most important thing my wife and I have learned is that each one of them is different. Wildly different, outrageously different, kind of “How could these kids come from the same parents?” different.

You can get easily fooled by superficial facial features and mannerisms into thinking that there is some commonality between your children, but this is not true. When dealing with their various challenges nothing is more prone to lead to disaster than using something that worked with one child on one of the other ones.

There is nothing particularly new about this. But I’ve found it helps immensely to have a firm grasp of this fact of differences before formulating any plan to deal with one of  my children.