Picture this. Your child comes home with a special assignment from school. He's very excited about it and puts in a lot of time to perfect it. He's thrilled with the result and can't wait to take it to school.

A few days later, he comes through the door, picks a fight with a younger sibling and bursts into tears. Finally, he manages to tell you that the project he was so proud of was 'unacceptable,' that the teacher wants him to do it over.

What's your first reaction?

a) Protective - "I'll straighten this out."
b) Embarrassed - "MY son always gets good grades."
c) Angry - "That teacher is picking on my son!"
d) Worried - "This could be damaging to his self esteem."
e) Grateful- "He's got someone who's really going to push him to reach his potential this year."

I think that lots of parents want to believe that 'e' is the right answer.... I just remember wishing that it wasn't so difficult to stifle all of the other reactions on my way to that answer! Sometimes the urge to protect goes a bit too far.

As parents, it's not our job to see that our children never experience sadness, disappointment or frustration. As much as most of us would like to, we're probably not going to be able to keep those things out of their lives -- now OR when they become adults. But, we can do the next best thing.

We can invest the time that it takes to prepare them to face life's struggles.

Instead of trying to shield our kids from 'negativity' let's help them embrace tough situations. Why not use the bumps provided by the classroom or the playground to build the strengths they'll need when applying for a job or surviving an unhappy supervisor?

Isn't that real learning?

Andrea Patten

Throughout her life, Andrea Patten has distinguished herself as a creative problem-solver. She particularly enjoys finding practical commonalities between apparently 'dissimilar' services, ideas or methods, making them all stronger in the process. In her career as a licensed addictions counselor she found a niche in program development helping organizations bring such innovations as bilingual programming, family treatment and networking for comprehensive client care.

When her son was young, she took a break from human services and studied marketing in one of her father's companies. There she discovered more similarities. "Whether it's a product, a service or a message it needs to be presented in a way that it will serve its intended audience."

A few years later, Andrea was probably as surprised as anyone to find herself once again serving families with substance abuse issues. Hired to assist a child protection organization improve interventions for kids at risk due to parental substance abuse, she became part of a team that provided home-based services to families,and developed training to enhance social workers' knowledge of addiction and addiction counselors' ability to work with family violence issues. She provided leadership, training and support for a network of "healthy-living" foster homes. She ultimately became the director of an agency where she had the opportunity to improve services to people of all ages suffering the effects of family violence.

"Teaming with my father to write 'What Kids Need...' was a tremendous growth opportunity for me. It took me out of a familiar role and let me try to reach families in an entirely new manner. My favorite part of direct service work was always helping people to identify and connect with the well of optimism and strength inside of them. I think that this book can provide hope to families facing a wide variety of struggles."