‘Oh, Casey, you really want to play with Emily’s bubble wand—right now. It’s hard to wait.

“I’m an only child so I thought I was doing Dara a big favor when I had Gregory. I was naive enough to believe that they’d automatically get along. And they did—until he started to walk and talk. I kept telling myself, ‘It’ll get better as they get older.’ If anything, it’s gotten worse. Gregory is six now and Dara is nine. Everything that Gregory

She had each boy pegged, locked into his role, and was totally oblivious to the damage she was doing—not only to each boy individually, but to their future relationship.

“It’s important to make a distinction between allowing feelings and allowing actions,” I replied. “We permit children to express all their feelings. We don’t permit them to hurt each other. Our job is to show them how to express their anger without doing damage.”

If somehow either one of us had been made aware of the great affection and admiration that we each felt for the other, it would have been a big help to both of us.

‘Oh no! You didn’t want that to happen. You two were having so much fun together.’

why did my father feel he had to ration out our abilities as if they were somehow mutually exclusive? Why couldn’t he have said that there was room for more than one smart person in the family?

Don’t get trapped by “togetherness.”

It really is easier for a child to change his behavior when someone accepts his strong feelings.