In some ways connecting with the tragedy of strangers is a cathartic act. A selfish house-cleaning of sorts. The webster dictionary definition of catharsis is a purging of the bowels. Therefore, if you will permit me the slang, double entendre, one of the reasons we mourn the losses of strangers is to get our own shit out.

But there’s more to our tears than trash disposal. Communal sharing of emotions, whether it be through television sets, on Facebook, or in person at vigils, is one way that humans heal. We reach out to others, connect, bond, feel empathy, and ultimately become stronger. Connection with others is the best way to feel emotionally better. When I feel turbulence on a plane, I find that I immediately strike up a conversation with my seat mate and notice my anxiety immediately decrease. Last year, I survived an emotionally tortuous stint in a closed MRI tube by the glorious finger tips of a caring friend whose touch helped me overcome my fears.

Emotional connections with other people is a lifeline. Yesterday I appeared on CNN International to offer my thoughts on what the trapped Chilean miners need to preserve their mental health. My advice was clear: Consistent contact with others. Be that letters from family, emails from the public, or, best of all, some form of reliable electronic communication. Studies of Facebook users show that stints on the online social network can raise oxytocin levels, the human bonding hormone. I suggested that hard-wired iPod Touches with Facebook capability be lowered into the mine. Already there are numerous Facebook pages designed to share information and send encouraging messages to the miners. This kind of connection to the real world is a life-line as valuable as food and air.

But even without direct contact, humans can mourn and empathize with the pain of others we have never met, and this can be an act of connection. So, when we take time to reflect on 9/11 and mourn for the victims and families we become part of an emotional community. And that feels good.

According to research, happiness is both a genetic predisposition and a result of good choices, mostly in the arena of relationships. One study of sixteen cultures, sponsored by Coke, pointed to the fact that happiness is most directly correlated with quality and quantity of human connections. Except for the extremely poverty stricken, the support of friends, family, and lovers seems to override affluence as a key ingredient for happiness.

But if we set aside disposition and human connections for a moment, I think there are two very important concepts to consider. They are choices and circumstance. Living in this great recession, like many Americans, I am in a particular circumstance, one wrought with worry about how best to extract resources from my environment. How to balance care for my children with time spent procuring food, so to speak. In some ways it feels like this circumstance has limited my choices. But has it?

Truly limiting circumstances are being faced by the trapped Chilean miners, the flood victims in Pakistan, sex slaves, people with challenging health disabilities, and even new parents held captive by a demanding newborn. Yet, even in those circumstances, when the range of opportunities seems narrow, there exist small openings of maneuverability. The miners have organized into three-man squads with a functional hierarchy and task-specifc goals. Everyday a few young female sex slaves bravely walk out of brothels into the arms of relief organizations. People with disabilities choose to fight for life.

And, house-bound new mothers choose to forge what might be lifelong friendships in breastfeeding support groups and baby yoga classes.

And, even in Pakistan, choices can mean happiness or even death. A smiling grandmother and mother of eight, Siraj Begum, spent three days with her family on the roof of their home when their village was flooded, waving frantically to military choppers who ignored them. Only when she made the choice to wave her shawl and bed sheet did they finally drop some water, juice, and biscuits. Now, according to an NPR.org article, Siraj finds humor in the whole ordeal. “The reason we were rescued so late,” she laughs, “is because I was waving and using hand signals that the pilot just didn’t understand.”

Our circumstances may change and confine us but can they stop happiness altogether? Can happiness itself be a choice? I believe it can. In my particular case, as long as my oxygen mask is firmly in place (that is, I am not hungry or tired) I can choose to put a comedic lens on life. I can choose to find humor in the millions of things that go wrong in a day and find deep surprise and appreciation when things go uncannily right. I am primed to do this because I believe two things. One: Life isn’t supposed to be easy. And, two: At any given moment others are suffering more, so I feel lucky. This is the basis for my choice to feel happy, most of the time.

Circumstance may change the choices available to us, but it rarely obliterates our choice for happiness. Choose it today. I plan to, although I’ll be tired. It’s 5:30 am. Should I bother going back to sleep?

I entered the therapist’s office apologizing for my tears. I assured her that I was normally quite a together woman was completely surprised by this mess of black mascara. She was kind, empathetic, and made me promise to stop apologizing for myself. (Sigh. It’s a Canadian cultural tradition so I still do it sometimes.) I expected, like most people, to have a couple quick sessions and be dry-eyed and beaming within a few weeks. Little did I know that I was actually embarking on a tender journey toward the center of my earth. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was an identity crisis, some delayed grieving for the deaths of my parents, and yes, some pre-pardem depression. In the end I was so fascinated by the process that I spent seven years in therapy and a partially overlapping six years in graduate school studying psychology. Clearly I had found my bag and myself, and along the way I learned a few myths and methods of therapy that the common person may not know. So, here’s a starter list of things you may not know about therapy if you’ve never been there.

Stigma Belongs to You, Not Society At Large

Like many newbies, I was cautious early on about who I shared my news of therapy with. I still carried some crazy idea that therapy was for crazy people. In fact, psychiatric hospitals are for crazy people. The rest of us live with a pleura of annoying habits and feelings that sometimes run counter to society’s definition of “normal.” The rest of us can really use an observing eye to help us make sense of some of the painful lessons we learned and the thoughts in our head that stop us from being the best person we can be. When I finally started sharing my experiences of therapy with others I found out that nearly everyone, especially the most successful people I knew, had been or were continually in therapy. I felt behind the times.

The Range of Therapists Can Be Daunting

Most people choose a therapist based on a referral, having no knowledge about their psychological orientation or their education of licensure. To break it down, therapists can range from drug-prescribing medical doctors called psychiatrists, to clinical psychologists with a Ph.D., to marriage and family therapists, to social workers, to religious counselors, drug and alcohol counselors, to life coaches. Some are liscensed. Some are being supervised by someone with a license. Others are unlicensed lay people. But all have a capacity for care and are doing what they do because they have a lot of empathy. Many have recovered from some major emotional wounds themselves so they have personal insight into what you may be going through. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask a therapist about his or her credentials and treatment plan. But also know this. No matter the level of education or liscensure, it is the therapeutic relationship itself that heals. It is the consistent timing of sessions and consistent care giving that becomes the catalyst for growth.

Boundaries Protect YOU

At the beginning of therapy new patients are often taken aback by the abrupt way that a therapist may end a session at exactly 50 minutes or not disclose personal details about their own life. Or charge you even when you don’t show up. Or not extend the length of a session when you are stuck in traffic. Or, not take friends of yours on as patients. This is called the therapeutic frame and it is designed to keep you safe. Imagine the hurt if a therapist had time to bleed a session into 60 minutes one week but not the week you are in the most pain? Or, imagine your feelings of jealousy if your therapist seemed to be more helpful to a close friend of yours. Therapists may rigidly stick to the 50  minute hour or insist on a set weekly appointment because your brain responds to consistency of care. And because in the safety of that weekly 50 frame you have the complete freedom to vent and use it to your advantage knowing that the therapist will never inject their needs into your time.

Therapy Can Feel Like a Love Relationship

Imagine having a person entirely focussed on you, all eyes and ears during weekly sessions for months on end. Imagine that they have compassion and empathy and truly understand what you are going through. Now imagine that this kind of attention and safety brings forth emotional communication that you’ve never even been able to express to your real-world intimates. Yes, therapy can feel like love, because it is a kind of love. But it is a non-sexual love (and shouldn’t ever be!) and it is a false love in the sense that you never have to deal with your lover’s problems. Given the set up, it is perfectly natural to have deep feelings of love for your therapist, but in the psychological process these feelings will eventually transfer as you learn to love yourself and others. At no time should a therapeutic relationship become a dual relationship with real-world connections. A dual relationship has too much potential to injure a patient.

I’ll end this blog with a story I heard recently about Carl Jung. Jung was one of Freud’s disciples who broke off to form his own theory of personality. (I hope this story is true because I love it.) Supposedly Jung was once asked why would anyone ever want to enter therapy. Why would they want to put themselves through the psychic pain of revisiting all the hurts of their childhood or retelling of their worst nightmares. Jung seemed surprised by the question and responded with, “Well, you certainly shouldn’t, if you don’t HAVE to!”

(P.S.: I have opened a new private practice in Los Angeles and am taking clients who I do not know in the real world.)

I entered the therapist’s office apologizing for my tears. I assured her that I was normally quite a together woman was completely surprised by this mess of black mascara. She was kind, empathetic, and made me promise to stop apologizing for myself. (Sigh. It’s a Canadian cultural tradition so I still do it sometimes.) I expected, like most people, to have a couple quick sessions and be dry-eyed and beaming within a few weeks. Little did I know that I was actually embarking on a tender journey toward the center of my earth. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was an identity crisis, some delayed grieving for the deaths of my parents, and yes, some pre-pardem depression. In the end I was so fascinated by the process that I spent seven years in therapy and a partially overlapping six years in graduate school studying psychology. Clearly I had found my bag and myself, and along the way I learned a few myths and methods of therapy that the common person may not know. So, here’s a starter list of things you may not know about therapy if you’ve never been there.

Stigma Belongs to You, Not Society At Large

Like many newbies, I was cautious early on about who I shared my news of therapy with. I still carried some crazy idea that therapy was for crazy people. In fact, psychiatric hospitals are for crazy people. The rest of us live with a pleura of annoying habits and feelings that sometimes run counter to society’s definition of “normal.” The rest of us can really use an observing eye to help us make sense of some of the painful lessons we learned and the thoughts in our head that stop us from being the best person we can be. When I finally started sharing my experiences of therapy with others I found out that nearly everyone, especially the most successful people I knew, had been or were continually in therapy. I felt behind the times.

The Range of Therapists Can Be Daunting

Most people choose a therapist based on a referral, having no knowledge about their psychological orientation or their education of licensure. To break it down, therapists can range from drug-prescribing medical doctors called psychiatrists, to clinical psychologists with a Ph.D., to marriage and family therapists, to social workers, to religious counselors, drug and alcohol counselors, to life coaches. Some are liscensed. Some are being supervised by someone with a license. Others are unlicensed lay people. But all have a capacity for care and are doing what they do because they have a lot of empathy. Many have recovered from some major emotional wounds themselves so they have personal insight into what you may be going through. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask a therapist about his or her credentials and treatment plan. But also know this. No matter the level of education or liscensure, it is the therapeutic relationship itself that heals. It is the consistent timing of sessions and consistent care giving that becomes the catalyst for growth.

Boundaries Protect YOU

At the beginning of therapy new patients are often taken aback by the abrupt way that a therapist may end a session at exactly 50 minutes or not disclose personal details about their own life. Or charge you even when you don’t show up. Or not extend the length of a session when you are stuck in traffic. Or, not take friends of yours on as patients. This is called the therapeutic frame and it is designed to keep you safe. Imagine the hurt if a therapist had time to bleed a session into 60 minutes one week but not the week you are in the most pain? Or, imagine your feelings of jealousy if your therapist seemed to be more helpful to a close friend of yours. Therapists may rigidly stick to the 50  minute hour or insist on a set weekly appointment because your brain responds to consistency of care. And because in the safety of that weekly 50 frame you have the complete freedom to vent and use it to your advantage knowing that the therapist will never inject their needs into your time.

Therapy Can Feel Like a Love Relationship

Imagine having a person entirely focussed on you, all eyes and ears during weekly sessions for months on end. Imagine that they have compassion and empathy and truly understand what you are going through. Now imagine that this kind of attention and safety brings forth emotional communication that you’ve never even been able to express to your real-world intimates. Yes, therapy can feel like love, because it is a kind of love. But it is a non-sexual love (and shouldn’t ever be!) and it is a false love in the sense that you never have to deal with your lover’s problems. Given the set up, it is perfectly natural to have deep feelings of love for your therapist, but in the psychological process these feelings will eventually transfer as you learn to love yourself and others. At no time should a therapeutic relationship become a dual relationship with real-world connections. A dual relationship has too much potential to injure a patient.

I’ll end this blog with a story I heard recently about Carl Jung. Jung was one of Freud’s disciples who broke off to form his own theory of personality. (I hope this story is true because I love it.) Supposedly Jung was once asked why would anyone ever want to enter therapy. Why would they want to put themselves through the psychic pain of revisiting all the hurts of their childhood or retelling of their worst nightmares. Jung seemed surprised by the question and responded with, “Well, you certainly shouldn’t, if you don’t HAVE to!”

(P.S.: I have opened a new private practice in Los Angeles and am taking clients who I do not know in the real world.)

There is so much debate in American culture about how best to parent an infant. To let a baby cry or pick them up. To teach them to self console or help them learn to depend on another for help in stressful times. At odds are the capitalistic pressure for people to grow independent quickly and the more socialist idea that we are an interconnected species with elaborate social structures that require a system on interdependence. You know, the ability to lean on another’s shoulder when needed and offer a hug when asked.

Well, now new research supports my personal maternal instinct. Researchers from Harvard, Duke and Brown pulled data from a 1960′s study on mothers and infants. In the original study psychologists observed the interactions of mothers with their eight-month-old babies and ranked the quality of a mother’s affection from little to normal to excessive. (Note the bias terminology from the 1960′s — “excessive” implies that it is too much, even before any hypothesis has been proven!)

Then, more than thirty years later, a new group of researchers tracked down nearly 500 of those babies, now in their mid-thirties. And guess what? The group who received the “excessive” mothering had the lowest rates of depression and anxiety and the highest functioning relationships. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that no exception was made for children who came from stressful economic conditions, indicating that a mother’s strong love can be a buffer against the affects of poverty.

So I can exhale. My kids won’t grow up to be selfish brats. Hopefully they will have good mental health and, just as importantly, will have great empathy and compassion for others. Now if I can only get them to make their beds and hang their clothes up without damaging their psyches!

The blog started to bubble and hiss during a conversation with a young guide who helped us zip-line across the rain forest canopy. As he snapped hardware around the crotches of myself and a girlfriend, he grinned flirtatious directions like, “ladies, please spread your legs for me.” I thought this was a good time to ask if he was married. He shook his head and looked down. I took my cue and followed up with the other intrusive questions I have ready for evasive males. Children? Girlfriend? Fiance? Common law wife? In the end I discovered that this twenty-four year old has been living with a woman for the last five years and they have two children. But he has no plans to marry. This surprised me. In largely Catholic Costa Rica it appears that the no-rules-relationship-revolution is here too. I had thought this trend was exclusive to America where currently 40% of babies are born out of wed lock, my own included.

My thoughts came to a full boil a couple days later as I lay in a hammock under a palapa reading a biography referred by a friend. It is the story of the double life of author Alice B. Sheldon who found freedom in expression in the late 60′s and early 1970′s using a male pseudonym. A frustrated feminist, her work in the science fiction genre railed with themes of female oppression and female anger, all safely tucked inside the bodies of space aliens. This made me think about where I am today. Where we are, as women, as men, and children.

For years I have wrestled with questions destined for women of my generation. Unlike Alice, we were born liberated women, saddled with career goals (and identity!) Some of us are more like paycheck toting wives with economic parity on the home front but that’s still important. My mother, a sidelined feminist, never burdened me with a Cinderella dream of a prince and a castle, but instead noisily stuffed her unused ambition into my tiny head with words like “independence” and “…don’t need a man.” So many of my girlfriends were spoon fed the same messages by working mothers of the seventies or housewives who lingered at home and watched the battles from the foxholes of magazines, books, and television. I don’t consider myself a feminist in the vein of the early soldiers. Sometimes I call us post feminists. At other times I give a nod to those still actively organized in the cause of liberating women and acknowledge the third wave of feminism.

But my problem is this. Now that I am safely on the other side of the big leaps of struggle, past the shoulder pads and most of the glass ceilings, I see the flaws in the movement. I see the babies thrown out with the bath water. I hear the cries of toddlers with attachment injuries as motherhood increasingly becomes outsourced. I see the crumbling of good enough marriages and other kinds of love commitments as women continue to demand sanity and freedom. And I shake my head with astonishment at the one, last, accepted remnant of femininity, now exploded into a grotesque commercial monster — the sexualization of women. Must a new mother, plump with maternal fat stores designed to sustain a long term breast feeder, struggle on a stair master to squeeze into the latest Victoria’s Secret merchandize to please a husband and a culture and her female co-workers, who congratulate her for getting back into her jeans and her cubicle and her BMW within weeks of giving birth? I ask you, is this liberation?

What my mother forgot to tell me as she cheerfully handled Daddy’s paycheck and sent him off to supervise my brother’s hockey games and chauffeur me to ballet class, is that, in fact, to raise children well, you do need another person. That other person may not be a man. And he or she may in attendance out of economic necessity rather than biological obligation or love, but it really does take two people (at least!) to shoulder the workload and help us mothers feel liberated. And, by the way, raising kids and managing a home can be empowering itself. Mom didn’t know that because she didn’t have a cubicle or stock options to compare it to.

The third wave of feminism calls for more affordable childcare to help women on the path to some sort of economic equality. But shuttling babies and toddlers out to strangers is not the answer in my book. And what of the maternal women who work as childcare providers? Will the third wave of feminism find more liberated maternal women to help raise their kids? Then where does it all end? Probably with an underclass of low paid women skilled in childcare but little else. Oops! I think we have that already. We give these duties to immigrant women and call them liberated from their oppressive home cultures. Urgh! Feminism would do better to help “liberated” women relearn the some antiquated tools of relationship skills. Women have a specific skill set when it comes to communication and emotions. Why not put that to work into their relationships and get a helper with a biological interest in raising offspring?

And what of men? I mean, what are we going to do with all the fine men out there whose jobs as husbands and fathers are being outsourced?  I had dinner with a twice divorced man a while back who summed things up in a dismal way. “All women need us for is money,” he sighed. “As long as my child support checks keep coming, they need me for little else.”

But even that straight forward, though demoted task, may not be in the cards for men. If you believe last month’s Atlantic magazine article entitled “The End of Men,” women have both the numbers and skills to organize a coope. With 75% of embryos from fertility clinics being popped out as females (per parental request,) women outnumbering men on college campuses, and the decline of labor intensive jobs in favor of white collar employment that requires good social intelligence and communication skills, a matriarchal America is on the horizon. Already women make up more than half of the work force.

During the last year, my blogs has used data on gender and marriage to help us understand the changes in gender and relationships. I have tackled the rise of the metrosexual (liberated by masculine energy in women and by capitalist longings to sell more personal grooming products), the high divorce rate and birth outside of an old fashioned legal contract, the power and high depression rates of women today, the psychology behind cheaters, the growing single mother village and the confusing gender role expectations that sabotage so many relationships.

But the biggest question that still remains unanswered and it will be the burden of my daughters’ generation. What is the best basket to raise confident, loving children, who know how to attach long enough to raise confident, loving children? I’m still not sure what that answer is.

Our young zip line guide spends his days shuttling tourists like cattle across the treacherous heights of the rain forest canopy. He tells me his “girlfriend” says he works too much and doesn’t spend enough time with her and the kids. He tells me he loves his kids and he loves her, he just doesn’t like her anymore. So many marriages, legal or not, reach that stage of boredom and irritation. My best guess is that this is the time to use a human’s powerful mind to find a new path toward intimacy and commitment. Of course I speak from a place of wistfulness. Maybe the new kind of family will be our motley group who travelled to Costa Rica. Three single parents, five kids, and we mothered and fathered them all like an ancient village.

With so many families struggling in the great recession, many readers lost sight of the point of the article and instead assumed I am a wealthy woman who can afford extravagant vacations. Their comments on my post suggested that I am out of touch with the realities of most Americans. In truth, tips on affordable travel for families would be an entirely different article. So, here it is!

First of all, to make travel a priority, as I do, the travel budget begins with lifestyle choices at home.  I am a single mother of two. Since the recession, we moved from a three-bedroom apartment to a studio apartment. I drive a Toyota Prius. Just going from a Lincoln Navigator to a Prius put about $1000 a month in my pocket. But this article isn’t a blog about how to save money at home, it’s about how expose your children to international experiences. And here are some of my tips:

1. Forego Hotels and Rent Private Homes and Apartments

You’d be surprised how much cheaper an apartment in Paris is than a hotel. And it allows you to stay out of the expensive touristy areas and live in a neighborhood. The biggest website for private vacation homes is VRBO.com but my new favorite boutique site is www.travelhome.com

2. Share Expenses with Other Families

We are leaving for Costa Rica this week and have split the cost of the home with two other families. Traveling with a large group can save lots of money. And kids can sleep on inflatable beds and sofas so you don’t need a mansion.

3. Use Public Transportation

Taxis, car services and private shuttles don’t let kids rub shoulders with the locals. But a bus, train, public ferry does. In Venice, Italy, we ignored the water taxis and bought a water three-day “bus” pass for about $12.

4. Cook!

There is no better way to expose your kids to local customs in foreign countries than to bring them to local markets and try local ingredients.

5. Try Educational Tours

There are often group discounts on educational tours of say, art and architecture. In Ireland, I went to cooking school on a 400 acre organic farm that offers residential discounts in their “dorms” (Read: Elegant stone structure that were probably converted stables.) That farm also offered free room and board for those who volunteered on the farm.

5. Fly on International Carriers

Many international airlines offer discounts that Americans may not be aware of. Ryan Air is an example of a budget airline in Europe. At the time of this writing, they have a flight from the UK to Spain for just ten pounds each way! Ask the homeowners which airline they like to fly on. When I began to search for flights for our summer trip to Costa Rica, I was disappointed to see that most of the America carriers had really jacked their prices this year. But the owner of the home we’ll be renting suggested trying Taca Airlines, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that this Costa Rican airline still offers 50% discounts to kids. Their flights from L.A. were only $265 return!

6. Be Prepared to Go Last Minute

One of my favorite web sites, FareCompare.com has Twitter lists you can follow that tweet breaking news of last minute deals from your home airport. Mine is called @FlyFromLAX

Finally, I have one very creative way that I “earn” money for travel. I often rent out my own apartment to international travelers and use that money to get away. I’ve tackled this assignment with zest, putting chocolates on pillows, fresh flowers in the bathroom, and writing my own “guide to the neighborhood” book with restaurant and amusement recommendations. This alone has exposed my kids to plenty of international folks. We hosted amazing guests, such as the Canadian television host who left gifts on all our beds. The English screenwriter who left behind scraps of paper scribbled with prose that might turn out to be valuable someday. And the family from the Netherlands whose little girls learned to boogie-board with my kids. If we are in town when we have “guests” we couch surf with friends until our place opens up again.

And, oh yes, I have one other travel trick. On gift giving holidays like birthdays, graduations, and religious holidays, I ask friends and relatives to buy only gift cards like American Express or VISA, or give cash. I keep the gifts  in an envelope for our next trip and it becomes my kids personal souvenir money. Confidential to Aunty Maria: Thanks! My kids can’t wait to buy a souvenir when we go zip lining in the rain forest.

White faced monkeys and exotic birds, get ready, here come some adventurous American families.

Her husband, Dan Dorn, called them from his home in Los Angeles when the triplets were a year old and told their grand-father, “I need to move on.” He then divorced Abbie and has refused to allow the children to see their mother, saying it would traumatize them. They do not even know she exists.

Everything about this case disturbs me. It begs questions about the nature of motherhood? The rights of children and grandparents. And, perhaps most striking about this case, is what it says about our attitudes toward the disabled.

Long before we had institutions to house people with mental and physical disabilities, there were a common sight in our societies. Even Shakespere created characters with mental or with physical disabilities. I’m concerned that the more we insulate people, young and old, from seeing the full range of human possibilities the more we limit our capacity for compassion.

Abbie may be a single case of a family’s trauma. But it makes me wonder about the thousands of dedicated young men and women who are continuing to return from Iraq and Afghanistan with disabilities. I happen to support an organization called Iraq Star Foundation that gives free plastic and cosmetic reconstructive surgery to soldiers wounded in the war because, after risking their lives for our country, they are severely discriminated against when they come home disfigured. Our society has become intolerant of ugly and disabled.

Are Abbie’s children too young to see their mother? NO WAY. Everything is new, strange, and normal to kids. Some form of a living mother, her body warmth, her breath, her tears will have deep meaning to her children.

I happened to have grown up with a mother had a chronic illness (Lupus.) Consequently she spent a big chunk of my childhood on the living room sofa, too weak to make dinner. Did I feel ripped off? No. This was normal to me. We snuggled under quilts on that coach and read books together. This is my version of a mother’s love.

Who are we to decide what these children will take away from a relationship with a living being? Could it be more injurious for them to live with an adult anger when they learn they were deprived of their mother? Would a lifeless Teddy Bear be more acceptable for comfort than a living, breathing, feeling, mother? And what about the healing benefits for Abbie? Losing one’s body and one’s children is a double loss.

My answer is simple: Be a parent and say no. The good news is that the law is on your side. According to my research, all but one American state requires a parent’s consent for anyone to get married under the age of 18. Nebraska insists on that partners be 19 to get married with parental permission. So, grow a backbone, Mom, and put your foot down and say NO.

Of course, we all know how oppositional teens tend to react to parental authority, so be prepared to be hated. Use the time before your kid’s eighteenth birthday to impress upon your child the following statistics:

• The current media age that most people get married in the U.S. is 26.7 for men and 25 for women.

• Teen marriage has a dismal divorce rate. About one half of teenaged pregnancies will end in divorce within 15 years. But the younger the teen female the more staggering the rate with some studies showing a divorce rate as high as 70% for girls who marry below the age of 18.

• Teen fathers have incomes that steadily lag behind other males, even into their twenties and thirties. This could be related to the fact that they forgo educational opportunities in order to be a family wage earner in their teens.

• And let’s say a baby comes of that teenaged marriage and then the marriage goes down the tubes. For unwed mothers of all ages, marrying and then divorcing correlates with higher rates of poverty than never marrying.

For some teens, the desire for an early marriage is really a bid for autonomy. Teenagers want to be grown up and bolting from the nest feels very grown up. I would suggest that these parents explore with their daughter ways that she can feel autonomous without having to marry. Does she need a bit more freedom? How about more responsibility? A part-time job and some bills to pay can sometimes be a wake-up call to a teen craving independence.

Above all, validate your teens feelings of love and attachment. Her feelings are real, even if they are a bit premature and are prompting an unwise decision. Try welcoming her boyfriend into the family. If you exclude him and bar her from seeing him, you stand a good chance of making her run further into his arms. One technique for compromise might be to help your teenager plan a “down the road” wedding, say, one that takes place after post-secondary education is complete. Remember, if you like her lover-boy a lot that, in itself, may

Parenting a teen is no cake walk. This mother’s challenge is one that many parents fear. Try to remember that in terms of emotional development, teens are a lot like two-year-olds, with one big difference. Two-year-olds are mentally ready for action before their bodies can do it safely and this causes frustrating tantrums. Teenagers are physically ready for action before their minds have caught up. But both stages secretly crave boundaries. Boundaries help children and teens feel safe, even if it causes them to feel really angry. So be brave mama.

One of the most common reactions to acute emotional pain is a kind of shutting down of emotional processes. It’s nature’s way of protecting the brain from deep psychic pain that could lead to dangerous behavior. And this phenomenon is evident here.When Joran’s mother was asked about how she felt when she first heard the news that a dead woman was found in her son’s hotel room, her response was classic:

“I was complete shut. Numb. No feelings. Numb.”

Most illustrative of her need to avoid more pain right now was her admission that she will not visit her son in prison:

“I’m not going to visit Joran in Peru. I don’t have any feeling that it can add up to anything. I want to keep distance. I think it will bring emotions up that I’m not ready for. I’m not a police officer. I’m a mom.”

Then she goes on to imply that her son is suffering from a mental illness and suggests it is bi-polar disorder. While critiques may imply that she is helping to set up a legal defense based on insanity, I see a mother who is at wits end. It makes me think about other mothers who have been unable to get mental health services for their children, either because of cost or because the children are over eighteen and can decline help.

Here is America, we place so much emphasis on individual rights and freedoms that we do not forcibly hospitalize or medicate anyone unless they are an immediate threat to themselves or someone else. The problem with this liberal and well intended law is that many mentally ill people do not have the capacity to make these decisions for themselves. The mothers of mentally ill young adults often watch in horror as the child whom they have loved and nurtured for eighteen years becomes lost on the streets as homeless person because they refuse medication. Joran Van der Sloot had the financial where-with-all to get lost on the streets of the world and let his mental illness run the show. My heart grieves for this mother. She’s dealing with two losses in four months, and the public shame that comes from those who make motherhood a pathology.