It was not too long ago that I held a deep-seated prejudice. No, I am not talking about my longstanding hatred of Hungarians, nor my antipathy towards vegetarians, nor even my heated disdain for anyone who earns more money than I do. I’m, of course, talking about my bigotry towards the elderly. Until quite recently, I lived under the misguided belief that old people tended to be poorer drivers and should have their driver’s licenses revoked once they turned 80.

In fairness, I have some supporting data to back up my bias. My grandfather did not stop driving until he was 86. In his later years he rarely used his turn signal, usually opting to indicate his intentions with his windshield wiper lever instead. He thought STOP signs were for pedestrians.  My mother, now age 90, only turned over the car keys at age 85 when she attempted to park her car in her own garage. That wouldn’t have been a problem except for her small oversight of forgetting to raise the garage door before entering the garage.

So imagine my surprise when I read about a new study this week that shows that grandparents are far safer drivers than parents when kids are in the car. In fact, the study conducted by State Farm Insurance involving claims for collisions between 2003 and 2007 concluded that kids are 50% less likely to become involved in an accident involving injuries when a grandparent is driving than when a parent is behind the wheel.

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As I look back upon my life thus far, I realize just how blessed I am. Two wonderful daughters, a talented portrait artist wife, living in a gorgeous city (Seattle). But you know, it wasn’t always this way. My life story has been fraught with challenging and perilous obstacles at almost every turn.

Much like Jesus, I had a very humble origin. Like baby Jesus, I too was born in a little town called Bethlehem (just outside of Albany, NY). My childhood home, while not quite a manger, was rustic in its own way. While we did not have sheep like baby Jesus, we did have a sheepdog, at our 3,700 sq. ft. suburban split level five-bedroom house. I missed out on the simple joys of attending a public school. Instead I had to be bussed 20 minutes away to an all boys’ prep school for grades 1 through 12. I rarely got a window seat on the bus. But it made me stronger.

I was forbidden to wear colorful shorts, fun t-shirts or high top sneakers to school. Every day I had to wear the same dull grey uniform with a black tie. It was a military college prep school. Every year, I had to march in the Veteran’s Day Parade while the public school kids all had the day off so they could come to the parade to mock me. But I never complained about the injustice of it all. I reminded myself about all the kids in Africa, Bangladesh and New Jersey who had even less than I had.

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About 17 years ago, my wife and I committed a horrible lapse of financial judgment. We are still paying for this reckless mistake these many years later: We became parents. At first it seemed like a great idea – staring into the innocent, helpless eyes of our two adorably sweet, tiny angel babies we adopted from China.

If only someone could have intervened – stopped me from boarding that plane for Hong Kong – and pointed out that over the next 17 years, these little angels would morph into retirement-savings-draining, eye-rolling, “take me to the mall now” moody, fashion-obsessed teenage drama queens who would eventually become legally permitted to drive my car and whose primary function on this planet appears to be texting their friends about how lame their parents were for not letting them go to a party simply because we don’t know the boy or his family… if only somebody had intervened back then and told me what we would be in for, I would have undoubtedly made … the same reckless decision. But that’s beside the point.

My point is this: Raising kids is expensive. The return on your college investment is highly speculative at best, particularly when you learn your son has decided to major in Medieval French Gender Studies. For many parents a far less risky investment would be to put down their entire life savings on the trifecta in the second race at Belmont Park.

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[Author’s note: the following is a painfully true, 100% accurate story and it’s the reason I knew at an early age that I would NEVER become a scientist.]

When I was in tenth grade, I had a science experiment to do and I was running very short on time. It was due in a couple days and I had only barely started on my experiment. I decided to do an experiment involving “rust” and the rusting process, and how some elements can accelerate the rusting process while others tend to inhibit or decelerate it.

Anyway, I had one final experiment to do — to test the rust-inhibiting or accelerating effect on metal of boiled linseed oil. I had never heard of linseed oil (I was just reading from a book of high school science projects and one of them was about rust). So I made sure to precisely follow the experiment’s procedures as set forth in the book. One of the elements it suggested using to test the rusting process was “boiled linseed oil.”  So I went to whatever store sells linseed oil and came home and began the experiment at about 4:30pm. I should note at this point that my father, for reasons still unknown to me, chose this day of all days to come home at 5pm rather than his usual 6:30pm. The relevance of this point will become clear in a couple paragraphs, so be patient.

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[To LISTEN to an audio podcast of this week's column, press the PLAY button arrow below.]

If you’re like most parents, every now and then you probably wonder quietly to yourself “Am I a failure as a parent?” In the case of Howard Ryerson of Danville, VA, I hate to break it to you, but the answer is Yes, Howard, you are.

So for the rest of you out there, let’s find out just how good a parent you are by taking this amazingly accurate scientifically proven assessment to measure your parenting effectiveness.

Q1: Are you a parent?

Q2: Do you live in either the United States or Canada?

Q3: Are you Caucasian?

If you answered YES to all three of the above, then statistically speaking, you are almost certainly a TERRIBLE PARENT. In a few years your kids will most likely take a job asking people if they would like to Super Size it for 25 cents more. That’s the conclusion (I draw) from Amy Chua’s controversial new best-selling book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

In case you’ve been without electricity for the past two months – perhaps you were rafting down the Amazon in search of a lost tribe – and you’ve never heard of this author or her book, let me be the first to welcome you back to Civilization. We’ve missed you.  That’s Amy Chua pictured at right, carrying her younger child, Lulu, into the jungle, where she will leave her for three days to fend for herself after failing to get 100% on her 8^th grade science quiz.

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[To LISTEN to an audio podcast of this week's column, press the PLAY button arrow below.]

It starts out innocently enough. Your little four-year old princess Tara insists she’s scared and can’t get to sleep. Can she sleep with mommy and daddy? Pleeeeease? Against your better judgment, you relent and let her snuggle in bed with you – just this once.

Fast forward. Tara, now eight years old whines about having to eat her peas. Against your better judgment, you let her off the hook but still let her have dessert – after all, it’s cookies ‘n cream ice cream, her favorite. Before you know it, you wake up one day and your little angel is now a teenager and you suddenly discover that she’s running the show, making all sorts of drop everything demands that we parents cave into because it’s just less work not to engage in another battle. How did this all happen? Personally, I blame it on Obamacare.

I am the father of two high-spirited teenage girls.  As many of you know, I am a highly sought-out expert on parenting. My third parenting book, Timeouts, Tasers and Other Tools of Modern Parenting, addresses the challenge many parents face when it seems their teenagers suddenly are in the driver’s seat (in some cases literally). Bribery and blackmail are both tactics that I strongly recommend for most confrontations with your teenage offspring. And for you moms (as well as you dads who are in touch with your feminine side), don’t underestimate the power of a good display of sobbing. Totally disarms most whiny teenagers. But it takes practice. Start by sniffling and work your way up to the tears.

Take this quiz to determine whether you’re still the king or queen of your castle or whether the peasants have stormed the castle and taken you hostage:

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Last week I started to discuss nine things that I wished I hadn’t worried about so much as a parent over the past 16 years. I tried to be a conscientious parent, but in the process, I realize now that I made a lot of mistakes, like the time I sent around the Adoption announcement after we adopted our first daughter as a four-month old infant in China. There she was in the picture, this cute little bundle of joy, wearing a sweater with the words “Made in China” emblazoned across the front. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Who knew it would scar my daughter for life?

If you missed it, you can read Part I of the nine things I wish I hadn’t worried about here. To continue with my list…..

Lesson Six: Put your toys away after you use them. I thought it was a pretty simple concept: The toys go back in the toy box.  The dirty dishes go in the dish washer. Put your used bath towel back on the towel rack. But apparently the process is far more complicated than I ever realized because 15 years later, my daily message still appears to be as undecipherable to my teenage girls as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Whenever I’ve said “Please hang your coat in the coat closet,” somewhere between the time the words leave my mouth and enter their inner ear, the audio waves must somehow morph the sound of my words into “please don’t hang up your coat. I want to remember it lying there, in the middle of the kitchen table, on top of your dirty gym clothes, forever.” The typical response I get to any request to put an item away is always the same: “Yeah, I know” – which I now am convinced translates loosely as “over my dead body.”

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As a parent, you never stop worrying about your kids or how they will turn out. Will they grow up safe? Will they make good choices? Will they ever forgive you for buying them those matching green and orange plaid square dance dresses for their 13^th and 14^th birthdays? My two teenage daughters, Rachel and Emily (shown at left when they were much younger), are only a two and three years away, respectively, from heading off to college. [Editor’s note: My wife hates when I talk about our kids by name in my blog. Something about respecting their privacy. So for the rest of this blog, the part of Rachel will be played by Vivian. The part of Emily will be played by Nicole.]

The other day, I reflected on all the things I’ve worried about as a parent. I came to a startling realization: I spent much of the past 16 years needlessly worrying – fretting over how to be a better parent, be a positive role model, and keep my kids from making poor choices. In retrospect, I needn’t have been so anxious. I was never going to get it right. I finally realized that my kids were going to make it through this bumpy journey called childhood (moderately unscathed), regardless of my egregious parenting mistakes. In retrospect, I should have spent a lot less time worrying about whether they brushed their teeth and a lot more time about worrying how to cure my slice in golf. Then again, trying to cure my golf slice is about as futile as trying to be the perfect parent. Both end up in bitter disappointment.

Here are nine parenting lessons I wish I hadn’t worried about nearly so much over the past 16 years:

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For families everywhere the arrival of September means “welcome back to reality” time. School starts this week for most American teenagers, and summer is rapidly vanishing in the rear view mirror. If your summer was like mine, it won’t make for an enthralling Holiday letter come December – which is why when it comes to retelling the highlights of your summer vacation, if you weren’t able to afford an exotic, envy-inducing summer vacation, then at least make sure you have an exotic, envy-inducing story about your summer vacation.

When it comes to summer breaks, our family’s summers are consistently quite lame. Take this past summer, for instance. It consisted mainly of listening to our girls whine “there’s nothing to do” and “I’m boooooooooored” – God knows, life is boring when you live in the scenic Pacific Northwest with all its mountains and lakes. Heaven forbid your kids actually go outdoors, ride a bike, swim in the lake or clean their room.

As any loving parent would do, in an effort to insulate ourselves from their constant whining and badgering to “take me to the mall” or otherwise entertain them, we loaded up our kids’ summer with a series of week-long summer leadership / character-building camps and a couple of obligatory annual pilgrimages to visit elderly relatives. That’ll teach ‘em to whine about being bored.

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That’s my sister, Betsy Jones – on a good day. She’s 52 years old, but on most days acts 24: carefree, fun-loving.  But on a bad day, stay away from her because she is cursed with absolutely the worst luck of anybody I know. Take a good close look at this photo. You may think she’s on the verge of snapping – about to lose it and leap over the wall, with a one-way ticket to Crazy Town. And you would be correct.

You see, Betsy has had, well, a rather challenging life, to put it mildly. Imagine Winnie the Pooh going on an “explore”.  He comes upon a sign that says “This way to ‘Honey, Goodness, and Nice People’, that way to ‘Hell’s Burning Dungeons of Despair.’” Of course Pooh follows the sign toward ‘Honey’. Problem is, by the time Betsy gets there, the wind blew the signs around. Uh oh. That’s the story of Betsy’s life – “Blown by the wind.”

You know how some people lead a charmed life? Well, I think Betsy was put on this planet to balance out the scales – singlehandedly. It’s like Betsy has a sign on her back that reads “Go ahead, kick me again – but could you kindly do it before I get back up? – it will save me another trip down.”

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