"Mom, I need to ask you something," my daughter begins as she buckles her seat belt. Knowing the drive to school lasts only six minutes, she must figure the answer will be either concise or embarrassing, so I brace myself for a question about the meaning of a phrase I will undoubtedly have to look up on Urbandictionary.com.

"What's the difference between liberals and conservatives?"

Whew. An easy one. I'm just glad she didn't ask the difference between Democrats and Republicans. That's harder to explain.

"The short answer is, liberals think government can solve a lot of our problems, while conservatives believe the government should be limited so that people can solve their own problems," I say.

I offer up a couple of examples of government programs to illustrate the point — the economic stimulus package, "Cash for Clunkers" — but there's not much time to elaborate as we arrive in the school drop-off lane.

"Well, I'm definitely a conservative," Amy says as she climbs out of the van. "See ya."

I'm amused, but not surprised, that my 12-year-old already has decided on a philosophical label. Knowing Amy, it won't be long before she's asking me the difference between neo-cons and libertarians or the "Old Right" versus the "New Right." Clearly, she was sent to us by God to keep us on our toes.

I'm also not surprised to be having a conversation about political theory with one of my children. Call us geeky (we're OK with that), but we believe it's crucial to teach our children not only our core religious beliefs, but also our political beliefs. This is what it means to instill our values, and thus, to do the real work of parenting.
 

The television hanging above my head in the waiting room airs an episode of the syndicated talk show "The Doctors." The topic? Sex.

But not just sex. Graphic sex. The guest talks candidly to the show's regular cadre of physicians about exactly how she contracted HIV, and she's not using any euphemisms.

Call me repressed, but I just don't want to share this moment with a roomful of strangers. As my teenagers would say, "AWK-ward."

On the other hand, I've never felt awkward talking to my teens about sex. It's a subject we've discussed openly in our home since our children were young. At every age and stage of development, we've addressed their curiosity and need for information about human sexuality just as we talk about other issues of health and morality.

It turns out for all our culture's "sexual liberation," today's parents are still too reticent to discuss sexuality with their children. This month's edition of the journal Pediatrics includes a study that shows when it comes to communicating with children about sex, America's parenting can be summed up thusly: too little, too late.

"Many adolescents report little or no communication about sexuality with their parents," the study found. Worse, "Many parents and adolescents do not talk about important sexual topics before adolescents' sexual debut."

Past studies have suggested that many parents underestimate their adolescents' sexual activity, assuming their children are not engaging in sexual behaviors. One such study found 58 percent of teens reported they were sexually active, while only one-third of their mothers believed they were. Perhaps this is why so many parents miss the chance to influence their teens' choices to become sexually active.

Yet one thing is abundantly clear: Parents who make their moral beliefs about sex known to their children and clearly express their disapproval of adolescent sex have a positive influence on their children's attitudes and behavior. These conversations also serve to strengthen relationships between parents and adolescents, and closer relationships also are a key to avoiding premature sexual activity.

They're everywhere and you simply cannot escape them. They follow you to church on Sundays. They sit behind you on airplanes, in restaurants, even in the waiting room at the doctor's office. They disrupt family reunions and days at the beach.

They're the unwelcome but ever-present subtext to countless moments of irritation and unpleasantness. And now that it's summer, they're out with a vengeance, just waiting to raise your blood pressure and steal the peace of mind you hoped to find with a good book in a park, or over coffee with a friend, or while enjoying a movie with your spouse.

It's not politically correct to admit that you don't like them, but let's all confess our contempt for these ruthless killjoys and demand that someone do something about their growing numbers and the inescapable destruction they are causing civilization as we know it.

Next week, the U.S. Senate is slated to take up a long-planned and unprecedented overhaul of the American health care system. In such an effort, I'm certain these lawmakers will overlook a huge but hidden cost of their massive national health care program, that being the indubitable spike in high blood pressure among those taxpayers who read newspaper articles about health care reform and then pace across the kitchen, fuming. To wit: My husband.

I hope Altace is one of the drugs the government plans to hand out like candy on Halloween when it imposes its new system to assure our good health.

There's a parenting proverb that says, "Prepare not the path for the child, but prepare the child for the path." I can't find the source of it, though I once had a lovely decorative tile with this phrase that I kept in my kitchen until my son broke it. At the time he apparently was on a path of destruction.

There's a lot of wisdom in that phrase, but in our culture, it seems we parents spend a good part of our time trying to smooth out the bumps in the road for our children, rather than help them develop their own sets of internal shock absorbers. Our fixation on our children's happiness has created a perverse and unnatural reality. We're raising up a generation that expects life to always be fair and predictable; and also not too painful and not too difficult.

They say there's one in every family -- one who is different from the rest. There's the one who looks like dad's side or who has the only set of brown eyes or who uniquely displays a talent for music or art.

Usually, there's one child who's more athletic, or less; more academically inclined, or not at all; more outgoing or wouldn't say "boo" to a ghost.

Of my four children, Betsy is the different one. She's the only blonde. She's the only child who isn't easily distracted. She was the only 13-year-old who wanted a George Foreman Fat Reducing Grill for her birthday (because she was the only one who liked to cook).

Betsy is the one we dubbed "Little Miss Independent." Not only because she tried to scramble eggs on the kitchen floor

Our conversation paused just long enough to be sure the screech from the basement was a happy squeal, and not a painful wail. No tears. Score one for the moms.

"How did you do it?" my friend asks. "I only have two daughters, and I'm overwhelmed. You had four kids, and you seemed to have it all under control."

"I had help," I wink. "A great baby sitter who made it all possible." The young mom in my kitchen had been that great baby sitter some 15 years ago.

Missy says, "I learned so much from you; you'll never know."

By way of example, she recalls a time we chatted in the kitchen while my daughter Betsy shouted for me from the backyard. "You looked out the window, but we kept talking, until finally she yelled and cried so much you walked outside."

A few years ago, author Rebecca Hagelin appeared on Fox News' “O'Reilly Factor” to promote her first parenting book, “Home Invasion.” During the interview, an incredulous Mr. O'Reilly challenged Mrs. Hagelin, asking how she reacts to teens who rebel against standards in the home about media.

Mrs. Hagelin calmly explained that when children and teens understand their parents' standards and values, they tend not to rebel much - or at least, that's been her experience. Mr. O'Reilly summarized, “Well, then, you're just lucky, that's all.”

I've no doubt that Mrs. Hagelin is lucky, in the way that we all feel blessed with the embarrassment of riches that parenthood brings. But it wasn't luck that created a household in which she and her husband could expect that their children follow guidelines about media consumption; it was skill.

It's been a week of rough rides in the minivan. Midwest potholes being what they are, I wish I had a Lunar Roving Vehicle in my garage. Our roads resemble pictures of craters on Mars, or worse, the new federal budget - big, dark and dangerous.

I don't take my responsibilities in the driver's seat lightly, so I've learned to avoid the unforgiving cavities that have formed beneath the snow all winter, awaiting my aluminum wheels. The potholes I can't avoid - the ones causing all the rocky rides in my van these days - are the parenting variety.

Being the mother of three teenagers, you might assume that I'm up to my steering wheel in teen angst, anger and rebellion, but I'm not.

No, the one at the heart of all the consternation (hers, not mine) is the 11-year-old - my "tween" - and the issue that has us haggling back and forth in a familiar dance of pleading and denial:

This is what people always say when they learn that I'm the mother of three teenagers and a tween - "Whoa ... I guess you spend a lot of time hearing how stupid you are."

Usually the people who say this also are the parents of teens, and the comment comes as an attempt to bond over our presumed mutual suffering from the ill effects of our adolescent's bad attitudes.

I heard a comment like this recently at the doctor's office, when I mentioned that I have a 14-year-old son. "Oh, my kid is 15," came the reply. "I never knew how dumb I was until now. But that's just a teenager for ya. Right?"

Decision time: Do I say, "It is a dumb adult, indeed, who lets a teenager speak to him as though he is a potted plant," or do I smile and nod in deference to the needle he holds in his hand?