Excerpt
Perhaps the most worrisome part of learning about our child's recent indiscretion is how to handle our immediate reaction to this information. We are understandably hurt, angry and scared. We may even be in a state of shock or denial, because even when dealing with a child who is habitually in trouble, there are still plenty of unpleasant surprises left.

It's in this "unstable" emotional condition that we must meet our crisis head on at the jail, in the principal's office, in a hospital's psychiatric wing or maybe just in our bedroom where we have been crying tears of grief. Our child sits across from us, not speaking--his arms crossed against his chest as a show of hostility. Perhaps we find ourselves swallowing back those first angry words that want so badly to come out and attack him. But even this restraint is not enoubh. Without these once depended upon word weapons, our feelings have no place to go.

Of course, we have been in this land before, so in a way, we are experienced pros--except that we don't want it to go the way it has in the past.We know if we react to this crisis like we have every other one, this time will simply be "another" time. But we don't really know what else to do. Right now, we are thinking that there is no choice but to feel the way we have always felt at such moments.

"You don't know how it feels," is a commonly uttered retort to well-meaning friends trying to lift our spirits.

The truth is, however, this moment can feel however we allow it to feel--even in a time of crisis.