When your baby arrives, you pay attention to his every move, every sniffle, every blemish, every tear.  You watch your child with a microscope.

 

You continue using the parental microscope for years and years.

 

But there comes a time when using the microscope is no longer effective, and it does not help in managing your child.  In fact, the microscope seems to cause more irritation with your teen.

 

Rather than just a microscope, we need to begin adding a telescope for our children.

 

As parents, we need to take the long view of things, and we need to overlook some things that really don’t matter.  What are those things?  I do not know, they could be different for all of us.

 

But when the microscope doesn’t work, it might be time to use the telescope.