Here’s a parenting idea: Raise children your way

Dear Carolyn: It seems that parents are considered remiss if they don’t have their kids scheduled every minute of the day. Do you recommend free time so that kids can exercise their imaginations? Management

I’m afraid you’ve fallen a bit behind — parents are now considered remiss if they do have their kids scheduled every minute of the day, and don’t block out the requisite free time for them to exercise their imaginations.

Or just to exercise, since parents are also considered remiss if their children are visibly sedentary or, bless their hearts, soft.

If you have a sense of adventure or a knack for tea leaves, then maybe you can get ahead of the trends and anticipate the next things parents will be considered remiss for doing and/or not doing. There’s money to be made there for sure.

Unless we manage to get to the point, like Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches, where society’s appetite for judging parents culminates in such a frenzy of trend adoption and rejection that it becomes impossible to tell anymore what’s in or out; should that come to pass, the Star-On and -Off machines will leave town, taking their profit potential with them, and leaving parents no choice but to raise their kids as they see fit.

Dear Carolyn: When friends or acquaintances tell me they are going through a hard time, or have a health problem they are dealing with, I always tell them I will remember them in my prayers. I do not proselytize nor do I go into any details about how I pray or where I pray. I don’t recommend they go to church or light candles.

However, a family member said this might offend those who do not pray or believe in prayer, or those who do not believe in God.

Should I stop saying this and just pat them on the shoulder, saying, “I hope you will be feeling better soon”?

But what if they don’t like to be touched?

What if they don’t want to feel better?

I neither pray nor believe in God, and when kind people who wish me well say they will remember me in their prayers, I say, “Thank you.” And I mean it.

Because if I start nitpicking the molecular composition of people’s kindnesses, then I have bigger problems than the one they’re offering to pray away.

I might have a different answer if the person offering to pray for me already knew I wasn’t religious and made the offer as a deliberate attempt to get under my skin or register veiled disapproval of my atheism. In that case, though, I’d still just say, “Thank you,” because life is both too long and too short to play my half of that kind of game.