Description of safety strategy:
As a mother of four and a psychologist who spent close to twenty years working with kids, I know a lot about what makes them tick and what makes them go over the edge.

A lot of it happens at home. I've worked for over two decades as a doctoral psychologist--with abused and neglected kids, juvenile offenders, teaching at Dartmouth Med School, providing sports psychology consultation on peak performance and personal leadership as well as responsible team membership to competitive sports teams and now to competitive businesses including many on the Fortune 500 list.

Still, the hardest and most labor intensive job I've ever taken on is the one of collaboratively raising our four daughters, ages 11 to 18, with my husband. We are both proud to say that they are accomplished student-athletes who are self-motivated and know how to relish the joy that comes with pushing yourself beyond what you thought were your intellectual and athletic limits. Instilling these values and motivation in them has not been an easy task.

After all, I'm one of those "working moms" who sent her kids to daycare as soon as they were three months old in order to pay school loans and pay our mortgage. What has worked most effectively is something that I learned from watching my parents raise me and from observing the errors that the parents of my abused, neglected, and law-breaking clients made.

My husband and I have always honored our core values of integrity--doing what we said we would do, teamwork--our team is our family, communication--we talk with our kids constantly and race home for family dinners at least three nights during the work week even with crazy sports and performing arts class schedules for the kids, and accountability--we walk the talk.

I'm not talking about being self-righteous about some highly held values. I'm talking about walking the walk and living the values, the same principles that I now teach to corporate teams. Believe me, we have made mistakes in our 18 years of parenting. When we have not been able to deliver on promises, we've admitted our errors and our tendency to be human. When we have talked to any one of our children in a way that we later regretted, we have apologized.

Because of this, our kids know us in a way that many kids do not ever know their parents. And we know them. We haven't had to spy on or pick the brains of our kids. We talk every night at dinner and at tuck in. When they weren't comfortable talking about what was on their minds at dinner, they would make good use of the time spent driving them to events, during the privacy of ski lift rides on chily days, or tucking them in to let us know what was bothering them. They've also been very clear about when they needed help negotiating conflicts at school with other kids or teachers or coaches. And they've been clear about when they didn't need help. We've honored that, assisting them to design game plans for addressing things constructively, checking in to make sure that it got done, and devising Plan B when necessary.

Our strategy has never involved metal detectors or detective spying for our kids. It's not about metal--it's mental and emotional.

Know yourself and know your kids. Know your core values, build meaning for parenting, hold yourself accountable to model the values. Walk the talk. And talk talk talk. Soon you'll see your kids marching in the footsteps of yours--the ones that make you most proud.