Member Login  not a member? sign-up now!  Customize to your
family and get personalized newsletters.  Boiling Point  By
Michele Herman  Most Friday evenings, worn-out from the week,
our family goes out to eat. Before long, one son or the other
leans against me in the booth. I politely ask him to stop. He
forgets and leans again. I ask, he leans, I ask, he leans.
Within minutes my adrenaline is pumping, my pulse hopping, my
body on alert. As my generation likes to say, I am going to lose
it.  It's axiomatic: When you become a parent, you become a
person with a temper. Where there are children, there is
friction. And where friction meets exhaustion, there is
combustion. While experts rush in to fill all kinds of parental
needs, no one prepares us for the force of our tempers. We have
to learn strategies piecemeal  -- from books, experience,
serendipity, the successes and failures of our own parents  --
and even those of us who work hard at it sometimes fail
abjectly.  I like that expression "losing it" because