I ached for this woman as I read her letter. We are so often deluded by the notion that our lives are our own - that our personal actions have minimal consequences on others. It is very American of us, to imagine that we are such free spirits that we may somehow reinvent ourselves every so often without cost.

No one imagines that children can be so easy to lose. The LW, the Former Wise Mother, perhaps did not see it coming, or if she did, maybe she thought that mother love could overcome all. Would that it were so.

As I regard my own temptations, I think of her letter. Of her message that to have an affair is to deliberately poison the well your family drinks from. I work with some of the kids who took a sip. I see them, looking ADHD, all scatter-brained and random. I knew one boy whose father left and the boy appeared frozen all the rest of his days in school. A previously normal boy, frozen. He said : I have the same thought all the time - I should be in _________________. If he was living with mom, he thought he should be with dad. If living with dad, he thought he should be with mom. And the Biology lectures droned on, and he simply could not move his mind toward any other thought except longing. They gave him Ritalin and still he sat and contemplated his other life, the one he was missing by living whichever one he was in.

No one wants to talk about that part - the losing the hearts and minds of the kids part - even those of us who should talk about it skirt it. Why hurt the parent now? How does piling on guilt help? After all, it doesn't happen to all kids!

And yet - silence allows more wells to grow more toxic. It should be said: Affairs and divorce may hurt your family in ways you may not predict or control.

I thank the LW for saying it.

I have the same problem and solved it by:

- exercise - 30 minutes of treadmill a day helps me sleep more soundly

- calcium supplements at bedtime - same

- king-size bed, he knows to stay on his side

- spare bedroom set up for the nights I can't sleep - we have been married 20 years and when I was pregnant or the kids were little I spent about 5 years sleeping in the spare room. When I COULD sleep, I needed the whole bed to myself. They got older, I went back to our bed.

- final and most important key to solving the problem - marry a person who never takes such things personally. To him it is simply one more quirk of a partnered life. His attitude frees me to attend to my sleep needs and not feel like I am injuring him or hurting our marriage.

PS - I usually always leave after he falls asleep - that might help

This letter has an odd feel to it. Not necessarily the LW's language about his son, language I also find strangely touching, if over the top. No, it is the wife, raging at home, angry about this poor semi-retarded child's lost college career.

It sounds like this kid's academic struggles are not news. So, why the shock and drama? The LW states that Son passed High School because of Dad's letters "sent to all his teachers and principal begging them to pass him."

Dad sent letters to every teacher the kid had for four years, asking them to lie? And then enlisted - in writing - the principal in the fraud as well? And then neglected to mention to his wife that Junior's grades were entirely undeserved?

Otherwise, why is she so surprised? Has she not sat at the kitchen table with him for 13 long years, hammering on spelling words and multiplication tables to no avail? He cannot pass the written portion of the driver's test, but he got a good enough score on an ACT or SAT to get into college? If he is in the public education system, then he has had multiple standardized tests over the years, and his ability and achievement levels should not be a state secret. This is a measurable question.

If this letter is real, then it sounds like they need a few couple's sessions with a counselor who can help them revisit the last 19 years, discern what their son's intellectual abilities really are, admit whatever guilt or burdens they each have over their son's struggles, and forgive each other (and him). Then perhaps they will be able to recognize and celebrate his potential.

I wish them well.

Fiction, fine. We can take all the family material we want and spin it in the air until it emerges on paper, full of half-truths, mixed with insider information, and the world none the wiser.

But it is, as so many have said, unethical to sell the intimate, potentially embarrassing stories of our children's lives as autobiography. Where does it stop? Shall we hear of it when Ms. Waldman finds the wads of wet Kleenex in the son's bed?

That said, I do believe Ms. Waldman's kids are in luck. If she remains unable to decide whether her column is fair and kind to them, she can ask her mother-in-law.