As the parent of a 13 year old, I understand the LW's dilemma. There is often a fine line between pushing them because we know what's best for them and pushing them while losing sight of the big picture.

LW - what is your objective in having your daughter be a singer/musician? To make money at it? Get a college scholarship? Enjoy and appreciate music? Have a life-long fun hobby? Make up for the wrongs your mother did to you? And finally, is your objective the same as your daughter's?

Examine your true motives and see if they are really the best thing for your daughter. At age 13, it might be enough to have fun hobby that you're good at. Preparing for a career doesn't really need to be the objective.

Can you talk to your daughter and see if there is a different style of piano she could study? Different teacher, different approach? Since she likes music in general, it may be just that she'd enjoy it in a different package. I would offer my kid this deal: choose a new teacher and stick it out for a year (or 2) and if you still don't like it you can quit. After all, 8 years of piano has given her enough of a background that she can always go back to it later if she realizes it was a mistake.

Don't forget: kids don't have to accomplish all your dreams before they graduate from high school.

Marianne Pearl is part Cuban. So only a part-cuban actress should play her?

I hope the statement that parents are hiring professional consultants to find the perfect name to give their baby "a leg up" is one of those exaggerated media claims along the lines of women scheduling c-sections because they don't have time to give birth. Because while the choice of your baby's name can indeed reveal how truly stupid you are, the hiring of a baby-namer is a bigger indicator of how horridly insecure and shallow you are.

My naming pet-peeve (since this is where this thread seems to be going): not unusual names, but really common names given "creative" spellings, like Krystoffyr or Mychael. Like spelling it wrong suddenly makes you creative?

Kudos to Elizabeth Edwards for making that call - she made Coulter look like an idiot (not an impossible task, but one many other people haven't taken the opportunity to do). Now I'd like to see someone take on Chris Matthews and the others that have her on their shows. This woman has nothing to add to intelligent political discourse. Edwards should be killed by terrorists? What does this have to do with anything? All she has to add to the public debate is inflammatory statements that will get her publicity and sell her books. What does this have to do with our presidential candidates?

Expectations for parents today have changed; parents are expected to be more involved in their children's lives at every stage of development, why would it stop at early adulthood?

When my parents (now in their 70's) had children in the 1950's and 60's the line between parent and child was clear. Adults were for discipline, not for friendship. People didn't have kids because they wanted to have someone to take to soccer practice, they had kids because that was a result of having sex. Thus, when you were old enough to go outside and play with whoever and wherever, that's what you did. If you played a sport, your parents might come and they might not; they had lives of their own and that was everyone's expectation.

Today, those expectations have changed dramatically. Parents decide to have children when it will fit in with their life. Quality time and showing up for every soccer game is an expectation. Sending your kids out to randomly play for the day on their own is not. Talking to your teenager about their friends, sex lives, drug use, etc, is an expectation. If you spend 18 years developing a close and somewhat dependent relationship with your child, it's probably not going to come to a sudden end because they are adults. This could be the upside to parents who overdo the whole "I want to be her friend" thing with their children.

The WSJ has a reputation for unbiased reporting. Its editorial page is another matter.

-A lot of letter writers are saying they wouldn't watch anyone who made the jump from a morning show to the evening news. Does no one remember what Charlie (oops, Charles) Gibson was doing around a decade ago? And what he's doing now?

The difference is a 10 or 15 years ago the morning news shows actually were about news. Maybe not a lot of hard news, but news all the same. And then they expanded their hours and then they decided to do wedding give-aways where the viewer could vote on their favorite couple. And Survivor updates. And concerts and interviewing the idiots standing out on the plaza. And more and more drivel until there was 3 minutes of news left and 15 minutes of interviewing the garbage man who found the engagement ring in the garbage as well as the happy couple that had lost the ring.

I think there may have been a time when Katie could have made a jump to serious journalism, but not after she spent 10 years doing that crap and experimenting with her eye makeup. Yes, I'm a feminist criticizing another for her make up! I found it very sad and telling that while the Today show sunk further and further into the fluffy mire, Katie got blonder and her makeup got thicker and more glittery.