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"At dinner the other night, my husband asked me, &amp;quot;How&amp;#039;s your book coming?&amp;quot; My book is the manuscript I&amp;#039;m not as far along in writing as I&amp;#039;d like to be. The one that&amp;#039;s due on February 1st. The one that&amp;#039;s been hanging over my head. &amp;quot;Well,&amp;quot; I replied, &amp;quot;the holidays made it hard to get around to writing much.&amp;quot; My 10-year-old, the budding artist, commiserated with me: &amp;quot;I know what you mean. I haven&amp;#039;t been drawing much lately.&amp;quot; To which my nine-year-old added, &amp;quot;Yeah, I haven&amp;#039;t had ice cream in a loooooong time.&amp;quot; Ah. I see now. My baby hasn&amp;#039;t crossed over to the Dark Side yet. If only I could keep him there for as long as possible. The Dark Side is the part of life with deadlines, worries and woes. It&amp;#039;s got to-do lists, full calendars and shoulda-coulda-wouldas. It&amp;#039;s got too much to do in too little time, and it&amp;#039;s always, always, hanging over your head. Happily, it looks like the Dark Side doesn&amp;#039;t visit the third grade. Even when he&amp;#039;s got a spelling test the next day, my nine-year-old, Christopher, doesn&amp;#039;t seem too concerned about it. He studies, but puts as much mental anguish and hand-wringing concern into his homework as an adult might reserve for picking up the dry cleaning.  It&amp;#039;s not that Chris isn&amp;#039;t responsible. He&amp;#039;s more likely to know where his snow boots are and less likely to lose things than his brother is. He&amp;#039;s the one who reminds me to put pick-up slips in his backpack when I&amp;#039;m retrieving him from school, or that we&amp;#039;re out of milk. The kid has never even turned in a library book late. That&amp;#039;s exactly why I&amp;#039;m so relieved that he hasn&amp;#039;t crossed over to the Dark Side yet. It&amp;#039;s the responsible ones who find it the darkest there \u2013 the ones whose to-do lists seem to have no bottom, whose deadlines are always looming. The ones who are all too aware of how fast February 1st is coming. Chris will find his way to the Dark Side soon enough, most likely in fourth grade, when he&amp;#039;ll get more homework, take more tests and have more hanging over his head. Until then, though, I&amp;#039;m going to buy him some ice cream. He hasn&amp;#039;t had any in a loooooong time. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a2295/good-grief-011008/?src=shelter_footer>