I sent my son to Australia alone when he was 13 so he'd be more independent. Now that he's an adult, I get advice from him.

Cu cine ma intalnesc?

As a mom, I've made a few what-was-I-thinking parenting decisions . The first, and perhaps the most consequential, was choosing to send my oldest son to work on a banana plantation in Australia for 10 weeks the summer prior to his freshman year of high school . I believed it would accelerate his maturity and help him develop a worldview that might broaden his horizons in the future. I did it to fulfill my primary goal in raising my five children — to guide them from total dependence to