Dear Hal,

I saw you the other day on The Daily Buzz and they showed the subtitle of your book on the screen. I have what may be a silly question, but how is "keeping your cool" different from "being cool"? I want to be a "cool" parent, but I also know that it's not a good idea to be best friends with your kids. Is there any way to be both "cool" and ScreamFree?

Many of us want to be a "cool" parent for our kids. We'll make lemonade and have the best toys available, so that the neighborhood kids will come over and play with ours. As the kids grow up, we'll maybe listen to their music (and pretend to enjoy it), watch their shows on TV, and even just "hang out" with them.

None of that is necessarily wrong, but taken to an extreme, it can be misguided because most of us equate "cool" with "popular". Instead, let's be the coolest parents we can be by looking at things in another way. Let's make sure that we don't emphasize our desire to love or be loved by our children by maybe overlooking some bad behaviors, or trying to 'relate' to them by agreeing with or allowing potentially destructive environments.

Take teen drinking parties, for instance. Just last month, two parents in Chicago were found guilty of child endangerment for hosting a party such as this. Two teens left their house drunk and crashed their car into a tree just a few feet from the end of the driveway; both died from their injuries. These parents, and many others unfortunately, interpret the idea of being "cool" the wrong way to the detriment of their children.

At ScreamFree, we'd like to reclaim the term cool and we'd like to redefine it. "Keeping your cool" is not about being the most popular parent in the room. It's about being the calmest one, in the midst of making some very unpopular choices in the eyes of your kids. It's definitely not an easy route to take, but we're sure that it's the better one. After all, won't it be nice to hear them to say when they've grown up: "My parents were really cool. Even when I did bad stuff or was going down the wrong path, they kept their cool, and taught me the important lessons I needed to make it in life". So, to answer your question, not only is it possible to be cool and ScreamFree at the same time, it is absolutely necessary.