There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You've taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you've also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn't always right.

Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they'll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn't-always-right category. No matter that you've been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child's progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn't it just drive you nuts?

As parents, it's our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right.

Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one.

In our house the boundaries have been dubbed "Mom's Law." Mom's Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else's house as well.

Mom's Law includes, but is certainly not limited to:

1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don't.
2. Never throw sand… inside or outside.
3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back.
4. Do not steal…especially other people's teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are.
5. Never go into someone else's house to play, when they are not home.
6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won't step on them.)
7. Don't put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day.
8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub.
9. Anything (or anybody) that "accidentally" lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring.
10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments.

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her books.