Don't freak out

That's Rule No. 1 in my family and at least one other. It's simple, but it's not easy, especially now. Plus, a bunch of other things worth your time.

My wife and I met during college. We dated during our senior year and for a while afterward.

Then, we broke up. We didn’t reconnect until our 20th college reunion.

After that, we moved quickly: got engaged in a few months, married in less than a year. Now, we have a preschool-aged daughter and we live in the ‘burbs.

We have some other friends, a husband and wife, who took a different path. All four of us went to college together, but they skipped the whole “two decade hiatus” thing, and got married and had a family almost right out of school.

The result is that they’re our peers, and great friends—but they’re also 20 years ahead of us as parents.

I’ve turned to them a lot for advice, and one of the best things they shared early on was what they call Rule No. 1 in their family: “Don’t freak out.”

It’s applicable to almost challenge. We taught it to my daughter almost as soon as she could speak, and it’s shorthand in our family now, too, when people get upset: “What’s Rule No. 1?”

Like a lo…