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There is very little within the spectrum of average parenting that can't be made up for with a high-quality tuck in.

The tuck in was an essential nightly ritual in my upbringing which, like my own children, I prolonged with a variety of elaborate efforts: the additional story, the drink, the extra hug and kiss, the need for more blankets, and of course, an onslaught of elaborate and irrelevant questions-all critical tools in the arsenal of extending that sweet moment of one-on-one parental attention.

Perhaps you will think it indicative of arrested development that this ritual continued as long as I lived in the house. But really it was just that I was an only child to a single parent-we both needed the nightly hugs. Still, I hope to use it to prolong the child-parent bedtime connection as long as my kids will allow it.

Now, at the end of an exhausting day where my parenting has been marginal to poor, it is tempting to forgo this procedure with a swift, "Everyone in BED!" and a token, speedy hug and "G'nite, love you." However, I am starting to see the wonderful redemption opportunity I am giving up when I do this. A few, focused moments at the bedside can leave me, and hopefully my child, ending the day feeling that some good-quality parenting is going on, and love is in the air to fuel sweet kid dreams. This is an illusion I am more than happy to weave.

In my house, perhaps one night in a week, the high-quality tuck in will require an apology for bad behavior on my part. I do try to apologize at the time when I make mistakes with my kids, but there really isn't an ending moment to my grumpy-mom performance that would make an apology anything but a ridiculous comma in the middle of it. Enter the tuck in, where we calm down with routines and prayer and inside jokes and rituals, and then, as I kneel quietly at the bedside, I can sincerely feel (and not just say) that I'm sorry, and they are in a much better position to forgive.

There is no "right way" to tuck in a child. Every child has different needs. The tuck in has evolved differently with each of my four kids.

With my oldest, I've found the bunk bed is not helpful to this routine. We end up on my bed after I've said goodnight to all the others, chatting while my other little guy falls asleep on the lower bunk. He'll still let me sing to him and pet his hair.

I sincerely feel this daily touchstone of chatting can be the key to holding onto him through both tweendom and teendom. In fact, my Aunt Dede (three daughters)

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