Maybe you have heard the story of the boy asking, "Daddy, where did I come from?" The child's father went into a long birds-and-bees kind of thing before eventually taking the time to ask why the child was asking...and then the child ultimately said a new boy at school was from Cincinnati and had asked him where he was from.

Try keeping in mind that your boys will be asking about your childhood while looking forward to their own lives rather than looking back at yours. We all have our own baggage, but our children are not intended to be its carriers.

My two daughters learned of my childhood adventures and such from their grandmother and myself, then many years later I talked with them a bit about the overall dysfunction in our family history. My grandchildren occasionally ask what it was like for me while I was growing up, and I typically find answers by looking at things and/or possibilities in their own lives and finding similarities in mine.