"Dear Jennifer,... "

My gig as a Q&A website expert is hoppin' lately. It's funny because while I feel more qualified answering parenting questions, there are many more questions about relationship issues. Many are fairly easy -- Why hasn't he called? How do I get over her? No sweat.

There are those, however, that stump me. I answer the questions as best I can, but I feel like I'm flailing a little when I give relationship advice to a 40-year old gay man (about his sex life, no less) or the woman coping with heartache after her husband admitted to a 10-year affair (Yikes!)

The questions I find myself thinking about later are the parenting questions, of course. Today a mother explained that her college-aged daughter has informed her she'll be getting a tattoo. A very, very large tattoo from neck to lower back. This mother is adamantly against this decision and wants to know what to do.

Let's see... The objective professional in me thinks she should ask her daughter if she'd like her opinion then offer it as gently as possible along with the reasons she feels this way. Ultimately, it's her body and she has the right to decorate it however she'd like (Is decorate the right word??) The parent in me is envisioning Emily coming to me with this grand idea, my eyes bulging out of my head, and the words, "Over my dead body!" streaming out of my mouth at 200 decibels.

I like to play the "What if..." game and asked Jason about this situation...

Me: "What if Emily came home from college and told you she was going to get a huge... I don't know what... tattooed on her body?"

Jason: "I'd tell her to go talk to her mother."

Grrrrreeaaat.

Thankfully I'm not the mother who has to worry about it today. Maybe she came to terms with the idea and respected her daughter's decision after all. That's certainly what I'd do in her position. Yeah, right!