How Co-Regulation Became the Parenting Buzzword of the Day

On a recent evening, my children and I were watching "The Iron Giant," the animated cult classic about a robot from outer space who, in 1957, crash-lands in the woods outside a small town in Maine, befriends a young boy, and wages battle against both a murderously stupid G-man and his own robo-programming as a sentient weapon of war. The boy, named Hogarth, and his mother, Annie, get by on her income as a diner waitress, and, late one night, she comes home from a draining double shift to find her son missing. Frantic with worry, Annie drives around until she locates Hogarth at the edge of the woods--on his own and perfectly fine--where he manically chatters at her about the big metal alien he claims to have spotted nearby. Then she catches herself and, with effort, takes on a low, steadier voice. "I'm not in the mood," she says.