Perhaps we can learn something from Amy Winehouse. She died at 27, and thus has joined that exclusive “27 Club” of performers who died at the tender age of 27. That list includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain.  Are there lessons we parents can learn from these senseless deaths?

Of course there are.  Our kids don’t live in the often-insular world of celebrities.  Famous people influence our kids, but the social circles of our kids do not usually include numerous sycophants in their “entourage!” Elvis Presley was the first and prime example of this pattern when he died in 1978, in his own bathroom.