The Solar Tribes

So what, exactly, do you say? That the planet and everyone on it would die? That it won't happen and there's no point worrying about it?

This simple question threw me into chaos the day my daughter asked it. I didn't want to be facile or glib about it, but I wasn't up to a science lesson, either. My response was to walk outside where the yard grows wild and to ask her to imagine all the green turned to brown. "The life would go out," she said, with a stricken expression on her face.

I think she meant to say that the lights would go out, but she said "life." She was, inadvertently, referring to vitality.

And that's what your child's Sun sign means. Vitality. It represents her fundamental identity, her ego. It's the source that fuels her and the primary lens through which she filters her experience of the world.

In ordinary, every day reality, this can mean the difference between a child who leaps out of bed when the alarm shrieks on a school morning and one who snoozes right through it. It can mean differences as pronounced as the tortoise and the hare.

Your Sagittarian daughter, for instance, may seize every opportunity to travel, while your Cancerian son may prefer sticking close to the familiar turf of his own neighborhood. Nothing moves your Taurus teen when he's made up his mind about something; your Pisces college student, however, may waffle back and forth before he decides what his major will be. While the broad traits of each Sun sign generally fit, the specifics may not fit, because every child's vitality is expressed uniquely.

Virgos, for example, are supposedly tidy individuals. But I know plenty of Virgo kids, my daughter among them, who consider a messy room its natural state. Cancer kids should be nurturing, but I've met some who are bullies through and through.

When you look at a group of kids who share the same Sun sign, the diversity among them is staggering. But beneath the surface of it all, you'll find similarities, a certain perception that unites them, a common thread of passions.