My crucible was a papier-mache pueblo village.

A fifth-grade teacher assigned my daughter the project as part of a social studies unit. Typically, she worked on projects like this with a fair amount of parental guidance and oversight.

I passed the math word problems over to my spouse, but crafty and creative research assignments? That's my jam.

But this year, I had decided to take a hands-off approach to homework. I would still check to make sure my children were getting it done, but it was going to be all their own unassisted work and not my responsibility.

So, as hard as it was to stand by and watch the papier-mache explosion in my kitchen, I sat on my hands.

The research backs up my resolve.

The most thorough scientific investigation of how parental involvement affects students' academic achievement was published earlier this year by sociology professors Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris. Their research found that parental assistance isn't always a help in the long run. It can actually be a hindrance.

They reviewed nearly three decades' worth of longitudinal surveys of American parents and assessed more than 60 different measures of parental participation, from helping with homework to volunteering at schools, and controlled for parents' race, class and level of education. They looked at the relationship between that involvement and the students' academic progress, by measures such as reading and math test scores.

Most of the parental involvement didn't translate to better scores or better long-term outcomes. Robinson and Harris's data, published in "The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement With Children's Education," found that once students enter middle school, parental help with homework can actually bring test scores down.

The things that did seem to help? Reading to young children and talking to teenagers about college. Sending the message that school is important and providing support and encouragement when a child's academic performance falters.

There is wisdom in letting children try on their own, even when they are getting it wrong. But this is also not to say children should be left to sink or swim on their own.

Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, recently wrote an op-ed in which he described not helping as his 5-year-old son struggled for a minute to sound out the word "gratefully" while reading a book together.

Parents have a natural impulse to want to step in at the first sign of difficulty.

But, as Khan described in his essay, he is teaching his son that his brain grows when he struggles to learn something hard. We gravitate toward things that come easily and naturally to us. Learning happens in the struggle. That effort is also how we develop persistence.

Many parents fear their child will suffer if all of her peers are getting additional help while she tries to keep up alone.

A mom, who admitted to spending considerable time watching YouTube videos learning how to help her teenage son with a major high school project, explained her motivation: You don't want your child to fall behind because he's the only one not getting extra help. She poured hours of her own time into helping with the typing, formatting and grunt work involved with his assignment. The school had fostered a culture so competitive that it took parental involvement to excel.

That kind of environment is doing a disservice in the long run to the students, and some brave parents ought to speak up about it.

At the elementary and middle school levels, it becomes fairly evident to teachers when parents have taken too large a role in a student's project or homework. After all, they see the classroom performance and work of the same child day-to-day.

In our low-stakes fifth grade homework, the pueblo turned out just fine. In fact, my daughter took great pride in having done it by herself. It may have even provided a boost of confidence for her to know that she could figure it out on her own.

When the next assignment involved making a puppet of Abraham Lincoln, she asked for some fabric and a sewing kit.

I handed her the supplies and didn't even offer to thread the needle.

The puppet's hat didn't quite fit. And the beard may have been a bit uneven. But she managed to capture the spirit of Honest Abe perfectly.

Women who work up the courage to call an abuse hotline often ask a jarring question:

"How do I get him to stop hitting me?"

Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, knows the answer: "You're not going to be able to do that."

It's not that abusers are incapable of changing their behavior; they can.

But the victim of intimidation, threats, bullying, put-downs and abuse will not be the one who changes an abuser.

The recent release of a graphic video of Ray Rice, former Baltimore Ravens running back, punching his then-fiancee in the face and dragging her unconscious body out of an elevator, sparked a public outcry. Plenty of discussion on social media focused on the complicated reasons why victims choose to stay with their abusers.

There can be a sense of forgone conclusion about the abusers. If they are capable of the sort of brutal violence witnessed in the Rice video, what are the chances an abuser can learn to manage such out-of-control behavior?

"If we talked more about what to do for the Ray Rices of the world, who are the perpetrators of violence, we might get even further in the discussion," said Ruth Glenn, interim executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

The answer has high stakes: 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men aged 18 and older in the United States have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, according to a 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Teens and young adults face the greatest risk of violence in relationships.

Ray-Jones ran groups for perpetrators for a few years and saw a hundred men go through the treatment program. It was court-ordered treatment, twice a week for 52 weeks. There were some successes: A man said he realized he would yell at his wife and tell her if she could just keep the house clean or the kids quiet, he wouldn't get so irritated. He realized his culpability in that moment and started changing his own behavior.

She recalls another abuser, who said all the "right things" during the yearlong treatment, then said on graduation day: "I don't understand why I had to do this program. I only punched her in the mouth."

He had knocked three of his partner's teeth out, and she had needed stitches.

Edward Gondolf is one of the world's leading authorities on predicting abuse and reassault among batterers, and the former director of research at the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute. A long-term, longitudinal study by Gondolf looked at reassault rates for men who attended treatment programs. Although almost half reassaulted their partner within the four-year span, the reassault rate went down over time.

In fact, it went down substantially over time. More than 80 percent of the men had been violence-free for at least a year by the 30-month mark.

In other words, most abusers reassaulted early on. Eventually, the vast majority were violence-free for at least a year in the extended follow-up.

"Intervention does seem to matter," Gondolf said. He cautioned, however, that there was a portion of men who were violent early on and unrelenting in their abuse. "These are the horror stories that bring into question whether men can change," he said.

There is a core group of abusers who are unresponsive to change, impervious to treatment.

There's been research that tried to help identify which abusers are more likely to reoffend, but there's a basic way women can get a sense of the answer themselves: Ask yourself if you feel safe. Do you think he will hit you again? Listen to your gut. Are you living with verbal abuse, threats and intimidation?

The same can be taught to young people learning to navigate the early years of dating and relationships. If your child is dating, talk about what a healthy relationship looks like. Share the signs of possible red flags. How much is this other person trying to control you? Is he or she overly jealous, always asking a lot of questions about your whereabouts? How much time and attention does he or she want and demand from you? Do you feel listened to and respected?

Oftentimes, abuse goes unreported. What is the likelihood that abusers who never seek therapy, or are not forced to undergo treatment, will change? I asked Gondolf.

"That's an important question," he said. "And one we've somewhat neglected."

Listen to your gut.

More revealing than the nude celebrity pictures have been our reactions to the theft.

A common response -- "just don't take naked selfies" -- misses the most critical point. Digital sexual behavior is part of the dating and relationship landscape. The criminals who hacked celebrities' accounts, stole private photos, then sold or reposted them violated those women and their privacy. They also sent a loud message to everyone else: Your data is not safe.

And celebrities are hardly alone in capturing intimate moments with a phone.

The way parents talk to their children about this case lays the foundation for how upcoming generations will think about a shifting landscape of intimacy and privacy.

Several studies suggest that your child will, at some point, encounter a sexually explicit phone message. This will probably happen younger than you think. While fewer teens are having sex than in previous generations, they are more likely to use digital devices to experiment with sexuality.

Nearly a quarter (20 percent) of middle school students with text-capable cellphones admitted to receiving a sexually explicit text, according to a study published in Pediatrics in June. A 2012 study in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that one-quarter of teens said they have sexted. By college, those numbers are much higher. A 2013 study from Indiana University and Purdue University found that 80 percent of the college students surveyed had received sext messages, and nearly half, 46 percent, had sexted with pictures.

A report from the Pew Research Center released in February found that 20 percent of adults surveyed say they have received a suggestive picture, up from 15 percent two years ago.

If your child has a smartphone or is friends with someone who does, this latest news about celebrity photos merits a conversation. As evident from this and so many other cases that have been in the news, the consequences of virtual sexual behavior can have real-life impact just as damaging to lives and reputations as behavior offline.

The names involved in this particular case, however, are ones your child has likely heard; these are stars they have likely seen on television or in the movies.

When I broached the topic with my own tween daughter, she interrupted me to say that the strangest picture she's taken of herself is of her making a duck face. I was glad to hear that, but there were a few points I wanted to make clear about what had happened to actresses like Jennifer Lawrence.

I told her the basics of how the celebrities' private photos had spread. Despite a few eye rolls and "I already know," I said (again) that there are ways people can get into your phone and computer without your permission and use what they find to hurt you. We talked about ways to try to protect our privacy.

It may be easier for parents to pass judgment on celebrities who are victims of perverts and thieves. But if we want to try to protect our children from being victims -- or perpetrators -- of such crimes, we need to start those discussions from a different place. And the conversation about values needs to go a step further.

It's just as much a crime to break into someone's phone or computer and steal an image as it would be to break into their house and walk out with the china.

It's not OK for this to have happened to Lawrence because the pictures were taken in the first place.

It's not OK for those pictures to be spread around the Internet because people say she's hot.

Harassment is never a compliment.

There is a difference between what someone wants to do with another person and what they don't want to do. It's called consent.

Looking at a private picture that someone does not want you to see is a violation of that person's consent.

There's no shortage of sexually explicit photos on the Internet for those who want to view them. An image becomes more valuable when we don't want others to see it.

These may seem like heavy concepts to discuss with a child, but they can be explained in simple terms. And the younger we start talking about the various ways in which we respect another person, the longer we have to reinforce those ideas.