For the 500th episode of The Way I Heard It, I'd like you to meet his mother, Tamara Thornton. Tamara had what a lot of parents would consider a pretty good thing going. Her oldest son was at MIT, playing football, attending on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, and headed down a road that checked just about every box a parent could hope to check. In fact, Tamara says she and her husband were "high-fiving ourselves every day." Then, Ethan called home and told them he was dropping out.

As the son of Peggy Rowe, I've long believed that mothers deserve a disproportionate amount of either the credit or the blame for how their sons turn out. In Ethan's case, I was curious to know what Tamara was thinking when her 19-year-old walked away from one of the most prestigious universities in the world to start a defense company with no connections, no obvious path, and no guarantee that any of it would work.

Her answer led us into a conversation I suspect a lot of parents need to hear. It's about the difference between supporting your kid and steering him. Between wanting your children to succeed and needing their success to look a certain way. And what happens when the road they choose for themselves looks nothing like the one you imagined for them.

Ethan joined us too, which resulted in a few conversations mother and son apparently hadn't had until the cameras were rolling.

My apologies to both of them. Or, you're welcome.