Listen up, parents! Many of you already know this, but I'm here to repeat it on behalf of the Annoyed People Of The World Who Must Deal With Misbehaving Children™: When you set a limit for your child, you are thenceforth responsible for enforcing and maintaining that limit.

I was in the coffee shop this morning, working on the novel. (Two chapters left -- I'm gonna do it! In your face, Josh!) Here comes a woman with her kid, who immediately seizes the little bell on the counter, to be used for getting the clerk's attention. (TPCQ: "My name is Chet!")

Mom said to Junior: "You can ring it once. Just once, okay?" Junior rings it once. Mom says: "Okay, now put it back." Junior rings it again. And again. Ring ring ring. Ring in your ears, mister writer guy in the next room. Ring ring! Ring ring ring. Hope you weren't right in the middle of a paragraph or anything! Ring ring ring. "Okay," Mom says. "That's enough. Put it down." Ring ring ring.

Here's the way this should go: "You can ring it once." Ring. "Okay, that's it." Mom takes bell and puts it back. "But why can't I ring it, Mom?" "Because," Mom says. "We're in a quiet place. And when you're in a quiet place, you need to be quiet. People are working and reading, and we have to respect that. The bell is here to get the clerk if s/he is away from the counter, not to be used as a toy. When we get home you can ring your own bells all you want."

There's no need to be nasty or blindly authoritative -- kids respect logic, they really do -- but you have to hold your ground. Being lenient so that your kid will think of you as Their Pal is stupid, and it's bad parenting. That's a value judgment, and I'm making it.

I know classroom discipline is different from parenting, and I know it's much more stressful to have to be a parent all the time. (After class, they're out of my room for 23 hours and 10 minutes.) But I also know that if you waffle on what the rules are or how we're going to act as humans, you let the kid push the boundaries until what you say doesn't matter.

Then what happens when you tell the kid not to worship Satan?

The Life of the Mind

The chapter of the book I'm working on now is a mixture of five different styles -- romance, detective, etc -- so basically I'm writing pulp. Purposefully bad pulp. The first bit is the romance section, so basically this morning I turned out nine pages of wretched syrupy puke. I actually got bored with it as I wrote it. A direct quote: "His eyes met hers, and everything else around her vanished. Her heart raced as his oceanic gaze penetrated deep into her. Time stood still and her mind swam with euphoria." Blaurrgggh!

My greatest fear is that someone will read that section someday and tell me: "Hey this is good. You should write romance novels."

TimeWaster™

Thanks to Diane for linking us to It's Jerry Time! Highly polished cartoons about Jerry and his wacky true-life adventures. Check out his trouble in Gettysburg.

Today I'm listening to: Autechre!