RULE 5

DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN DO

ANYTHING THAT MAKES YOU DISLIKE

THEM

ACTUALLY, IT’S NOT OK

Recently, I watched a three-year-old boy trail his mother and father slowly
through a crowded airport. He was screaming violently at five-second
intervals—and, more important, he was doing it voluntarily. He wasn’t at the
end of this tether. As a parent, I could tell from the tone. He was irritating his
parents and hundreds of other people to gain attention. Maybe he needed
something. But that was no way to get it, and his parents should have let him
know that. You might object that “perhaps they were worn out, and jet-
lagged, after a long trip.” But thirty seconds of carefully directed problem-
solving would have brought the shameful episode to a halt. More thoughtful
parents would not have let someone they truly cared for become the object of
a crowd’s contempt.
I have also watched a couple, unable or unwilling to say no to their two-
year-old, obliged to follow closely behind him everywhere he went, every
moment of what was supposed to be an enjoyable social visit, because he
misbehaved so badly when not micro-managed that he could not be given a
second of genuine freedom without risk. The desire of his parents to let their
child act without correction on every impulse perversely produced precisely
the opposite effect: they deprived him instead of every opportunity to engage
in independent action. Because they did not dare to teach him what “No”
means, he had no conception of the reasonable limits enabling maximal
toddler autonomy. It was a classic example of too much chaos breeding too
much order (and the inevitable reversal). I have, similarly, seen parents
rendered unable to engage in adult conversation at a dinner party because
their children, four and five, dominated the social scene, eating the centres