WHILE THAT PATRICIAN gentleman above may not look like Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears, he was way ahead of his time when it came to advice for moms and dads. He’s Henry James, the august novelist, and if I had only had the sense to follow his rules, I wouldn’t have ended yesterday evening by yelling at my daughter…to stop yelling.
My son, who was caught in the middle of my battle with the Rock, gently suggested this morning that if I had been kind and quiet when talking to his sister, I might have averted the scene that kept us all up past bedtime. Unbeknownst to him, he was paraphrasing Henry James’s rules to live by:
“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
Thanks, Henry. Sorry, Rock and River. And Marion, maybe you need to add this to your list of the rules for sisters? Oh, wait–it’s already there, wrapped up and tied with a bow, in the all-important number 15.
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Yelling about not yelling. If that’s not the ultimate parental tiger chasing its tail, I don’t know what is. What I love most about this is your willingness to share it. So sisterly. There is not a mother among us who has not done this. But maybe some of us did not know that…until now. Thank you.