FAMILY AND
FRIENDS
RULES
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If you imagine yourself as the center of your own universe, then you are the very hub. The next circle around you is your lover, your partner; this is your closest, most intimate relationship. The next circle to that is your family and friends. These are the people you love the most, choose to spend the most time with, love you the most. These are the people you can relax with, kick off your shoes and be yourself. But there are still Rules.
There is still a right way to treat them and a not-so- right way. You still have to behave with honor, dignity, respect. You have responsibilities toward both your children and your parents. You have a duty to your siblings. You have obligations, that have to be taken seriously, to your friends.
You have a whole raft of hats to wear—parent, friend, child, brother/sister, uncle/aunt, godparent, niece/nephew, cousin— and a whole set of rules and duties to perform. The next section is guidance on how best to wear all these hats.
As we go through this life, we have to interact with other people. We rub up against them (emotionally) all the time, and we have to have rules to govern our behavior so we do right by them, to steer us through tricky situations, new experiences, and ongoing close relationships.
If we want our relationships with our family and friends to be successful and for them to think the very best of us, then we do need to give those relationships some thought—a conscious approach rather than sailing on asleep at the wheel like most people. By consciously being aware of what we are doing, we can improve those relationships, iron out the problems, encourage others, and generally spread a bit of warmth and happiness as we go. What could be finer?
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If You Are Going to Be a Friend, Be a Good Friend Being a real friend is a tremendous responsibility. You have to be loyal, honest (but not too honest), sincere, reliable, dependable, friendly (stands to reason really), pleasant, open, sociable (not much point having friends if you’re not going to be sociable, is there?), responsive, welcoming, and gracious. You also have to be forgiving at times, be prepared to offer help, support, and sympathy. At the same time, you don’t want to be taken advantage of or have the wool pulled over your eyes. And you may have to be brutally candid at times and be prepared to risk the friendship by being so. Yet equally there are times you need to hold your tongue and keep your opinion to yourself. They are your friends, not clones of you—they do things differently. You have to be counselor, confessor, priest, helper, companion, friend, confidant(e), and comrade. You have to offer the friendship enthusiasm, dedication, determination, creativity, interest, passion, and drive.
And this is all what you have to do. What does your friend have to do?
Well, in an ideal world the same. If your friend fails to do any of this, you will still carry on being her friend, being forgiving, being supportive, and being there.
And I guess if you have to take anything away from this Rule, the most important bit is being there. You are there when your friend is going through it and not just there for the good times. You will be there when your friend needs you in the early hours, the dark days, the times of trouble and stress. You will be there to hold her hand, let her cry on your shoulder, lend her a Kleenex, pat her on the back and make her endless cups of coffee. And you will tell them to cheer up, stop worry-
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ing, stop being such a fool, whatever it takes to get them up and at it again.
You will be there to give your friend good advice. You will be there just to listen at times. You will be there when you don’t want to be.
You will be there when all her other friends have fallen by the wayside.
You will be there no matter what.
Someone once said that a real friend is someone you can be having a conversation with as she gets on a plane, you don’t see her for ten years, and when she arrives back you carry on the conversation as she gets off the plane like a moment hadn’t passed. That’s exactly how it is between good friends.
THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT
IS BEING THERE...AND NOT
JUST FOR
THE GOOD TIMES.
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Never Be Too Busy for
Loved Ones
It is very easy in the rush of living to overlook people close to us. I do it. I have brothers who are very special, very close to me, and I forget to phone, forget to stay in touch. Not because I don’t care but because 1 am too busy. Unforgivable. Every now and then I’ll complain that I haven’t heard from them. But, of course, it is me not staying in touch just as much as it is them. We have to make time, because if we don’t, time slips past so fast that a few weeks become months, and then years are added on before we know it.
It’s the same with children. Parents all harbor a secret fantasy of,
“Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the Victorian ideal of seeing them for an hour before bedtime when the nanny has them all bathed and pajama-ed and ready with the cookies and milk?” sort of thing. Well, I know I do even if you don’t. But the more time we put into our relationships—with children, siblings, parents, friends—the more we get out of them. It has to be us to make the move, to phone, to stay in touch. And what if they don’t also do this? Fine. You’re now the Rules Player.
This is what you do. You become incredibly successful at handling your life, at processing guilt (you don’t have any because you phoned, you wrote, you stayed in touch), at forgiveness (they didn’t phone or write or stay in touch), at relationships in general. You take the moral high ground and be the first to offer the hand of friendship, be the first to forgive and forget. (And I don’t care how serious the squabble was, Rules Players don’t carry grudges, ever....)
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make time. You have to make quality time (sorry, I hate that expression as well) for all those around you to whom you make a difference. Those who love you get repaid in time—it’s a fair exchange. They love you, and you give them something of yourself, something precious. Yep, your time and attention. And you do this willingly, not as a chore. You do this with dedication and commitment and wholehearted enthusiasm— or you don’t do it at all. There is no point spending quality time with your kids, for example, and using that time to catch up on work or read the paper or get tomorrow’s lunchboxes ready. You have to be there entirely for them, or they’ll know your attention is elsewhere and they’ll feel cheated.
So when the phone rings and it’s your mom, your grandmother, or your old friend but you’re really busy doing something, don’t keep her on the phone making “uh huh” noises while you simultaneously finish searching the web or writing that letter. Either put everything down and give her your full attention, or ask if you can call her back later—and make sure you do. One day she might not be there—and then you will so desperately wish you’d actually listened. But then it’ll be too late.
So make time for the people who matter— today.
THE MORE WE PUT INTO
OUR RELATIONSHIPS,
THE MORE WE
GET OUT TO THEM.
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Let Your Kids Mess Up for Themselves—They
Don’t Need Any Help from You
I have children, and I naturally want them to be happy and well adjusted and successful. But do I also harbor secret plans for them? Do I want them to be doctors? Lawyers? Diplomats? Scientists? Archaeologists?
Paleontologists? Writers? Entrepreneurs? The Pope? (Look, someone has to be the Pope, and it may be some parent’s ambition somewhere to see his child as the Pope.) Astronauts?
No. 1 don’t think so. Hand on my heart, 1 can say I haven’t ever had such ambitions for them. I do hope they’re not listening, but I can say that I’ve been disappointed on the odd occasion when their career choice has seemed a bit unusual—not their sort of thing at all. But you have to let them make mistakes. You can’t steer them right all the time, or they’d never learn for themselves.
And this is what this Rule is all about—giving your kids the space to mess things up. We’ve all done it. I was given immense freedom to screw up, and I did it big time, magnificently, spectacularly. Result? I learned pretty quickly what worked and what didn’t. I have a cousin who wasn’t given anything like the same freedom. He was much more protected, and he didn’t screw up anywhere nearly so badly. But later in life, and he’d be the first to agree with this, he managed his life in such an unfortunate way that his screw-up really was spectacular. We all have to make mistakes. Better to make them while we’re young and have the resiliency to bounce back.
Being a parent is about 75 percent making it up as you go along. You too have the freedom to make mistakes. Trouble is that if you get it wrong as a parent, your mistakes can really
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affect someone’s life adversely. That’s why it can be really hard to stand back and watch our children make bad choices. We want to run to them and protect them, nurture them a bit more, and keep them from harm. But they have to learn by getting it wrong. If we think they’ll only learn by us telling them, then we are making a big mistake. They have to do life for themselves to really get to grips with it. It’s real, and they can’t learn it from a book or from us or from the television. They can only learn it by getting their fingers burned. Your job is to stand by with the bandaids and the antiseptic and a kiss to make it better.
You are, of course, allowed to ask leading questions: Are you sure that’s a good idea? Have you thought this one through? And what happens after you’ve done that? Can you afford to take that much time off? Won’t it hurt a bit? Didn’t you try something like this before? You can also do this with friends as well when you can see they are about to make a big mistake but you don’t want to be the killjoy. Try not to make your questions sound too judgmental or moany, or they’ll ignore you and go ahead just to be stubborn.
YOU CAN’T STEER THEM
RIGHT ALL THE TIME, OR
THEY’D NEVER LEARN FOR
THEMSELVES.
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Have a Little Respect and Forgiveness
for Your Parents
This one may or may not affect you. Personally, as I am now technically an orphan, it shouldn’t affect me. But it does. Big time. I was brought up with two major dysfunctional attributes. A missing father and a difficult mother. I have siblings with the same background.
We have all handled it differently. I found it easier to come to terms with my mother once I too had children and could see what a difficult job it is. I could then also see that some people are intuitively, naturally good at it. And some people are, to be brutally frank, utterly useless at it. My mother fell into the latter category. Was that her fault? No.
Should I blame her? No. Can I forgive her? There is nothing to forgive.
She embarked on a life path for which she was ill equipped, received no help, was lacking in any skill, and found extremely limiting and difficult. Result? She treated her children appallingly, and we probably all need therapy. Or forgiveness and respect. Why should she be blamed for doing a difficult job badly? Hey, there are lots of areas in all our lives where we aren’t very efficient or skilled or even enthusiastic.
Your parents do the best they can. And that might not be good enough for you, but it is still the best they could do. They can’t be blamed if they weren’t very good at it. We can’t all be fabulous parents.
And the absent father? That’s OK, too. We all make choices that others can judge as bad or unforgivable or just plain selfish and wrong. But we aren’t there. We don’t know what weaknesses people have or what drives them. Or indeed what is even going through their head. We can’t judge until we, too, have to make the same choice. And even then if we choose a different way, then that’s fine, but we still can’t judge or blame.
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So, for the fact your parents brought you into the world, have a little respect and forgiveness. If they did a good job, then tell them. If you love them (and there is nothing that says you have to), then tell them.
And if they were appalling at parenting, then forgive them and move on.
As offspring, you do have a duty to be respectful. You have a responsibility to treat your parents kindly and be more than they are by being forgiving and nonjudgmental. You can rise above your upbringing.
HEY, THERE ARE LOTS OF AREAS
IN ALL OUR LIVES WHERE
WE AREN’T VERY EFFICIENT
OR SKILLED
OR EVEN ENTHUSIASTIC.
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Give Your Kids a Break
We’ll talk in a bit about what good parenting is—what your role as a parent is. First, let’s look at this Rule—give your kids a break means support and encourage your children. In fact this should be support and encourage all children, not just your own. Children get a pretty poor deal of it. They hear it from all directions, and the word that figures most in their lives is “no.” No, you can’t do this. No, you’re not old enough for this. No, you can’t have that. No, you’re not going there.
No, you can’t see that film.
Cast your mind back, and see if it wasn’t the same for you.
“No” is terribly easy for us to say. It’s the word that trips so readily off the tongue. But to give support and encouragement, we do have to train ourselves out of it. We have to learn to say “yes.” Obviously we need to qualify our “yes,” depending on the age or skills or development of the child. But a resounding “yes” gives kids a great boost even if it is followed by a “but not at the moment,” or “when you are old enough”
or “when you have saved up.”
It is also easy to say to a child, “You’re not very good at that,” or “I wouldn’t do that if I were you; you’ll only fail.” Better to encourage a child and let him learn that he might fail than to set the idea running in his mind beforehand. I know we all want to protect kids from harm, from failure, from disappointment. But sometimes we have to push them forward and shelve those worries for the moment.
Truly successful parents are the ones saying, “Go on, you can do that, you’ll be great at that, you’ll be terrific.” By voicing such positive enforcement, our children get to believe in
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themselves and can do more, be more, achieve more. If we just say
“no,” they’ll grow up with low self-esteem and lacking in confidence.
A friend recalls how she desperately wanted to be a ballet dancer when she was 6 years old. She was already showing the signs of being destined for her current 6 ft tall, large feet, athletic build—as far from a ballet dancer as you can imagine. Her parents must have been able to see this and could have told her that really she should do something else. Like all-in wrestling for kids. But instead, they found her a ballet class. It didn’t take long for her to realize that ballet wasn’t right for her, and she stopped going because it made her legs hurt. However, it was her choice to stop. And she left with her self- esteem intact. (She only wishes they hadn’t taken the photos.)
Whatever kids want to do, it is not your job to edit their dream, stand in their way, voice your concerns, limit their hopes or discourage them in any way. Your job is to give guidance while supporting and encouraging. Your job is to give them the resources to achieve whatever it is they want to. Whether they do or don’t achieve is irrelevant. If they had the chance, that’s everything.
THEY HEAR IT FROM
ALL DIRECTIONS,
AND THE WORD THAT
FIGURES MOST IN
THEIR LIVES IS “NO."
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Never Lend Money Unless You Are
Prepared to Write It Off.
The full title of this Rule should actually be: Never lend money—to your friend or children, or your siblings, or even parents—unless you are prepared to write off either the money or the relationship.
There is a lovely story told, I think, about Oscar Wilde (correct me if I’ve got the wrong person) who borrowed a book from a friend and forgot to return it. His friend turned up and demanded the book back, by which time young Oscar had lost it. His friend asked Oscar if he wasn’t jeopardizing the friendship by not returning the book. Oscar Wilde merely replied, “Yes. But aren’t you also doing the same thing by demanding it back?”
If you lend money—or a book or anything else—don’t do it unless you are prepared for it to be lost, forgotten, not returned, broken, ignored, whatever.
If you are precious about it, then don’t lend it in the first place. If it means a lot to you, keep it safe. If you do lend anything, including money, then don’t expect to get it back if you value the friendship—or relationship. If you do get it back, then that is a bonus. If you don’t, well you were prepared for that in the first place.
Lots of parents make the mistake of lending money to their children and then getting all hurt and disappointed when they don’t get repaid.
But they have spent the child’s entire life giving them money, and then as soon as they get a bit grown up and go away to college or whatever, the parents suddenly start saying it’s a loan and demanding repayment.
Of course the child isn’t going to repay it. She hasn’t been trained to.
It is
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unrealistic to expect her to do so. If she does do, count your blessings and be grateful for the bonus.
Same with friends. Don’t lend them anything if the nonreturn is going to matter to you. It is your choice, after all. You don’t have to lend anything to anyone. If you choose to do so, be prepared to write it off or don’t do it. Obviously, if the money means more to you than the friendship, then of course demand it to be repaid—and add interest as well.
And the same goes for siblings or parents. (Goodness, don’t ever lend money to them; they’ll never pay it back.) So who should you lend money to? Strangers, of course. And they won’t pay it back either.
IF YOU ARE PRECIOUS ABOUT IT,
THEN DON’T LEND IT
IN THE FIRST PLACE.
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Keep Quiet
I have a friend who has three small children. She told me recently that before she had children, she didn’t really get the things that people with children told her. She wasn’t always convinced by their claims of tiredness or logistical problems, she didn’t necessarily believe that children could squabble that much or be such hard work, she sometimes just didn’t understand what they were talking about. Even when she had two children, she didn’t really get what people with more than two children were telling her. Now, however, she says she finally really gets it, and it just isn’t like she’d imagined.
You’d have thought that if you had two children you’d know what life was like for people with three kids. But you don’t. In fact, you don’t even know what life is like for other people with two children who are different sexes from yours, or further apart in age, or when there’s less money, or the parents are working different hours from you. Even apparently similar circumstances can be deceptively different.
And we all have our own personalities and values and strengths and weaknesses. I know one person who is widowed and hates spending time with happy couples because it reminds her what she’s lost. I have another widowed friend who has no problem spending time with couples because she doesn’t see it in relation to her own marriage.
Neither is right or wrong, but both have their own histories and attitudes.
So what am I saying? Essentially, don’t judge. Try walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins before you presume to know what his life is like. My own mother had one of her children adopted when he was a few weeks old. For years I thought
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this was a terrible thing to do. But once I had children of my own, I realized that I had no way of assessing whether what she did was OK.
She already had five children, she was widowed, and therefore the sole earner (in the 1950s, when that was even harder than it is now), and she was working all hours with no money for childcare. Would I have coped any better in her circumstances? I can’t know.
This isn’t easy. I’m not just saying that we should think twice before we form an opinion. I’m also saying that since we can’t judge anyone else’s situation, we should keep quiet about their choices in life. It’s not for us to tell even our nearest and dearest how we think they should act. For many of us, and I’m certainly including myself here, this can be one of the hardest Rules of all.
However, think about how you feel when people try to tell you what to do. If you know what’s right for you, you don’t appreciate other people telling you what they think. They don’t understand. No, not even your closest family members really understand what it’s like to be you. Even if you’re making a mistake, you still want to be allowed to make it for yourself and to learn from it. And that’s how we need to treat everyone else around us. Tough, ain’t it? But necessary.
THINK ABOUT HOW YOU
FEEL WHEN PEOPLE TRY
TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO.
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There Are No Bad Children
There are no bad children. Yes, there may be children who do bad things. There may be children who do appalling things. But they are not bad. No matter how naughty my children are, they are not bad. They may make me climb the walls with their behavior at times, but when they have gone to sleep and I peep in at them, they are angelic little cherubs, utterly good, utterly perfect. Yes, what they do during the day, to get my dander up, may be naughty, may be bad behavior, but they remain intrinsically good.
The only reason the behavior is bad is because they are exploring the world and learning where the boundaries are. They have to make mistakes in order to find out what’s what. It is only natural and quite normal.
The same goes for any other behavior that is out of the ordinary. There are no clumsy children, only clumsy behavior. There are no stupid children, only stupid conduct. They are no spiteful children, only spiteful acts. There are no selfish children, only selfish actions.
Kids don’t know any better, and it is your job to teach them, educate them, help them, encourage them. You start off on the wrong foot if you start off believing they are bad. You’re almost bound to fail if you believe them to be faulty. You can’t change a bad child, but you can change bad behavior. If you believe the child is good, you’re on to a winner immediately. All you’ve got to do is change the behavior, and that is an attainable goal.
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It is awfully detrimental to say to a child, “You are a bad child.” It sets something up in their mind that is hard to shift. Better to say, “You’ve done a naughty thing,” or “You’ve been naughty.” This they can do something about. But if you tell them they are bad, there is nothing they can do about that, and it affects them.
YOU CAN’T CHANGE
A BAD CHILD,
BUT YOU CAN
CHANGE BAD BEHAVIOR.
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Be Up Around People You Love
Your job from now on, as a Rules Player, is to be up around people you love. No more moaning. No more complaining. No more grumbling. These things will no more issue from your lips. You are, from now on, the positive one, the perpetually cheerful, always up one around whom good things revolve and happen.
When asked how are you, instead of saying, “Can’t complain, mustn’t grumble,” in the future you will say, “Fine, good, marvelous”—No matter how crummy you feel, no matter what sort of a day you’ve had, no matter how low, down, or fed up you are. And do you know, the interesting thing is that when you do say “Marvelous,” even if you don’t feel it, you’ll find something positive to say to follow it up with.
Whereas if you’d said “Been better,” then the follow-up thoughts would be negative. Try it—honestly, it really works.
In the future, right from today, from this very second, you have to become the one who is always happy, up, cheerful. Why? Because someone has to, or everybody will want to end it all. This life is hard and treacherous. Someone has to lift the burden, lift the spirits, lift the gloom. So who’s it going to be? You, that’s who.
I know, I know. You’ll be sitting there reading this, thinking, “Why me? Why lay this burden on me?” Because you can do it, that’s why.
But do it secretly (remember Rule 1), without fuss or bother. Just a simple change of heart, change of direction. From now on you cannot be anything but up around those you love. OK, moan to strangers. But loved ones get the full treatment. Up, up, and away.
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Successful people, those who have got it licked, are invariably cheerful.
They care more about what people around them are going through, feeling, suffering than their own petty problems. They invariably want to know what’s wrong with you rather than moaning about their day.
They think positively, act positively, project confidence, verve, and enthusiasm.
I had a friend who went to live abroad in a country where he spoke very little of the language. But he said his mood lifted whenever he was there because he didn’t know the words for fed up or miserable or down.
When someone asked him how he was, he could only say “Happy,”
because that was the only word he knew to reply with. He found that when he said it, he felt it.
SOMEONE HAS TO
LIFT THE BURDEN,
LIFT THE SPIRITS,
LIFT THE GLOOM.
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Give Your Kids Responsibilities
Children grow up and leave home. They go from helpless babies to mature adults who have sex and drink beer while your back is turned.
The secret is to try and keep pace with them. As they grow, you have to back off more and let them do more. You have to resist the urge to do everything for them and let them fry eggs* or paint dustbins** for themselves.
It’s a delicate balancing act. You can’t give kids more responsibility than they can handle, but at the same time you can’t hold them back.
And when you do let them fry eggs or paint dustbins for the first time, they are going to make a mess— yolk on the stove, paint on the garage floor. It’s the mess most often that makes a parent say, “No, you can’t.” But we have to break a few eggs (ha ha) to be able to fry one. We have to gloop a bit of paint if kids are going to be able to carry out any DIY job for themselves when they are grown up.
When kids are tiny and learning to drink from a cup for the first time we expect spillage. We stand there with a paper towel in our hand prepared to mop up. But by the time they are teenagers, we’ve forgotten the art of hiding the paper towel
1 This one comes from my own son who, when he was asked what being a grown-up meant, said it was being able to fry eggs as he wasn’t allowed to— he was about 8 at the time. I felt so mean I got him cooking breakfast every day for a month until he was sick of frying eggs.
1 This came from a friend who was always angry with his father.
When I asked him about his relationship, he complained that as a kid he was never allowed to do anything to help. He finally lost it with his father when his father was painting a dustbin and the kid wanted to help and his father said, “No.” But why? It wouldn’t have hurt. Why the father was painting a dustbin in the first place remains a mystery.
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behind our back waiting for them to spill stuff. We expect them to be able to keep their room tidy the first time. But they’ve never done it before. They don’t know how to do it. They have to learn, and part of that learning process is not doing it, doing it badly, doing it differently from how we, as adults would do it. Our job is to help them. To hand them responsibility slowly, bit by bit, but with guidance.
We expect kids to do everything right the first time, no spillage, no broken eggs, no paint on the floor. It is our expectations that are unrealistic. Growing up is a messy business.
AS THEY GROW,
YOU HAVE TO
BACK OFF MORE AND
LET THEM DO MORE.
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Your Children Need to Fall Out with You to Leave Home
Your kids have never tidied their room. They’ve played their music long and loud and driven you mad. You and your kids are about at a breaking point, and you wonder where you went wrong as a parent of sullen,
moody, dressed-in-black teenagers. Your kids are
monosyllabic, depressed (but miraculously cheer up when their friends come round), always hungry, rude, mercenary, troublesome, and unrelentlessly embarrassed by you. And you blame yourself. It is all your fault. You have somehow failed them. Rubbish. This is all good stuff.
Look, your kids have got to fall out with you to be able to leave home.
If they loved you too much, they couldn’t leave. You’ve nurtured them, wiped their bottom, dressed them, fed them, doled out money for all of their life. And they don’t want to feel grateful. They want to leave, drink too much, have sex, and use grown-up swear words. They don’t want to be your darling little angel anymore. They want to be irritating and daring and rude and adult. They want to discover and explore and get into trouble all by themselves. They need to break the chains, rip the parental ropes off, and run over the hill shouting that they are free at last. How on earth can they do that if they are still in awe of you, still feeling so attached to you, still loving you so much? They have to break free by not getting on with you before they can come home again as something more than just your child.
This process is all natural, and you should welcome it and be glad to see the back of them. Throw ’em out early, I say, and then they’ll be back all the sooner. You can’t ruffle their hair ever again or tuck them in or read them a story, but you will
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find a grown-up friend comes back, and you can share a whole new relationship with them.
Hold them back, and they’ll resent you for longer. Take it personally, and they’ll take longer to return because they’ll feel guilty.
And you can show this to your teenager: Don’t give your parents too hard a time. They are feeling just as threatened by this new relationship as you are. Give them a break. They’re making it up as they go along, just as much as you are.
THEY HAVE TO
BREAK FREE BEFORE
THEY CAN COME HOME
AGAIN AS SOMETHING
MORE THAN
JUST YOUR CHILD.
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Your Kids Will Have Friends You Don’t Like
“Oh no, not Mickey Brown—again!” This was my mother’s cry every Saturday morning. She hated Mickey Brown. Loathed and detested him with a vengeance. Why? I have no idea. She disliked most of my friends, but she saved up all the venom for poor Mickey Brown, whom she took against before she ever met him.
Look, your children will sometimes have friends you don’t approve of.
It’s natural. Live with it. As kids, we are attracted to other kids who are different from us. It’s our way of finding out. We go for the very poor kid or the very rich kid because we have no experience of it and want to know what it is like. We go for the ruffian or the spoiled princess or the kid from a different ethnic background to ours or the ragged urchin who smells or the autistic kid or the one from the gypsy encampment or the smug middle-class one whose parents are accountants.
Whatever it is, as parents, we will be tempted to disapprove. It’s human nature, but we mustn’t. We must be supportive, encouraging, welcoming, and open. Why? Because if our child is hanging out with other kids that test our tolerance, it’s a good thing. It shows we are bringing them up not to be prejudiced or judgmental. And if they aren’t acting this way, we shouldn't either.
The funny thing is that Mickey Brown’s parents couldn’t stand me either. He wasn’t allowed to play with guns, and I was always smuggling them into his house when his parents
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weren’t looking. I didn’t like guns particularly—and we are talking cap guns here—but I did love getting him into trouble...
One of my own children had a birthday party and insisted on inviting a kid in his class who had serious adjustment problems (what we used to call a “naughty child” but you can’t do that any more—see Rule 73).
When his parents came to collect him, they were quite tearful, as it was the first birthday party this poor kid had ever been invited to. What’s that? His behavior? Oh, he was a little angel and didn’t put a foot wrong. In your dreams. He behaved true to type, and I was heard muttering, “Never again; he never comes here again,” for many weeks afterward. No, seriously he played up a bit and wrecked the place, but no more than any of the others did. One of the others, a supposedly good kid, was caught filling one of my Wellington boots with cheese sandwiches and jelly—secondhand if you get my drift.
IF OUR CHILD IS HANGING
OUT WITH OTHER KIDS
THAT TEST OUR
TOLERANCE
IT’S A GOOD THING.
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Your Role as a Child
So, you’re a grown-up now and probably don’t recognize yourself as a child. But you are still a child, although you’ll get strange looks if you park in a “parents with children” space if you happen to go shopping with your mother or father.
Until both of your parents are passed on and you have been promoted, so to speak, you remain a child. And you have a responsibility. You have a duty—now you are a Rules Player— to be courteous, thoughtful, patient, and cooperative toward your parents.
Yes, yes, I know they drive you mad, but from now on you have a role and it is simply this:
To behave impeccably with them
To look after them if that’s what they want/need
To back off if that’s what they want/need
To listen to them when they chatter on, without losing your patience or sighing
To appreciate that they have had a long and hard life and gathered a lot of experience—some of which may be of some use to you—
and you won’t know if you carry on shaking your head and ignoring everything they say
To visit, write, phone, communicate more often than you think you should—but probably not as much as they think you should
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To be pleased when they come to stay and happily let them watch whatever TV program they want without complaining And why will you do all this? Because they gave you life, brought you up. Yes, yes, I know they made mistakes along the way but you forgive them all of them (see Rule 70) and you turned out fine. Oh yes you did.
Parents deserve decent treatment when they get old and need attention and someone to listen to them and take them seriously—and they make great baby/dog sitters (and usually free as well).
YOU HAVE A DUTY
TO BE COURTEOUS,
THOUGHTFUL, AND
COOPERATIVE TOWARD
YOUR PARENTS.
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Your Role as a Parent
Gosh, this is a tough one. You have a role and it is important, but how do we define it, make it real for you, so that you can live by it, put it into practice?
If you are crazy enough to take on the role of parent, then you are signing an invisible contract with your children to give and get them the very best of everything you can. And I don’t necessarily mean material possessions. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be all that the very best parenting requires. You will be encouraging, supportive, kind, patient, educational, loyal, honest, caring, and loving.
You will have to make sure they eat the best food for developing children. You will supply them with the best education for their talents and skills. You will aim to develop their interests in all areas and not just the ones you are keen on. You will set clear boundaries so they know what’s what, and what they can and can’t do—and with clear and acceptable levels of discipline should they overstep the mark. You will adjust your degree of supervision to match their age—little ones need closer supervision than big ones. You will always provide a safe haven for them to come home to—no matter how much trouble they’ve got themselves into in the big bad world outside.
You will be firm, loving, sharing, caring, and responsible. You will set them standards and be a role model to them. You won’t do or say anything you wouldn’t be proud of them knowing. You will stand up for them, protect them, and keep them safe.
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You will stretch their imaginations and feed them with stimuli so they grow up creative, excited about the world, and raring to go.
You will approve of them, boost their self-esteem, improve their confidence, and send them out into the world literate, educated, polite, helpful, and productive members of society. And when the time comes for them to leave the nest, you will help them pack and keep giving that support while they find their feet (or should that be wings?).
Not much then, really.
YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE
TO ACCEPT IT, IS TO BE ALL
THAT THE VERY BEST
PARENTING REQUIRES.
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