Parent Group Urges Politeness

Discipline is an issue, and so politeness is the talk of the house these days. Of the three key phrases—“please”, “thank you”, and “I’m sorry”—we are in particular focused on two: “Please”, for Mommy, who faces a constant barrage of demands; and “I’m sorry”, for Daddy, who is the target of most of the physical abuse here. I sat her down on Sunday morning to explain how important it is to be polite and considerate, and how her parents also try to use these words in their lives with the people they care about. Still, after breakfast this morning, she tossed her used bib at Laurea in the kitchen, and we had to start the whole thing over. We used to threaten to call Ms. Ines—the most sophisticated disciplinarian in her classroom—and discuss incidents like these with her, but that promise has lost its sheen. So now, we do our best simply to demonstrate civility in an effort to build civility in Kina. For what it’s worth, in the minutes leading up to this morning’s print run, our publisher did in fact make a promise that she would not hold our supplies hostage, which seemed like progress—until she followed it up by demanding an episode of Octonauts. A ray of light, though: she did say “please”.

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