30 days on writing: Entry #21: The inhumanity of children in the modern imagination

[ed_rex]

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

The perils of not taking a sneak-peek ahead: Yesterday's entry, and especially the extensive excerpt from The Valley of Shabathawan would have served as a pretty conclusive reply to both questions.

But in case you didn't read Question 20A then or don't want to now, I'll sum

Comments

[jade_noir]

I completely agree with your sentiments on children in our society. I have babysat for numerous and diverse families and have come in using the technique(god, it's true how radically different it is from most peoples' parenting that I am calling it a technique) of treating the children like people, like human beings. I did this by listening to what they want and making compromises and explaining to them every command that I made in the most rational way I could. Because of how I treated the kids, they liked me and returned my respect with respect. My ability to get them to do what I wanted varied from person to person. Some people are just more stubborn and require detainment or punishment (or something that I found most effective: distraction

Why is respect so hard to come by?

[ed_rex]

Speaking of respect, my apologies for the delay. My inbox has been getting a little crazy (yours is about #35 of 85 that I've so far managed to deal with this afternoon).

Your method of "dealing" with kids is more or less what mine is - and kids generally seem to both like and respect me.

As you said, they (like adults) are all different, but that's kind of the key, isn't it? Talking to them (and yes, observing them) so that you can find out what kind of people they are.

God knows, when I was a kid I grew irate indeed whenever I detected an adult condescending to me.