The Example

Last night I took my first 'ox bile.' It's cattle bile. 500 mg. As far as I know, it's not constipating. They say to take it once a day with food. The hope is to mitigate against possible gall stones brought on my constant ceftriaxone infusions.

I switched to Firefox yesterday and will go with it unless it ticks me off.

Jansenist is a great parent. He's got experience working with mentally disturbed kids. After he got back home, he sent me an email about his dealing with my son, which I print with permission here.

Paying attention to children is an excellent control
technique. When a kid knows that an adult is responsive,
helping them to get what they want and need, attentive to their concerns and observations, the child has no reason to be disruptive or annoying.

All disruptive behavior is essentially a variation on
screaming. And who screams, adult or child, when they feel listened to?

Of course, you have to be paying attention before the blowup occurs...

Had I used attention with yoour son when he was bouncing the ball against the wall, I might have avoided the whole heavy handed intervention that followed.

As soon as I saw him bouncing the ball against the walls in your house, I should have asked him if he wanted to roll the ball across the floor with me, or play with it outside.

Calling to your [sexy, stunning] wife, "Is he allowed to bounce the ball, blah blah blah..." wasn't respectful on my part. And neither was taking the ball away when he did it again. So he escalated. Tit for tat.

Same with grabbing his arm and pulling the fork from his hand the night before. He was behaving in a dangerous manner and needed to be stopped quickly, but not in such a disrespectful and rough way. I could have hugged him from behind with my left arm, held his right forearm steady with my right (which would have prevented him from hurting himself or anyone else with the fork) and said something good natured like, "Hey, bud, how about putting that down before you go running over to your sister?" At least then he would have had the chance to put it down himself, giving him a greater sense of control.

He responded to my action by leaving the room for a few
minutes, then coming back and grabbing the fork and running from the room. He repaid aggessiveness with defiance (the human race needs more of that!), but could have gotten hurt running with the fork.

I was still stressed from the pencil incident during the croquet game. Too stressed to do my best work.