Long-time readers know that–at the tender age of nine–Lydia has the fashion sense and the social concerns of a teenager. What they may not know is that she also has the smart mouth of one. She can be a very unpleasant little person when she sets her mind to it, and lately it seems she’s set her mind to it with a vengeance.

We have implemented a complex plus/minus system for evaluating her behavior and made her allowance contingent upon her earning more pluses than minuses over the course of a month. For the most part this is going well and I can see a marked improvement in her behavior since we began over two months ago. She had gotten to such a point, however, that even a “marked improvement” leaves rather a lot to be desired.

Two of her more frequent allegations against me are, “you’re the worstest mother in the world” and “it’s no fun being your kid,” and frankly, I am sick unto death of hearing that bullshit. It’s exhausting and I want it to stop. To that end, I have decided to embark upon another, additional behavior-modification program. I’m going to look up and print out a number of articles about really bad parents, and every time she levels one of her accusations against me, I’m going to make her sit down and copy out one of them and read it back to me. Part of me thinks this is a bit over the top, but so far nothing else I’ve come up with has worked, and I’m really fucking tired of hearing how I’m the worst mother ever because I won’t buy her an ice cream cone. Maybe it’s stooping to her level (or below it, even), but I can’t help wanting to show her just how bad some mothers can be.