buoren: "Our job is to civilize them, to teach them to say please and thank you, don’t spit and scratch and don’t pee anywhere you want." Children, see. I like the approach recommended in the article for dealing with kids. As completely unreliable as such introspection is, if I try to put myself in the mind of a small child being all "maaaaaaaammm I wanna cooookieeeeee" and being met with the literal word-for-word acknowledgement of exactly what I just said it does seem to have an excellent sort of judo-like defusing tantrum-stymieing effect.
