At times, with the special needs counselor, my spouse and I just want to rend garments and gnash our teeth. Yes, we *know* there are steps to take to limit a child's physical aggression. But we don't always need to hear the steps. Sometimes, it's useful just to shout to the heavens. "If you tell a child to stop, that's provocative. The end result is that the child will continue to do the obnoxious thing, and will just *amplify* the intensity of the obnoxious thing." No shit. But here's a question. Sometimes, physical proximity is not a reasonable choice. Let's say you're at a hotel, and your children have raced away--so that there are several football fields between the kids and the adults. You see your kids, but they are just little stick figures against a sea of beige carpeting. One child puts an arm in the air--violence is on the agenda. If you were Mary Poppins, you might hurl yourself down the length of the hallway; you might intercede. You ...
In a way, "Dear Mr. Henshaw" is a companion novel to the Ramona Quimby series. Leigh Botts doesn't meet Ramona, but Leigh's issues remind me of Ramona's issues. When Ramona's father loses his job, he struggles with depression and begins smoking. When Leigh's father has his own existential crisis, there is a related string of bad decisions. Beverly Cleary doesn't mince words. Adults make errors all the time. Children have to cope with the messy behavior of loved ones. Bill Botts is so lost--so inadequate--that Leigh Botts needs to invent his own surrogate parents. He is like the bear in a Henshaw novel--when the bear's mother dies, the bear begins eating only sugar, so much sugar that he cannot hibernate properly. It's a friendly ranger who intervenes and teaches the orphaned bear to feed himself properly. One of Leigh's surrogate dads is Mr. Fridley, the observant janitor, who drums up tasks for Leigh and sings the praises of a well-develo...