T HE other day my eleven-year- old daughter was drawing illus- trations for a summer book report assigned by her English teacher. We happened to be at a local pool, and while she shielded her pictures from the splashes of her siblings, I was chatting with a clutch of other mothers about—what else?—our “parenting tech- niques.” “Excuse me,” my daughter interrupted, holding out a drawing with a dubious look on her face. “What do you think of this one? Does this work?” I glanced at it. “No,” I said, “not good,” and I balled it up. My daughter nodded; she had thought so, too, and she calmly pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. But from the reaction of my fellow mothers, you would have thought I’d punched the child in the nose. “That’s it?” one woman murmured incredulously. “Just . . . no? Not good? Don’t you think you should be a little more supportive?” In a flash, I realized that I had just trans- gressed the most sacred dictates of what
N AT I O N A L R E V I E W/S E P T E M B E R 26, 2005
Comments