Sick Mark

Dani The Mark, Jill The Shill, and The Baby have all been sick. With the gang out of commission I've been plotting my next move.

Next Post: The Fiddle Game.

What Chinese Mothers And Superior Western Fathers Have In Common

I'm sure that my readership of active, informed and concerned parents - and Asians - have read through Amy Chua's controversial article in the Wall Street Journal, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, and they may have seen the response article in the New York Times with a title that loosely translates to Everyone Hates Amy Chua.

Through all the controversy and hubbub I see Amy as a kindred spirit joined with me by our willingness to offer up for public inspection our commitment to borderline parenting tactics. Amy and I have a lot in common - she is a Harvard and Harvard Law grad, and was editor of the Law Review; I am a college graduate with a blog. Her eldest daughter played at Carnegie Hall; my eldest daughter knows by heart the theme to Mickey Mouse Club House.

If you asked Amy how her daughter got to Carnegie Hall, she would say that she took a cab down Broadway and turned left on 7th because Amy is not funny and she would have come from the Upper West Side.

As an olive branch from a Western Parent, I want to point out an area where she and I agree. Amy offers that "children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences."

I agree mostly with this statement, and with some simple modification, like changing the word "work" to "do stuff I want them to do" and change "override their preference" to "con them" I would agree completely.

Amy continues the thought: "This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up."

I don't agree with Amy here. I believe that Western parents often get pretty good results without ever having to call on fortitude or ever giving up. We are probably just happier to lie to our kids.

That's the thing with poor old Amy, she is earnest, forthright, righteous, and heavy-handed, always teaching the lesson and getting it done by hard work. She takes the same straightforward approach of hard work and practice to parenting as she demands from her kids piano lessons.

I think if she was willing to have a little more fun with the whole thing, and employ a little more creativity, then she might have had similar results with less misery.

Bait-And-Switch

Wikipedia: "A bait-and-switch is a form of fraud in which the party putting forth the fraud lures in customers by advertising a product or service at a low price or with many features, then reveals to potential customers that the advertised good is not available at the original price or the list of assumed features is different."

Dani, the mark, has been climbing out of her crib in the night and into her baby sister's crib. We are delighted that Dani is so affectionate with the baby, but the behavior is clearly a problem and we need her to cut it out. Neither one of the girls fall asleep if they are in the same crib, and Dani has a penchant for being an over-lover as she enthusiastically hugs and snuggles which may harm the baby.

We've been trying to curb the crib creeping for months, but to no avail, so a few nights ago we tried a con.

We got both the girls ready for bed in the nursery and put the baby in her crib first.

Then we took the mark over to the baby's crib and told her to give her a kiss and say goodnight, thus dangling the bait in front of the mark.

Then we put the mark down in her own crib. While I told the mark in no uncertain terms that she was not to climb into the baby's crib under any circumstances, Jill The Shill secretly replaced the baby with a red cherry ball covered with a baby blanket.

We put the baby down in our room and waited to hear Dani climb into her sister's empty crib. We waited and waited. Twice, thinking we heard movement, we sprung into the nursery only to find Dani gazing at us from her own crib and perfectly behaved.

The mark never took the bait, and around 1am we eventually put the baby back in her crib so that Jill and I could go to sleep.

In the morning we found Dani in the baby's crib reading her a book.

"The Brothers Bloom"

I saw "The Brothers Bloom" last night. It's a great movie about two brother con artists.

Those guys would probably be really good dads.

The Next Test

We have been working on this issue for weeks. Clearly, straight forward negotiations are not panning out.

The Pig In A Poke

Wikipedia: “Pig-in-a-poke originated in the late Middle Ages. The con entails a sale of a suckling pig in a ‘poke’ [which is a bag]. The bag ostensibly contains a live healthy little pig, but actually contains a cat. If one buys the bag without looking inside it, the person has bought something of less value than was assumed”

Tonight I tried my first con and it worked surprisingly well. Dani The Mark refused to eat a delicious medley of pasta and broccoli prepared by Jill The Shill.




Through careful listening, I learned that the mark did not want the pasta that was prepared for her but, what she did want was another undefined and unavailable option that she called “different pasta.”

The way I saw it, I had three choices:
1) Force the mark to eat the pasta that was prepared for her
2) Figure out what “different pasta” was and see if I could somehow get it for her
3) Try a con

Remembering the pig in a poke con, I found a Dutch oven to work as the poke; it was covered and opaque so the mark couldn’t see what was inside. Then I transferred the rejected pasta into a new bowl to give plausibility to the claim that it was “different” and placed the bowl of pasta into the oven.

Then I tried the con job. I pitched the pasta that was hidden away in the oven as the best possible “different pasta” that could be found in all the land.

The mark bought the con.

When I uncovered the oven and handed over the different pasta, Dani The Mark had some reservations, but was easily convinced that this was somehow a sufficiently different pasta to meet her demands.

Next time, I might employ Jill The Shill to claim that she had seen the metaphorical pig in the poke prior to the sale and verify its superiority.

Also, I might try to get more value from my con by getting the mark to do something, like eat broccoli, before I ever open the poke.

Establishing A Currency

Formally, most cons revolve around money; the artist hopes to get money from the mark and the mark is hooked into the con by the promise of a large pay out by the artist.

That financial model, clearly, is not at play as I endeavor to con my two-year-old daughter. In spite of the bonds and saving accounts set up for her by doting grandparents, I don’t particularly want her money. What I want is her obedience, and for her to adopt certain behaviors – like eating vegetables, or keeping her clothes on.

Further, for the time being my daughter does not want my money. More than anything, she wants juice, she wants to wear her tu-tu, and she wants cake.

The good news is that I can easily appeal to her self-interest with promises of juice and cake. The bad news is that the business of the con is complicated by the need to draw a behavioral line between something like eating vegetables and the promise of lemon tort.

Many cons rely on the free flow of money in order for the artist to slip away with his payout. It will be wise of me to modify the structure of some of these cons to make them work as a parenting tool.