By a staggering coincidence, just now on the Daily Mash:

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.

“we are trying to teach her to do the right thing because it makes everybody happy”

So you want to condemn her to a life of meekness, promiscuity and abusive boyfriends ??

Holy cow you live in a very strange world.

I said do the right thing, NOT do what everyone else wants.. Jesus. Since when is being a doormat and a slapper ‘the right thing’ ?

Molgrips – I think she was referring to the “makes everyone happy” bit rather than the “right thing”. Unfortunately the two aren’t always one and the same.

Of course, that’s aside from the intrinsic difficulty of “making everybody happy” and the moral and ethical quandries raised by doing “the right thing”. Those maybe lessons for another day though!

I suggest crushing up contraceptive pills and putting them in her food by the way, if her mother doesn’t have that one under control already

Cheers for the heads-up there Hels. I shall be onto that as soon as my girls get anywhere near puberty 😆

Molgrips – I think she was referring to the “makes everyone happy”

She assumed I meant making other people happy one at a time, at the expense of your own happiness. Which is a rather odd conclusion to jump to – everyone includes yourself. Makes me wonder about some people’s backgrounds.

But yes – ‘the right thing’ could be defined as that which makes the most people the happiest, but I understand on an academic level that’s a fairly complex problem.

However when you’re three, it’s not. As she gets older I hope to have these discussions and more.

And don’t forget the Condom Fairy, who secretly places a handful under Ms Atrisk’s pillow.

(I suggest crushing up contraceptive pills and putting them in her food by the way, if her mother doesn’t have that one under control already.)

I’m pretty sure this is illegal and would see you land a custodial sentence if found out.

All she need’s is to have a piss test for whatever reason and the indicators that she is on the pill could be thrown up. Doctor – “Are you on the pill – our results have some odd readings – why isn’t this in your records?”

Idiots.

She could also already be on the pill unknown to you…. What effect would doubling the dose have?

I think the problem is that the reasons for kids going off the rails and the solutions vary massively from child to child. Many of my friends growing up hit their teenage years, and embarked on campaign of drink, drugs, terrible, terrible makeup, conning their way into nightclubs and acquiring boyfriends that were double their age. There were nine pregnancies amongst my peers from the age of 13-15 – with three abortions and the rest going to term.

One got pregnant (somewhat unusually) to a lad her own age – he told her that they didn’t need to use contraception because he was sterile (he lied). He then told her he would dump her if she didn’t have an abortion, then dumped her anyway the day after the procedure – so yeah, teenage lads can be a nightmare too. 😉 One girl got deliberately pregnant at 15 to stop her 26 year old boyfriend from leaving her. It didn’t work, and she still lives with her mother 17 years and four more kids later…

With the lads, the main issue was getting involved in hard drugs and violent/racist gangs.

There was no common ground, other than age – some were from single parent families, some from stable homes. Some had very laid back parents who just let them get on with it, others had parents that tried to reign them in. Some were from the top ability classes, others from the bottom. Some were from ‘rough’ estates, others from posh ones. Some had horrible stuff going on in their lives (mother dying of cancer, or being sexually abused), some had charmed, worry-free lives. Fortunately, most grew up into decent people and sorted their lives out by the time they hit 20…

She could also already be on the pill unknown to you…. What effect would doubling the dose have?

Nausea and vomiting, mostly, with a side order of excessive bleeding. It’d be a bit like taking the morning after pill day after day.