Recently I read an article about children’s picture books. The gist of it was that many books for the very young reflect a current style of parenting, which I define as trying to reason with very young children.

This works to a point. When my kids were little and greedy by nature (everything on a store’s shelf glitters and beckons), I had to invent some strategies. One of them was, “Well, we don’t have money for that today, so why don’t you buy it with the money that Uncle Neal will give you on your birthday?” Generous Uncle Neal never failed to write checks on birthdays and Christmas.

This stalled the begging. While I hurriedly selected something exciting like a dishrag, the kids earnestly discussed the possibilities. They seemed to enjoy it.

On a recent food-coop excursion, I overheard a father who was “reasoning” with his very young daughter. The conversation went something like this:

“Genevieve, you know that just because you want something very badly at this moment and can’t have it, the world is not ‘unfair’ to you, as you’re telling me.”

That’s interesting, I thought. Had the father been reading picture books that modeled “reasoning”?

The child didn’t pause. “You,” she said in a very loud voice, “have BRAIN DAMAGE!”

“Did you hear what I said?” her father asked. “The world is not ‘unfair,” as you just told me.”

She didn’t allow him to continue. Apparently she didn’t understand that the interplay between parent and child should be reasonable. “BRAIN DAMAGE!” she screamed.

I put my head in the freezer with the organic chicken thighs so that no one would see me laughing.

If that little girl could read, I think that she would be laughing about books that extol reason as the primary means of dealing with children.

Parents’ strategies have to be diversified because kids are like viruses. If they grasp your plan of attack, they mutate and may yell, possibly in public places, “Brain damage!” That’s not reasonable.