Childish Behavior

Working for nearly 35 years as an editor provided valuable experience in dealing with childish behavior. But how could I have known then that the sometimes Sisyphean effort required to push against professional writers’ whining, excuses, immaturity, recalcitrance, and incoherence would come back into play and serve me well a generation later teaching kindergarten?

I remember one writer, tripped up and caught first by a fact-checker and then by a copy editor, who nevertheless wanted his essay published, uncorrected, as he had written it. Figuratively stamping his foot and holding his breath, he insisted that the piece was fine just as it was and the statement one he wanted to make.

When reason and courtesy could not prevail against such intransigence I coldly laid out three options for the writer and his copy:

1. You rewrite it

2. I rewrite it
3. I kill it

He chose option No. 1.

Kindergartners, similarly self-absorbed, at times fail to see, and thus choose, options that are clearly in their best interests. The counterstrategy against their obduracy is not nearly so cold-blooded. Today, for example, I told one five-year-old boy to get down before he fell from the high teacher's stool he was perched on.

He reassured me of his prowess. "I'm talented at climbing," he blithely said by way of ignoring the directive. When I told him he was going to get me in trouble with the principal, he complied. Was that empathy for a co-conspirator, or a first sign of maturity?