The neighbors around my new home in Zurich were saying the area is coming alive again, thanks to more children moving in. I’m sitting on my terrace just now and thinking, coming alive! Like Hell, it’s getting noisy. Nothing new there, but what I’m thinking about is why?
I know babies have a limited way of expressing themselves, but what exactly is all the crying about? Seems they have it pretty good. They get carried everywhere, their eyes shaded from the sum, wrapped up against the cold, and are the center of attention whenever they’re in the room. They also get fed every couple hours - around the clock - and when anything leaks out, it gets washed, patted and powdered. I could live like that quite happily.
Same with toddlers. All they have to do is play, mumble a new word now and then, and try not to poop their pants, and the latter seems optional. So what’s with the temper tantrums? What are they so pissed off about? Wait until they hit puberty.
The Adolescents’ sole means of communication is the scream. Sometime they scream at each other, more often they scream to each other, even when they’re in the same place. But, I’ve also seen them walk quite some distance away from each other so they could turn around and scream back and forth. Sometimes they just scream all by themselves.
Screaming is also the primary training tool used by these children, who’s misguided parents got them a dog. The training technique works like this. If the dog is doing something unwanted, scream it’s name, lets say it’s Duffy, at the top of your little lungs, wait two seconds, and repeat. To add variety, vary accent on the syllables, stamp a foot in time to random screams, and put hands on hips.
Duffy for her part will continue to chew your shoe, since you seem to be busy screaming about something and it doesn’t seem to have any negative consequence to her, so it must be OK to keep chewing. Duffy, at least, has figured this out.
I’ll say nothing about teenagers, they need all the sympathy we can give them.

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