Dear Moralist:
We recently threw a surprise party for our eleven-year-old daughter, who entered the apartment and sullenly stated: "You can all come out from hiding. I've known about this party for ages." Needless to say, we were mortified and I felt especially bad for my husband, who travels frequently to the Pacific Rim and has missed our daughter's last six birthdays. Your advice?
Glenda
Dear Glenda:
Sounds like he'll be giving the next six a miss too, based on a certain somebody's behavior. Seriously, though, it's not as though your daughter's 37. Emotions are brittle and volatile in a pre-adolescent and it's distressing to have one's bubble burst by an unthinking acquaintance. I suggest taking your daughter into your bedroom, pulling out the box of crudely-carved wooden maple leaves, foam-core snowmen, and poorly-cut Valentine's hearts she's given you over the years and explaining that much as you oohed and aahed when receiving these gifts, they're stored under your bed for a reason and that, often, we pretend to be delighted, touched, or surprised on special occasions so that we don't bruise the feelings of others.
Dear Moralist:
My son's closest friend seems extremely slow-witted. When asked if he wants soda, "Bobby"'s response time is a good ten seconds. Is it harmful for my son to spend entire days with a child like this?
Phoebe
Dear Phoebe:
Why are you offering other people's children soda?
Dear Moralist.
We worry that our daughter may not have our aptitude. She tests in the middle of her class while my husband and I collaborate in a creative field (network TV) and last year earned more than $825,000.
Cynthia
Dear Cynthia:
I wouldn't fret. Nothing in your admittedly brief letter points towards overly superior intelligence. And television is not a creative field, particularly network.
Dear Moralist:
I have a fourteen-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter. While her room is adorned with posters of pandas, elephants, and kitty cats, his features photos of depraved, half-clad women sucking lollypops or pacifiers or splayed across the hoods of late-model sports cars. Given that my children are approximately the same age, I find this pronounced difference in aesthetic preference disconcerting.
Gertrude
Dear Gertrude:
You describe a situation that is entirely normal; your daughter's interest in the animal kingdom is by no means aberrant. Rest assured, though today her tastes may appear to be dismayingly juvenile, she will mature.
Dear Moralist:
My son attends a well-regarded day school in the Philadelphia suburbs. This year the 14 fourth graders will journey to Greece during spring break. We have been asked to contribute toward the expenses of a girl whose family lacks the means to send her. Shouldn't this be covered by the school's scholarship fund? And if such monies aren't available, would it be the worst thing in the world for this youngster to remain home?
Tory
Dear Tory:
I hope your son has a very pleasant trip to Greece although the Athens airport is, along with that of Lagos, one of the least secure in the world and, according to the U.S. State Department Web site, a hotbed of smuggling, carjacking, and random gunfire.
Dear Moralist:
My wife likes to gape at others who discipline their children in public. She seems to get some sort of rise from watching an irate father dress down his son. When I tell her she's setting a bad example for our kids, she retorts, "I spend all day with them." What does she mean?
Roger
Dear Roger:
I believe she means that she spends great periods of time with your offspring while you, presumably, do not. Observing parent-child conflict is catnip to women such as your wife as it allows them to feel others suffer as they do. As long as she refrains from lambasting unknown children herself, I see no harm in mere observation.
[The following letter has been edited for length and clarity]
Dear Moralist:
Our son Luke is an amazingly precocious seven-year-old- Ever since he read "Origin of Species" at five, others have commented on his seemingly supernatural abilities. Just last week at the Museum of Natural History, he enthralled a group by explaining that the Copernican conception of the solar system is heliocentric (sun-centered) rather than geocentric (earth-centered). At his interview for the Johns Hopkins Center for Gifted...
Dear Whomever:
What, precisely, is your question?
Dear Moralist:
My ten-year-old daughter illegally downloads movies and watches them in forty-minute segments on her computer. She's currently viewing Quentin Tarentino's "Reservoir Dogs" and ignoring my advice that she watch the entire film in one go. Your input, please.
Stephen
Dear Stephen:
"Reservoir Dogs": great flick! And yes, I'm in complete agreement: a work which relies so heavily on jump cuts, flashbacks, scrambled time sequences, and interior monologues truly should be absorbed in one sitting to fully appreciate directorial craft.
Dear Moralist:
We currently reside in Zurich and our son is enrolled in a state-run elementary school where he is teased and bullied on a daily basis. Whatever happened to the notion of Swiss pleasantness?
Nancy
Dear Nancy:
I'm not sure to which pleasantness you refer. The Swiss are primarily known for refusing entrance to trains crammed with those fleeing the Holocaust, sheltering the ill-gotten gains of others, and chocolate. The Spanish are nice.
Dear Moralist:
As a stance against the rampant comercialization of American life, we have a family policy: no one is allowed to wear T-shirts which bear printed words. Recently, my son's uncle gave him a shirt stamped with the logo of a prominent New York investment bank. Given the prestige of this firm, do you think it would be acceptable just this once to waive our household rule?
Elizabeth
Dear Elizabeth:
Prominent New York investment bank? I didn't know there were any left. If you are referring to Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs, the names of which are still prone to provoke decidedly mixed feelings, I counsel caution until tempers have cooled. Remember, the Dow's still below 10,000.
