a bad babysitter just needs a mentor or two. Leave a stack of these stories around the house and ask the babysitter to read them aloud to the kids. The children will thank you for it.
THE TEN BEST BABYSITTERS IN THE BUSINESS
bad loser, being a
SEE: loser, being a bad
bargaining, endless
With some grown-ups, a ‘no’ is final. But with others there’s a small chink of doubt in the ‘no’, and if a child is quick about it (and they always are) they’ll stick the end of a chisel into this chink and start wiggling until the ‘no’ gives way. If this sounds familiar, pull out Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, one of the first books to bring the child into the story – and make them the responsible one. The experience will change them forever.
When the bus driver asks the reader to keep an eye on his bus while he goes away – and not, on any account, to let the pigeon drive it – no child, fluffed up with self-importance as they by now will be, can resist. The pigeon gets straight to the point. ‘Hey, can I drive the bus?’ he asks, innocent as you please. When the child says ‘no’, the wily pigeon deploys every tactic in The Children’s Handbook of Manipulation1 to get an affirmative answer, from compliance-through-distraction (‘Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s play “Drive the bus!”’) to bribery (‘I’ll be your best friend!’) and emotional blackmail (‘I have dreams, you know!’). Never was a simply drawn pigeon (round head, round eye, two stick legs) more expressive than when Willems lowers the shutter of the pigeon’s eyelid to fit a simmering, tight-lipped ‘Fine.’ Most children find this book so absolutely hilarious that any attempts at bargaining thereafter will quickly slide into a parody of the bargaining pigeon – and become a lovely, happy shambles.
SEE ALSO: adolescence
bath, not wanting to have a
Every parent should keep a clutch of nakedly pro-bathing propaganda under the bathroom sink for when their sticky infant, smeared with jam, glue, sand, glitter, orange juice and beetroot purée needs convincing that having a dunk in a bathtub is a good idea. A stalwart staple is I Don’t Want to Have a Bath! from the appealing and brightly illustrated Little Tiger series, in which the mischievous bundle of orange-and-black stripes cavorts with each of his animal friends in turn, getting muckier and muckier in the process. It’s quite plain to the little tiger that being dirty is synonymous with having fun – and who would want to put an end to that? And then, thankfully, he meets an animal who won’t play with him unless he’s clean . . . Soap dodgers take note! The Pigeon Needs a Bath!, featuring the argumentative pigeon of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! fame (see: bargaining, endless), is guaranteed to contain more objections to bathing than your recalcitrant toddler could ever come up with by themselves, and effectively makes them all redundant. And the enticing illustrations in Bathwater’s Hot make the idea of being wrapped in a warm, fluffy towel at the end impossible to resist.
| CURE FOR GROWN-UPS | The Witches ROALD DAHL, ILLUSTRATED BY QUENTIN BLAKE |
Clever-clogs kids of chapter-book age will, of course, counter your request that they take a bath with the argument that, in Norway witches can smell a clean child more easily than a dirty one – and that regular baths put you at greater risk of being ‘squelched’. (And, as you know, witches must squelch at least one child per week if they’re to avoid getting grumpy.) Rather than suffer the lecture, keep your copy of this terrifying but brilliant story under lock and key – and only bring it out once the boy narrator and his cigar-smoking grandmother have finished turning every witch in the world into a mouse.
SEE ALSO: body odour • hands, not wanting to wash your • swim, inability to • told, never doing what you’re
beards, horror of
Unless they have been raised in close proximity to one, small children frequently burst into tears at the sight of a beard. A razor is one way of dealing with it. Another is to bring out this surreal board book, beards, horror of which comes complete with fake beard with which, in turn, to scare the
