Nelligan describes seizing opportunities to reinforce fundamental principles. Like me, he’s a big believer in timeliness—and that anything other than a respect for punctuality suggests to others that your time is more valuable than theirs. (My kids have heard me give this little homily many times. Maybe that’s why Nelligan’s take on this gave me a chuckle.) He tells of a time a family showed up disruptively late to a school event. Afterward, the family meandered over to him, with the father explaining, “We were late getting here because we’re always so damn busy.” Nelligan’s response, in front of his sons? “Yeah, I hear you. Good thing the Nelligans are never busy.”
There are sensible tips to building a kid’s self-assurance and sense of competence. When his boys were little, Nelligan would tell them: “You guys are small so if you get lost somewhere in a bunch of people, look for that guy with a stripe running down their pants. That’s a policeman or a solider and they’ll help you out.” When his five-year-old got lost at a mall, he stared at legs until he found a mall security officer.
The volume is hit-or-miss. Some anecdotes fall flat. But it’s an engaging, provocative contribution. As Nelligan puts it, he wrote this book “with an edge because after 20 years in Parent World, I know that parenting in this increasingly erratic and questionable culture demands hard and direct truths, not soft-pedalled equivocation.”
That’s a pretty fair summation of both the book and the need for an old-school approach to education.
Wishing all of you a merry Christmas, a happy Chanukah, and a terrific 2025.
