The Ol’ Stare of Truth: Another Positively Passive Patterson Parenting Principle
Today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse presents the idea that a young child can be intimidated into telling the truth by staring at them. I would like to say that my children were susceptible to such things, but sadly, that is not the case.
My son, when caught in wrongdoing, will simply deny it or will make up a story describing how he didn’t do it. It doesn’t matter if you catch him red-handed, he will still deny it. Moreover, the stories he will tell to cover his tracks are so outlandish, it’s hard to believe he would ever expect anyone to fall for them.
His little sister, on the other hand, is a notorious truth-teller. She does not go from lie to truth. She goes from truth to more truth. When it comes to wrongdoing, she is much more likely to conceal the evidence, to prevent being asked about it. When the evidence is discovered, she immediately admits to the wrongdoing. On the other hand, if you accuse her of doing something she did not do, she gets very upset, many times to the point of tears.
As for the Ol’ Stare of Truth, it flat out does not work with a kid with Asperger’s Syndrome like my son. The in-the-face, grabbing-the-shoulders method Elly is using would make my son very uncomfortable. He would find it difficult to concentrate on what you were asking him to confess. He would be much more interested in getting you out of his face and to get you to stop touching him. Most likely he would completely shut down and stop talking. The Ol’ Stare of Truth works with Michael Patterson, but if I wanted to wipe that smug look off Elly’s face, I would have her try that trick with my son.
The strangest part of today’s reprint is the final panel. I am not sure what Elly is holding in her right hand, or what it has to do with the Ol’ Stare of Truth. Also, I am not particularly fond of seeing Elly lead Mike by yanking up the back of his shirt collar, which would choke most kids I know. However, the most disconcerting thing of the strip is to see Elly’s butt, looking so petite and delicate. Clearly this strip was done before the time when Lynn Johnston decided that big bottoms on women were funny, like Friday’s and Saturday’s strip.
My son, when caught in wrongdoing, will simply deny it or will make up a story describing how he didn’t do it. It doesn’t matter if you catch him red-handed, he will still deny it. Moreover, the stories he will tell to cover his tracks are so outlandish, it’s hard to believe he would ever expect anyone to fall for them.
His little sister, on the other hand, is a notorious truth-teller. She does not go from lie to truth. She goes from truth to more truth. When it comes to wrongdoing, she is much more likely to conceal the evidence, to prevent being asked about it. When the evidence is discovered, she immediately admits to the wrongdoing. On the other hand, if you accuse her of doing something she did not do, she gets very upset, many times to the point of tears.
As for the Ol’ Stare of Truth, it flat out does not work with a kid with Asperger’s Syndrome like my son. The in-the-face, grabbing-the-shoulders method Elly is using would make my son very uncomfortable. He would find it difficult to concentrate on what you were asking him to confess. He would be much more interested in getting you out of his face and to get you to stop touching him. Most likely he would completely shut down and stop talking. The Ol’ Stare of Truth works with Michael Patterson, but if I wanted to wipe that smug look off Elly’s face, I would have her try that trick with my son.
The strangest part of today’s reprint is the final panel. I am not sure what Elly is holding in her right hand, or what it has to do with the Ol’ Stare of Truth. Also, I am not particularly fond of seeing Elly lead Mike by yanking up the back of his shirt collar, which would choke most kids I know. However, the most disconcerting thing of the strip is to see Elly’s butt, looking so petite and delicate. Clearly this strip was done before the time when Lynn Johnston decided that big bottoms on women were funny, like Friday’s and Saturday’s strip.
posted by howard at 10:00 PM
11 Comments:
The most disconcerting part for me is, of course, Elly's automatic assumption that whatever Mike would have told her was a lie; since he "can't" be trusted to tell the truth, she "has" to glare at him like a freak to remind him that he must respect her authoritah!! The one thing that never changes in the strip is Lynn's default assumption that parents are at war with their children.
I don't have Asperger's, but I can imagine what my reaction would be if some adult grabbed my shoulders and glared at me like that when I was a little kid. I'd flip out. I'd be crying anyway because the adult didn't believe me (I was like your daughter, I'd try to conceal messing up but always confess if caught, and I had a tendency to think I'd done something wrong when I hadn't.) But invading a kid's personal space like that, and with that Glare of Doom -- no one ever did that to me, but I'm pretty sure I would have found it severely traumatizing. That kind of controlling, invasive behavior, especially coupled with Elly's glare of absolute hatred and ire, looks quite abusive to me.
Clearly this strip was done before the time when Lynn Johnston decided that big bottoms on women were funny, like Friday’s and Saturday’s strip.
It's only the 19th strip in the first collection. As there are no Sunday strips amongst those 19, this strip would have appeared roughly three weeks into the strip's run.
It's awful in every way--content, art, spirit, [lack of] humor. It's too bad LJ isn't looking back on her old strips with a more critical eye. It's not necessary to reprint every one, especially since she's filling spaces with new-runs still.
There is one strip, at least, that I guess she'll have to omit altogether. Michael complains about having to walk to kindergarten, because it's freezing and school is "three whole blocks away." Elly retorts that when she was his age, she walked six blocks to school and they didn't even own a car. Then she thought-bubbles that she swore she'd never sound like her mother. Since she's established that Mike is taking the bus to grade one, I guess she'll have to scrap this. Editing it to him not wanting to wait for the bus in the cold on his way to grade one wouldn't have the same impact.
There's also one where Mike is coughing and Elly yells, "You're going to kindergarten--& stop that phoney sick routine!" Then time elapses and she gets a phone call from the school--they're sending him home because he's running a fever and is much too ill to be out. After the phone call, she looks sad and gobsmacked while thinking, "They never actually come out and CALL you negligent." On the face of it, I'd think she wouldn't repeat that one because of the "kindergarten" reference. But with a little bit of Wite-Out, she can change that to "You're going to grade one!" Never mind that Liz is clearly a baby--that hasn't stopped her before. After all, she pretends that no one aged in the first three years of the strip.
April_Patterson,
There's also one where Mike is coughing and Elly yells, "You're going to kindergarten--& stop that phoney sick routine!" Then time elapses and she gets a phone call from the school--they're sending him home because he's running a fever and is much too ill to be out. After the phone call, she looks sad and gobsmacked while thinking, "They never actually come out and CALL you negligent."
We can probably expect an edited version of that one this week; after all, the people who don't notice the revised dialogue aren't going to pay any heed to the warped Aesop: "Elly is being cruelly victimized because an outside authority overrides one of her horribly bad decisions."
Then time elapses and she gets a phone call from the school--they're sending him home because he's running a fever and is much too ill to be out.
Elly is just evil. Her kid was 5! She didn't even bother to take his temperature! Anyone who could identify with that, Lynn included, scares me.
Elly is just evil. Her kid was 5! She didn't even bother to take his temperature! Anyone who could identify with that, Lynn included, scares me.
I know! It's horrifying that her mind immediately leaps to "phoney [sic] sick routine" instead of checking to see whether he's actually ill. She clearly thinks her kid is a devious little saboteur who must be thwarted at every turn.
Clio, April_Patterson,
I love how Elly thought-bubbles that they never actually came out and called her negligent. That's because it reminds me of a nifty Latin phrase that fits this situation like a glove: res ipsa loquitor--the thing speaks for itself. They don't HAVE to call her a careless, heartless boob because the fact that she sent a sick child to school because she thought he was faking speaks louder than she can hope to yell.
res ipsa loquitor--the thing speaks for itself
Heh-good point. It so does.
There's also one where Mike is coughing and Elly yells, "You're going to kindergarten--& stop that phoney sick routine!"
One of the things I can count on with my kids is that they do not mess around when it comes to describing their own illness. They have never faked illness. As a parent, there have been moments when I hoped my child might be exaggerating how bad they feel; but experience has taught me otherwise. My kids would rather be up and around doing things.
IMO the strangest part of this strip is the sense of triumph Elly seems to get from "staring the truth" out of her kid. IT's like DC commented - she's at war, and the parent-kid metric is zero sum; for the parent to win, the kid has to lose. And the triumph for the parent is not the Truth, or the happiness of the family or the welfare of the parent or the kid, but the Win Over The Kid.
As far as "how fucked up can parenting get", this is pretty much the far end of the scale.
FDChief
And the triumph for the parent is not the Truth, or the happiness of the family or the welfare of the parent or the kid, but the Win Over The Kid.
That seems to be the main aspect of Elly taking pride in her parenting skills. There are many strips where Elly seems to be happy in having tricked or outplayed her kids to get them to do what she wants. She can't just ask her son what happened.
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