Walkaway

by Cory Doctorow

Making other people feel like assholes was a terrible way to get them to stop acting like assholes.

the plural of anecdote is not fact.

But as an actual old lady with gray hair and wrinkles, she understood the silences. She didn’t have to talk to Seth about most things, because she had him modeled so well in her mind, she knew what he would say to practically anything she might say to him—and vice versa. They could sit together, not speaking. The silence wasn’t distance, it was closeness. She’d catch him looking and grinning sometimes. She’d grin back.

“Parenting,” Iceweasel pronounced, “is the art of getting out of the way of your kids’ development.”