When I misbehaved as a small child, my mother’s solution was to ask me to “sit on the stairs and think about it.” I would toddle off to the stairs, sit for a while and contemplate my wrongs, and then return to explain what I did wrong and that I would not do it again. My mother congratulated herself on being an amazing parent who was deeply in touch with her child and didn’t need to resort to the kind of “Go to your room!” discipline that others practiced. Then my brother, Stephen, arrived. He did not want to sit on the stairs and think about it when he misbehaved. In fact, he loudly refused.
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