I'll tell you: Teenagers is a whole different game than toddlers. Just when you think you've got junior trained to not throw spaghetti on the wall, they turn 11 or 12 or 13 and, whoosh!, the pasta's in play once again. My wife and I have drawn up elaborate, somewhat silly rules for one of our teens -- because it was just too hard for her to take responsibility for herself. I think teens need arbitrary and silly rules, because otherwise they'll cross over the sensible ones.

Nat, if I had a lot more time, I'd be rewriting this and the previous post as a book proposal. Though I would only do it if I could ask Larry Wall for a preface....

yudel @ use.perl.org