Well. This is happening.

I managed to forget to bring my laptop charger with me, so we're stuck with the phone for tonight (and likely the weekend as a whole). Hurrah.

I had been hoping to regale (ha, see what I did there? Total title pun right there. I'm here all weekend. Please tip your servers.)  you with exciting tales of driving insanity, but a.) the drive to my parents' house is incredibly boring, and b.) despite the increased volume due to it being the day before Thanksgiving, there weren't many noticeably bad drivers out there. What's this world coming to when decent people can't even gossip about fellow drivers doing incredibly stupid shit? I thought this was America. Clearly it is not actually America. I appear to have been misinformed in this regard and instance.

Of course, not having a laptop also somewhat shoots my backup plan (i.e., moving on to the poster and trailer synopsis of Leprechaun 3, which is apparently Warwick Davis' favorite Leprechaun movie. The fact that Leprechaun 3 has reportedly received a rating of zero percent fresh from Rotten Tomatoes further cements that Warwick Davis is a terrible person and is contention with me for the title of History's Greatest Monster) right in the kneecap. Not even around it, either. The bullet hit a few tendons, but it's also lodged just right there in the patella. It is pretty well disabled right now.

However,  let's see what some copying and pasting from other articles can do for us tonight. Around now is where I'd try to include a funny picture or gif (probably of the Office Space guys beating the circuits out of the terrible office printer, and probably with an attempted zinger for the caption (like, "anticipated audience reaction), because I'm wacky like that), but, again, laptop isn't going to make it this weekend, so we're relying on my capacity to type on a small keyboard and lack of understanding of copying, lasting, or even highlighting while using a smart phone. I can't even count my words. Truly this is the worst.

Anyway, while I was living and loving and losing in France, I noticed a list which I am certain (good Lord did my phone want to capitalize "certainty") was viewed as some sort of parenting gospel by Bev. It was also among the worst things I have ever read. It was a refrigerator magnet (or a list turned into a refrigerator magnet) detailing tips for dealing with teenage boys as a mother. These were tips like, "Don't talk to him about the future. Talk to him about love. That's what interests him." My mom is a lovely person, and she is an intelligent and reasonable person. I bring this up because Bev was seldom any of these traits. That said, if my mom had tried to use that strategy on me, I would probably need a crutch to walk around because I would have gnawed off my leg to get out of there. I had an awkward enough time freshman year of college when both of my parents decided to reiterate that I should always use condoms in separate conversations in uniquely terrible ways at a time during which I was not sexually (seriously, phone? You don't recognize the world "sexually" and suggest "sexy ally?" You are being just terrible tonight.) active. Hell, I had a conversation with my dad that consisted of, "You don't have a girlfriend. You're sixteen. I think you'll just be much happier if you have a girlfriend." Maybe? I also have other things going on, and how did we get on this topic again? I'm asking so I can be sure to avoid whatever triggered this conversation in the future. If Bev had come at me talking about love (romantic love, that is, as opposed to love for the planet or our fellow men, which she certainly did try to talk about with me, during which time she disparaged vaccines and maintained that modern medicine is a mafia), especially when I was a teenager, I would have walked right on out the door and kept going straight until morning.

I say all of this because I think I have finally come across a list with even worse advice. This is brought to you by a Facebook status that read: "for all my parent-friends: this is a good read if you want to be an effective mentor in their lives" (no, he didn't put a period at the end, nor did he deign to capitalize anything). This is from "25 alternatives to 'What'd you learn at school today?'" I would provide a link, but it says I have to select text, at which point it no longer gives me the option to insert a hyperlink. Oh, Blogger app. How inadequate you are. Anyway, here's the list.

1. When did you notice yourself most interested and curious today?
2. Was there a time today when you were especially confused? How did you respond?
3. What is one thing that was hard to believe? Not confusing, but surprising?
4. If you were more ____ today, how would it have impacted the day?
5. When were you most creative today?
6. Tell me one fun thing you learned, one useful thing you learned, and one extraordinary thing you learned.
7. What does a successful day at school look like to you? Feel like?
8. What sort of different reasons do your friends go to school?
9. Who worked harder today, the teacher or the students?
10. How else could you have learned what the teacher taught?
11. How do your teachers show they care?
12. What do you know, and how do you know it?
13. What would you like to know more about?
14. What is the most important thing you learned today? The least?
15. Tell me one chance you took today, and how it ended up.
16. What is one thing you learned from a book?
17. What is one thing you learned from a friend?
18. What is one thing you learned from a teacher?
19. What still confuses you?
20. What is something you say or heard that stuck with you for some reason?
21. Based on what you learned today in ______ class, what do you think you’ll learn tomorrow?
22. Tell me three facts, two opinions, and one idea you heard today.
23. What should you do with what you’ve learned?
24. When did you surprise yourself today?
25. What’s stopping you from being an (even more) amazing learner?

I can respect what this list is trying to do. When my parents would ask me what I learned at school, I would tend to grunt and smack in their direction and be a generally sullen teenager. The article wants to enable parents to be positive mentors in their kids' lives. That, I can get behind. I can even respect the use of specific but open-ended questions, but pretty much every one of those questions sounds like it belongs in a doctor's office more than on a car ride home. And, yeah, I get it, I'm not a parent and I don't really work with kids, so I'm not an authority on any of these subjects. That said, I do remember really not wanting to answer the "What did you learn today?" question, mostly because answering it would take a lot of effort to go through what was learned throughout the day and whether or not I actually wanted to share it at the risk that it might continue on to a more extensive and in depth discussion when all I wanted was to finish dinner and get back to instant messenger and playing video games. All of the questions from that list seem to have the same problem. They're trying to make you think, which is great and all, but kids (should) do plenty of that at school, and they probably just want a break when they get home.

Frankly, all of these questions are too open-ended. They're right in the principle that kids and teenagers like to talk. Teenagers love to talk (even about school), but the authors are wrong to assume that teens want to talk to their parents. The authors are trying to be clever and design questions that can give the most possible information with minimal queries. That is WAY too clinical (to the point that I would strongly suspect that it's psychiatrists and psychologists writing this, which in hindsight would probably be a pretty reasonable assumption anyway), and it'll make kids clam up for the same reason they go silent after being asked what they learned. I would rather see questions that are more discrete and based on something that's happening. Questions like, "What class is that for?" leading to "What are you studying?" to "How's that going?" Yes, it's more work to ask more questions and stay engaged rather than just remembering tricks from a list. Yes, it's possible that the kid will clam up anyway. That is a thing that happens. Deal with it. Some kids want their privacy, some kids will want to share everything,  and almost all kids will switch between those two attitudes, and that's their prerogative. They are becoming actual people (even if they're not real people until at least 22 or 23, because everyone needs at least one good ego-breaker before they're ready to face the world), so they have some degree of autonomy (even if it's not legal yet and should not be legal yet, because teenagers make terrible, terrible decisions).

If you want to be a good mentor, you need to lead by example. Yes, you need to stay involved, but there's only so much involvement a kid can take. More importantly, you need to challenge them to do even better. I actually got really hopeful when I read one of the questions that was phrased with an "even better." It gives encouragement both for what has been done and what can be done, and I think that's the core of good mentoring. The question they gave wasn't awful- it's important to find what's holding you back, but I think it's more effective as an implicit exercise than as an explicit question. Instead, trying to show kids what the next step up is (for example, arithmetic to basic algebra to higher concepts) and showing them that there's always more to learn, and it's all pretty cool.

Well, maybe calling it cool is the wrong call if you're a parent.