My Nephew Smashed My Brand-New Car With a Baseball Bat at My Sister’s Urging – So I Taught Her a Lesson She’d Never Forget

My sister, Kelsey, calls this “gentle parenting.” I call it something else entirely, but I’ll keep it polite.

Whenever anyone in the family tried to redirect Jeremy, Kelsey had the same response, delivered in the same breezy tone: “You’re interfering with his development.”

She said it when Jeremy dumped pasta on our cousin’s lap at Thanksgiving because he wanted to sit at the adult table. She said it again after he knocked over a display at the hardware store and just kept walking away.

Eventually, the rest of the family stopped correcting Jeremy at all because Kelsey’s response always landed harder than whatever her son had done.

My sister, Kelsey, calls this “gentle parenting.”

“Kelsey,” I told her once, “your son is going to really hurt someone one day.”

She just laughed. “You sound like Mom,” she said, as if that was something to be embarrassed about.

The clearest example of what I’m talking about happened at our grandmother’s 80th birthday party last spring.

My mom had ordered a beautiful three-layer vanilla cake from the local bakery. It took her two weeks to decide on the design. White fondant, yellow roses, and Grandma’s name in gold lettering across the middle tier.

Jeremy wanted chocolate.