The Bravest Kid I've Ever Known and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls by Christopher Milne Page B

cuddles.
    I’m going to tell Dad to take it slowly, though. No point in rushing in — he might get a shirt-front.

Mandy Cripps stormed home from school, crashed open the front door and threw her bag against her bedroom wall. Then she pinched her little brother, marched into the kitchen and demanded, ‘What is there to eat?’
    ‘For a start, I will not have you speaking to me like that,’ replied her mum. ‘And secondly, the answer is nothing because dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes. I’ve got school council tonight.’
    ‘But I’m hungry now!’ said Mandy.
    ‘Well, you’ll just have to wait,’ said her mum. ‘Did you eat all your lunch?’
    ‘What lunch?’ said Mandy. ‘Had to pick up papers and didn’t get time.’
    ‘Not another detention?’ asked her mum.
    ‘The idiot teacher said I was talking in class,’ said Mandy.
    ‘Oh really?’ said her mum. ‘And which “idiot” was it this time?’
    ‘Mr Tyres,’ said Mandy.
    ‘And were you talking?’ asked her mum.
    ‘No,’ replied Mandy. ‘All I did was ask Sandra for a loan of her rubber.’
    ‘Well,’ said her mum, ‘unless the whole world has switched over to sign language, asking for a rubber is talking!’
    ‘No, it’s not!’ said Mandy.
    ‘It seems to me, young girl,’ continued her mum, ‘that everyone is an idiot except you! Your teachers, your brother, your father and me…’
    ‘You can say that again,’ said Mandy.
    ‘Right!’ shouted her mum. ‘That’s it! Go to your room and I don’t want to even see you again until the morning. Is that clear? No dinner. Nothing!’
    ‘Idiot,’ said Mandy again, as she stormed off and slammed the door behind her.
    ‘What’s going on?’ Mandy’s mum asked her dad later.
    ‘Got me beaten,’ said her dad. ‘We give her absolutely everything, yet she’s been a rude, grumpy little miss from the moment she was born. Perhaps we spoil her too much?’

    ‘I’m sure we do,’ said Mandy’s mum. ‘What was it first? The terrible twos? Then the shocking sixes, the evil eights and I can’t think of one to go with elevens, but how does bad-mannered, ill-tempered, stubborn and selfish sound?’
    ‘Spot on,’ said Dad. ‘And it’s time it stopped!’

    The trouble was, Mandy had heard this all before. And she knew that all she had to do was suck up to her parents for a couple of minutes and they would melt. Go to water.
    Just forty-seven minutes after being told to stay in her room for the rest of the night, Mandy Cripps strolled out of her room and said, ‘Hello, Daddy.’ Then she gave him a huge hug and, with the cheekiest of grins, added, ‘Something smells good.’
    Her parents looked at each other, shrugged and thought, What do you do?
    You see, Mandy’s parents were the sort of oldies — and there are an awful lot of them — who love their children so much, so desperately, that they can’t bear the thought of them being sad for one little minute. As if a little sadness might be the start of a long one, which might lead to a child feeling lost and abandoned and damaged and unloved and…
    Pathetic, isn’t it?
    So the parents give in to their kids at every turn. They know deep down that they’re suckers, that what is really needed is a bit of discipline, to say no every now and then, but they can’t help themselves.
    Sometimes it’s parents who need to grow up. Mandy had worked this all out, it seemed, about two hours after she was born. But getting away with everything, and being spoilt rotten, and thinking you’re right all the time and everyone else is wrong, is not a good thing.
    Unfortunately, kids sometimes need to work that out for themselves. Otherwise trouble can come along. And so it did for Mandy.

    Mandy had been arguing with her little brother at the beach one day, accusing him of stealing money from her bag. ‘You pinched it!’ she yelled. ‘I had two dollars and now it’s not there.’
    ‘I haven’t been near your stupid bag,’