HOW TO ARGUE AND WIN EVERY TIME

If the boss respects us, he will pay us a fair wage, provide us ample security, and furnish us with safe and comfortable working conditions. He will listen to what we have to say, implement our ideas, and encourage our creativity. Respect. That is all we want—that the boss will not view us as disposable commodities, as a bag of rags to use to wipe

If you want her to hate you, force her to obey you. Force and hate are twins.

The argument with children is won many years before adolescence sets in. It is won with unconditional love, with respect, and with trust. It is won by having been the child's advocate, the child's friend from the beginning, without having expected anything in return. It is not a conditional love given with the expectation of future compliance or su

Parents must rear their children toward that one day when the child begins to seek his or her freedom, when the insect, whether an ugly moth or a beautiful butterfly, seeks to abandon the cocoon. During the years between infancy and adolescence, the winning argument will have already been made. The winning argument will have been love; the losing a

Work teaches children more about themselves than any activity I know, other than play. For myself, I was never forced to work. I was simply never given anything but a minimal allowance. I needed more money than my parents provided and found work an adventure.

Perhaps I learned that children know the difference between right and wrong, that they do not need to be punished for wrongs they did not intend to commit, and that the wrong itself contains its own punishment. My father was a very wise man. He understood children.

The more one seeks security the less secure one will be. And further: The more security one appears to acquire, the less security one actually possesses.

I believe that much of today's crime is also a function of space. We cannot pack a dozen young rats in a concrete shoebox without their attacking and killing each other. We cannot pack millions of our young into the concrete boxes of our cities without expecting them to lash out in pain and anger and violence.

The problem is, of course, that there are sides. The problem is that there is argument. The cure is for the parent to get on the side of the child, to argue for the child, and to end, forever, the war. Otherwise the parents' argument is but the further presentation of power, and the child's argument is not argument, but rebellion against power. Pow