There is a kind of gentle teasing-with-love that we do in our family. But we don’t tease about subjects that we know are touchy or hurtful. And we don’t overdo it.

For instance, my husband can tease me about my lack of good balance (he calls me a Weeble), but he won’t tease me about my weight.

I can gently tease him about his occasional absent-mindedness, but I would never impugn his intelligence.

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I have a brother who’s several years older than me, but last time I visited him, when he was about 40, it struck me how juvenile his humor still was. One night at dinner he and his wife and kids, me, and one or two of our brothers were present. I said something, and my brother pretended to catch me in a contradiction, so he accused me of lying. To him it was in good “fun,” but to me I was accused of lying in front of his children, and that wasn’t funny. I tried to defend myself, and he kept it going. His wife finally told me to give it up. The whole visit I realized that he did that kind of “catching you in a trap” with everybody. It would have completely disgusted me to deal with it all the time, as his family had to.

When I was about 20, I was part of a youth group that did that stuff routinely. I got very good at it, and later had to break the habit. But it’s a juvenile habit, annoying to others, and way too easy to step over the line and truly say the wrong thing. (I once completely offended my sister in such a regard. She was spending the night with me and she asked to borrow a pair of pants to put on over her PJs. I loaned her a pair, but told her she’d never be able to zip them up–I barely could zip them without anything underneath them, and she was putting them on over PJs. She tried and failed to zip them, and I said, “Boy, you’re fat.” She burst into tears. She was a size six, trying to zip pants that I’d told her couldn’t be zipped–to me it was fairly obvious I didn’t really think she was fat. But my silly comment still really hurt her in an area where, unknown to me, she was sensitive.)

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But it also never would have occurred to me – until reading these comments – that anyone, even people who find such shows funny, might think that kind of behavior was acceptable in real life, any more than throwing pies in people’s faces. There really are families where people talk to each other that way?

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Again, I think a mix is needed. Parents do give counsel, and kids seek it. In scenes where parents are absent, kids make choices based on what their parents would want them to do…or they choose otherwise and suffer consequences. No constant parental presence, but book characters who are children shouldn’t come across as orphans or disobedient rebels who get away with their disobedience, either. (In my first book–so far unpublished–my protaganist has been told things that aren’t true. She believes them at first, and when she begins to have doubts, she asks her mom a question or two. After that, she goes to her Bible–conveniently a kids’ Bible that has study notes–and begins to figure out how she should respond to the situation. So she has a mix of adult input and figuring things out herself.)

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Also I never thought the humor on Cosby was at all nasty.

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It’s a bunch of kids who don’t respect their father and his vision and aren’t willing to work with him. They’re selfish brats (granted, the father needs to work some things through too) who sass their father constantly and do nothing to help with the family.

And we see this as the norm these days … even OK.

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I don’t suppose that would make a very popular TV show. It won’t even be very popular around here with several of our posters.

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As for Lohan and Richards: they’re a couple of train wrecks looking for their 15 minutes of fame at the expense of their kid’s childhood.

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