For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 20, 2013

Younger siblings are such tattle-tales (and I am one of only a brother… excluding our three older stepsisters and two younger stepsisters).

Ah yes, the broken toys (mostly baby toys) and outgrown clothes- how to get rid of any of them? A problem I face often. If you so much as threaten to throw out even one of the 405 papers they bring home from school, or a broken toy that’s been under the couch for 4 years, suddenly it’s a masterpiece.

There are a good thing for younger siblings after all

So, you are calling a toddler a “b***h”. Don’t you think that’s rather inappropriate, as well as mean-spirited?

sad part of all of this is that Michael probably wouldn’t have noticed if Liz hadn’t told him all the stuff their mom threw out.

Elizabeth is angry because Michael was gone so long. That will show him what happens when he’s gone.

The fact that Elizabeth could rhyme off every single item Ellie threw out is a good warning to other parents….little kiddoes are smarter than you think. Best not to do anything in front of them that you’d regret having them disclose later.

That said, you also have to watch how you handle the topic of ‘telling on others’ so it still doesn’t prevent them from telling you stuff that may be vital to their personal safety.This is how predators gain their trust…by telling them not to ‘tell’ mom or dad as his ‘actions’ may hurt their feelings.

It was getting too boring for Elizabeth. She had to start the fireworks.

O no all his good junk !!!!!8^(

“They’ll never notice” is the mantra for all who clean house.

Blabbermouth Elizabeth

My b*tch of an older sister (3 yrs older, now a mother of 4 with no husband, a drunkard, and smokes crack, from what I’m told…) used to break things, and blame me. Me, being the middle child, couldn’t do right, and the blame stuck.

Elizabeth the sponge, squirting out what she soaked up while he was gone. lol

My mother threw my comic book collection away while I was away during my hitch in the US Navy in 1952. I had many early editions of Marvel comics, Classic comics, and Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies. I’m sure they would be worth a bundle today.

AZ WIZ, my mother did the same thing to my brother’s baseball cards. :( And she was a total packrat!!!

Didn’t Lynn Johnston take some flack for Michael’s conduct during the fire; in that it appeared that he cared more for the manuscript than his wife and children?

she really missed him

You are determined to make these people psycho. Each of the incidents you mention had either a legitimate reason or was a running joke, even to the characters. Stop trying to poison other people to your sick point of view.

When my kids were little, when they didn’t pick up their toys like I asked them, I would go to the playroom & start picking up broken toys and throw them away. Immediately they started running around picking everything up. The room got cleaned & some broken toys got discarded. (Once I threw it away, that was it.) Worked every time.

Hey Howardthejeck even with a spoiler alert why post unnesscary comments except to make youself feel superior. Your life must suck if you have to use these threads to feel important. You have my sympathy.

Not the comics they are worth something now.

Oh, how true!!!!! I can vouch for the abject misery of being an older brother to an infernal kid sister!! Especially when the lil brat got her PhD. and all I have is a BS……… $%^&#@

My wife puts such things in black plastic garbage bags, and puts them out in the shed, with a date. If they haven’t been missed in a year, they go to good will.

I know two wrongs do not make a right but this is what happen a few houses down just this weekend. The mother throws away some of the 12 year old boys stuff while he is away on a sleep over. He comes home and finds his stuff missing. So he throws her jewelry box in the trash. I heard him say “You throw my stuff away so I throwed your stuff away.” With her and the kid and the husband all in the front yard they way they were I was thinking some one was going to call the law. I came back in the house and locked the door.

SAVE THE COMICS!!!!

Parents should NEVER, EVER dispose of anything in their child’s room or personal belongings without the child present. Just because the child isn’t an adult yet doesn’t mean he or she should have no voice in what they get to keep or dispose of.

The worst offending parents are those that are packrats themselves and quite likely have stuff from their own childhood that they’ve hung on to for years.

She didn’t think it long term, she wrote the story as she grew, her kids grew, and life passed. What happened with Mike in his adult years would be Lyn looking BACK and thinking about what might affect his adult actions, not foreshadowing.

Michael wasn’t the one who divided the apartment entranceway, Deanna did that after the Kepelfroth’s started give her a bad time about leaving the baby stroller and Meridith’s tricycle there.