Rachel, my 4 1/2 year old, has been going through a challenging stage this past week or so. When she doesn’t like something I say, she scrunches up her nose and makes a face at me. I’ve been trying to make it clear that such a face is not acceptable. She’s just trying it out, but she looks exactly like a spoiled teenager when she does it, which gets completely under my skin.

Tonight during the girls’ bath I found myself giving a charming lecture about the order things–about how it is not okay to talk a certain way or make a certain face to anyone, especially to one’s mother. “Moms make the rules,” I heard myself explaining confidently. “And Dads too,” I added as a not quite as convincing afterthought.

She thought about it. “Well, what about Martin Luther King?……” I could see her working something through in her mind. “He CHANGED the rules.”

Taken aback by her answer, I laughed and asked where she had learned that. Apparently, her class had read this in a book at school.

I’m still working on a comeback.

Should I tell her he went to jail?

Maybe I’ll just tell her that his face froze making a nasty face once. That’ll get the discussion rolling in class.