He was continually getting into trouble.
As boys go, he was a lot more unruly than most. He never seemed to do things properly. It was often the case that he didn’t seem to understand what his mother had told him. Either that, or he just didn’t remember what he’d been told. Either way, she was running out of patience with him. The boy was acting like a dimwit. She’d talked about it with her husband and they decided that it may help if one of them had a heart-to-heart talk with him; maybe hit him with a few hard facts about himself. They felt it was worth a try. It was also agreed that if his behaviour didn’t improve after that, they would have to take him to a specialist.
This particular morning she had asked him to help with folding clothes. She showed him how to do it, asked him to put them in a pile and left him to it. When she returned she found a stack of scrunched clothes. It was as though he was being deliberately carefree in the way he did things. She had lost her temper and said how disappointed she was. He hung his head. He honestly felt he was really trying. He was trying so hard to please her. He was doing his best, but she just got really aggressive and shouted at him, all because he had folded them wrong.
“Look mum, I’m only human!” he shouted.
At this point she produced a small remote control from her handbag. She selected the ‘listen only’ mode and pressed a button. The boy’s body went stiff.
She gave a great sigh. “Yes. Well. I’m glad you brought that up…”