Brats
A few years ago a French toy company had an unusual contest-a "biggest brat" contes. The company had a prize for the child whose behavior was the worst in the world.Over 2,000 parents entered their children in the contest."Our child is the world's biggest brat" they wrote.The parents made lists of all the things their children had done.Judges read the lists and chose the winner. She was a little girl from the United States. Her name was Lizzie,and she was four years old.Here are a few of the things Lizzie did to win the title"The World's Biggest Brat"
She put a garden hose into the gas tank of her father's car.Then she turned on the water.
She painted a leather sofa with spray paint.
She threw her mother's wedding ring into the toilet. Then she flushed the toilet.
She put an ice-cream sandwich into the VCR.
She set the table for dinner.Then she glued the silverware to the table. Imagine her parents' surprise when they sat down to eat and tried to pick up their forks.
Lizzie may be the world's biggest brat,but she is certainly not the world's only brat.Alo is a five-year-old boy from Bangladesh.One afternoon, while his father was asleep on the sofa,Alo cut off his father's mustache. A few days later,he cut off his brother's eyebrows when his brother was sleeping in the bedroom. A few weeks after that ,he cut off most of his mother's hair when she was asleep at night. Alo's family now keeps every pair of scissors under lock and key and always sleeps behind locked doors.
The behavior of a Mexican boy named Manuel is perhaps even worse than Lizzie's and Alo's because it is more dangerous.Manuel likes to play with matches.One day he found some matches near the kitchen stove.He took the matches, sneaked into his parents' bedroom, and set fire to the curtains. Fortunately, Manuel's mother walked into the bedroom just in time.She pulled down the curtains and put out the fire before it spread.
Hiroshi,a young Japanese man,says that he rarely misbehaved when he was a young child but turned into a real brat when he was about thirteen.'My friends and I used to sneak around at night and let the air out of tires.We were terrible" he says."Our parents tried to control us.but they didn't have much success. We drove them crazy"
No mother or father wants to be the parents of a brat.Parents everywhere try to control their children's behavior.some parents spank their children when they misbehave. Other parents won't let their children watch TV or eat dessert.In Japan, parents often send their children outside when they misbehave and tell them they can't come into the house. In the United States, arents do just the opposite:They send their children to their bedrooms and tell them they can't go outside.
Lizzie's parents don't know what to do about Lizzie. Her mother says,"I keep telling myself that Lizzie is going through a stage,but sometimes I don't know...It seems like she's always getting into trouble"Lizzie's father says"One day we'll look back on all this and laugh"
What does Lizzie think about her behavior?Lizzie doesn't like to talk about it. When a reporter asked Lizzie if she was "a bad girl",Lizzie kicked his leg. Then she yelled,"Im not a brat!I'm an angel!Get out of my house!"
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