Teach Your Children (Fairly) Well Part II

I am the parent and my children are the children, and if I want to make an arbitrary rule, such as: if you're going to watch TV on a school night, then it has to be a documentary, then they need to abide by the rule and embrace the rule and not give me a bunch of shit about the rule . . . which is why, last week, when we were two minutes into Hoop Dreams, my son Alex said he wanted to go upstairs and read instead of watching and I did something unprecedented in the history of parenting--

I forced my child to watch TV instead of allowing him to read a book

but I had good reason for this . . . Roger Ebert lists Hoop Dreams as the number one movie of the 1990's and my son was being totally close-minded because he was angry about my "documentaries on school nights" rule . . . a rule which my wife and children should realize is never going to last, and if they could simply humor me for a bit and allow me to reign like a lunatic dictator over my tiny realm . . . and Alex ended up liking the film-- you can't not like it, it's great (though not as fast paced and violent and entertaining as Arrow, a show to which my kids are addicted).