My Toddler and North Korea

I've been thinking about the situation with North Korea having nuclear weapons, the flow of diplomacy with them, and how it may impact my little boy.

When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, we actually did practice "duck and cover" drills in school. We lived with the threat of nuclear annihilation, and followed the progress of various negotiations with the old Soviet Union to try to avoid MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Apart from all that, it was a pretty great time to be a kid.

Then, of course, in the 80s and 90s, we saw the beginnings of détente and the eventual end of the Soviet Union, and all of us who had images in our heads of "The Day After" breathed a sigh of relief.

Moving on a bit, as my wife and I try to be good parents to our son, we have learned that one of the best ways to discipline him is calmly. It's not always easy, but it is most effective when giving him a time out to say something like, "Aw, Andrew, it's really too bad that you chose to do that. Now it's time for a time out." The lessons seem to be learned a lot faster than when we allow our upset to show, and he's much calmer in experiencing discipline.

So now I wonder if it would make sense to communicate to our friends in North Korea something along the lines of, "Aw, Kim Jong-il, it's really to bad that you chose to build nuclear weapons, after agreeing to not do that. Now it's time to go to your room for a time out." (Meaning that you can live with the stick of Mutually Assured Destruction, not the carrot of lots of trade and goodies.)

Yep, toddlers of all ages learn much faster when you set clear boundaries and stick to them. I wonder if we have any adults in the room in our State Department.

Nick