Poor Rachel is continually harassed by little boys in her class who call her "stick" and "stupid" and so forth. I told her that a great rejoinder would be, "Is that the BEST you can do?"
Tonight she started sobbing when I insisted she go to bed, and she said that some 4th-grade boys had called her "stupid."
"Remember what I said to tell them?" I replied.
"Yeah, but I forgot," she said.
"You can't do any better than THAT?" I play-acted. "Okay, how about in Spanish? Can you insult me in Spanish? What? You can't? You've been learning Spanish since kindergarten and you can't find a good insult? Okay, how about French? You can't insult me stylishly in French? Look at all the kids in this school who can speak multiple languages and you can't even figure out how to insult me in another language??? That is SO disappointing."
And then, I told her, she'd walk away. And if she did that enough, the other kids would stop calling her names because they'd realize they couldn't find a way to make her mad or cry, and that's boring, so they'd just stop.
Her tears dried instantly, and she did say that she used the "You can't do any better than THAT?" rejoinder to a kid named Oliver in her grade. She said he just stared at her and didn't say anything, and then I said, "See, you did great!" and gave her a high-five.
She'll have those stupid older boys whipped into shape in no time.
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