(876a) Cat Among Pigeons by Agatha Christie

In page 179, we find Jennifer's mother saying," Jennifer has really been most tiresome. After having made a great fuss about going to Meadowbank and being quite sure she wouldn't like it there, and saying it was a snobby kind of school and not the kind she wanted to go to, now she sulks all day long because I've taken her away. ..."

Now that sounds very familiar. I have come across parents who send their children to whichever school they like, perhaps because it is famous. But they never pause to consider if such a school would suit the child. The thought of whether their child would be happy there never cross their minds. Maybe they think that children are supposed to be seen and not heard. They themselves live in the twenty first century but they expect their children to behave like Victorian children.

Such parents would inevitably find that the older their children become, the less the children would talk to them. It is futile to try to communicate with such people with fixed mind sets. My sympathies go to teenagers with parents like that!