“Ten Steps to Create a Delinquent”

The magistrate Calatayud is well-known in Spain for his educational sentences to minors. By means of these ten steps he thinks and he invites us to think about some family behaviours. It’s quite interesting. It reads like this:

“Ten Steps to Create a Delinquent”

By the magistrate Calatayud 

1st: Starting when the child is young, give them everything that they ask for. This will serve to convince them that the whole world belongs to them.

 2nd: Don’t worry about their spiritual or ethical education. Wait until they get older so that they can decide for themselves. 

3rd: When they curse, laugh. This will encourage them to do it more often. 

4th: Do not scold them or tell them that something that they’ve done is bad. That would be able to create an “I’m to blame” complex in them. 

5th: Get everything out of the trash that they have thrown away like books, shoes, clothes, and toys. This will grow them accustomed of taking responsibility for everything else.  

6th:  Leave them to read everything that they can get their hands on. Then they will know to sterilize their plates, silverware, and glasses, but not realize that they are still full of trash. 

7th: Fight will your spouse all the time with your child’s presence, this will not hurt him/her too much today in the family, but perhaps his proper conduct will be destroyed forever.  

8th: Give them all the money that they wish to spend. They won’t suspect that if they want to do they same as you, they need to work. 

9th: Satisfy all of their wishes, appetites, comforts, and pleasures. The sacrifice and austerity would produce frustration. 

10th: Take part in whatever conflict that they have with their profesors and neighbors. Your children will think that all of them have predjudices against them and that they actually just want to bother them.