Living With Grown-Ups: Duties And Responsibilities

By Nadege Nicoll

This book is a humorous fiction for kids aged eight to twelve. It is the second volume in the "Living With Grown-Ups" series. Isaac, Aaron and Tiger explain their parents' bizarre view on what their duties are: to make life complicated for themselves and their children. It's a good job the kids have realized that they have responsibilities as well: making their parents feel guilty!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nadege Nicoll
• Release date: Oct 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780988860742

Nadege Nicoll

Nadege Nicoll was born in France but now lives permanently in New Jersey with her family. She stopped working in the corporate world to raise her three children and multiple pets, thus secretly gathering material for her books. She writes humorous fictions for kids aged 8 to 12. She published her first chapter book “Living with grown-ups: Raising Parents” in March 2013. It is a pretend self-help handbook for children to cope with their parents’ inconsistencies. Her second volume in the series has just come out in October 2013! Living with grown-ups: Duties and Responsibilities. In this volume, parents' behavior seem even stranger... Can it get any worse?!!

Book preview

Living With Grown-Ups:

Duties and Responsibilities

(The Stuff We Must Do)

Nadege Nicoll - illustrations by Stuart Nicoll

To my boys, princess and husband, I am so privileged and lucky to have you.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2013 by Nadege Nicoll

Illustrations copyright© 2013 by Stuart Nicoll

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9888607-4-2

Smashwords Edition

Published in the United States - August 2013

Nadege Nicoll, LLC

PO Box 286

Short Hills, NJ 07078

From The Same Author:

Living With Grown-Ups: Raising Parents

*

Visit The Website:

www.nadegenicoll.com

Contents

Introduction

Different Kinds Of The Same

The Duty To Make Life Complicated

Fear Is The Best Form Of Control

The Duty To Make Us Miserable

The Pleasure Of Forbidding Pleasure

Torture Is A Two Way Street

Twisted Family Values

The Duty To Be Party-Poopers

We Must Plan, Plan, Plan

Guilt Is The Only Way

Introduction

My name is Aaron. My brother Isaac wrote a very helpful book about how to raise parents. If you have not read it yet, what are you waiting for? If you have, you understand my family. And you know that my siblings and I want to help you keep your parents under control. This is no small task!

In this book, it is my turn to share some wisdom on adults. Or at least, try to make you feel better about yours. They are not the only whacky ones; all parents are.

My favorite adult nonsense has two words: DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES. Do you know what these are? Well, you should! Because apparently, we all have duties and responsibilities. Parents and children, from the youngest to the oldest. There is no escape from these. No excuse. So if you don’t have a clue, you need to catch up fast! But worry not, I am here to help…

Let’s start by explaining what these words mean:

• Duties are: stuff you MUST do.

• Responsibilities are: stuff you MUST do.

See any difference? No?! That’s because there aren’t any. It’s a lot simpler already, only one thing to remember!

What’s not so simple is how to survive in the world of duties. Because they can be so confusing…

Confusion can be good sometimes. If no one knows who is responsible, nobody can be blamed when things go wrong. Or even better, you can try to shift the blame onto a younger sister for example. If you don’t own one of these (a younger sister I mean), you should really think about getting one. They come in pretty handy in many bad situations.

I know that, because I used to be the youngest before Tiger was born. In those days, my brother would make mischief and try to blame me for them. Luckily, Isaac never knew when to stop (and still doesn’t...). So I did not get in trouble too seriously. But still...

For example, a long time ago, he put dad’s wallet in an empty box of pasta. Then mom threw the box in the trash. Isaac told my parents I did it. At that time, I was barely one and could not walk. Mom asked him how I could have come out of my playpen, climbed on the desk, grabbed the wallet, walked to the kitchen, put the wallet in the box, climbed back in my playpen while she was sitting in front of me the whole time. His answer was, I know!!! Aaron is so sneaky! I think that’s when mom realized what a fibber he was...

But regardless, I spent most of my first five years getting out of sticky situations that Isaac would blame me for. Then, Tiger came. And now, she is the one responsible for everything that goes wrong in the house.

I think our luck is going to run out soon though. Lately, my sister’s speech has improved a lot - especially the screaming part of it. Whenever we point the finger at her for any reason - even when she actually does something wrong, she goes mental and yells, NO, YOU DID IT, YOU NAUGHTY I SAY!!!! for about ten solid minutes. So I don’t know how much longer we can keep on blaming her without going insane ourselves. We are reaching the point where mom’s lecture will be less painful than