Recently, I attended a dinner party. A couple brought their two-year-old girl with them. One never knows how a toddler and a fancy restaurant will go down, but the little girl held up through a four-hour dinner with panache — coloring on her paper, eating her chicken strips and sweet potato fries without complaint, and generally being well behaved and social.
Towards the end of the gathering, the little girl ended up sitting next to me. So we’re sitting there, chillin’, and she was doing something cute with her large red bib, when I cooed, “Aren’t you a good girl?” Her mother — a very nice woman, by the way, don’t get me wrong — leaned over and said, calmly but firmly, “We don’t use the term ‘good girl.’”