The things you yell at your little brother might become the voice in his head at twenty-five. Choose them like they’ll last.

Children keep the sentences said to them by people they look up to, and they keep them in the original voice. A line thrown out in a bad ten minutes can still be running twenty years later, long after you forgot saying it. Nobody is asking you to be perfect, and siblings fight. It is only worth knowing which words have that kind of shelf life.

Watch for the ones describing who he is rather than what he did, since those are the ones that stay. Say the repair out loud afterward. Then tell him the opposite thing sometimes, so there is something else on the tape.