There are these books, the No, David books. David, the feisty little boy does bad things—pull the cat’s tail, run in the halls, try to knock the cookies off the shelf—and headless women in dresses, the mom and the teacher, tell him “No! No! No!” To be fair, they end the book with “Yes, David, I love you.”

David loves these books. We own one and he begged me to check the rest out of the library. I have been reading No David morning, noon, and night. Literally. We read them as soon as he wakes up. We do a set at naptime. And we do a double set at bedtime. Rose has been reading them to him, and he has started reading them to me. “No, David!” he says, pointing to the child staring out the window, “Pay attention!”

The David of our stories is a strange looking creature. He has fang like teeth and a black mouth like a bottomless pit. I find the pictures ugly and unnerving, and, of course, the parenting style antithetical to my own.

I have some friends who claim never to have let the word “No” grace their lips. It’s not that they don’t have boundaries for their child, it’s that they are experts at the art of affirmation—not “No, you may not have cookies for breakfast” but “I love cookies, too. Let’s take animal cookies to the park for snack”; redirection—not “No don’t hit your sister over the head with a golf club” but “Come over here and hit the couch with the club"; and distraction—not “No, I cannot open your fruit leather while driving through rush hour traffic on the freeway” but “Look, a fire engine!”

I am trying to be one of those parents. For sure, the word “No” comes out of my mouth quite a bit. David crawling onto the kitchen table? Begging me to carry him for four hours straight? I’ve been known to say “No” and quite emphatically. But, in general I try really hard to be on the yes end of the spectrum.

In the story, David’s teacher discovers he’s been drawing pictures on the desk and punishes him by making him stay after school and wash all the desks. As I’m reading the next story, I’m still thinking about how could that teacher have affirmed him instead. Could she have told him what a creative artist he was and asked him to illustrate a class book? Could she have used the pictures as a memory map of the day’s activities and taught him about memory aids?

I’m just a teeny bit offended that instead of being afraid of that mean mommy and teacher and impressed by the creative lengths I go to to be so nice, David digs having an authority figure yell at a bad little boy. He’s not at all threatened by it. He’s ready to order his namesake around too. No, David, don’t do it!