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Dear Ann Landers,
wrote to you several months ago to ask what to do about my husband's tickling our three-year-old son. We had many argu-ments about it. I felt he was subcon-sciously antagonizing the child because Timmy always ended up crying. My husband said I was crazy-that it was all in fun and the child was crying from exhaustion, but he really liked it. Your response was, "Tell your hus-band to knock it off. Tickling can be an expression of hostility. The one being tickled may laugh-at first-but soon the frustration becomes too much and anger sets in. One of these days your son might retaliate with a knuckle sandwich." Today, Ann, we both won our point. Enclosed is the clipping that tells the story. When my husband read the story in the paper his face went white. Love you, Lady! TO THE VICTOR
DEAR VIC,
I must let my readers in on "the enclosed." Here it is-a UPI wire service story from Zanesville, Ohio. Dateline Cleveland: "If Edward Bruening could talk these days you can bet he'd be brag-ging about his seventeen-month-old son, Jamie, who packs quite a punch. "Bruening needed three hours of sur-gery Monday to repair a broken jaw suffered in a tickling session with his twenty-three-pound offspring. "'Every morning he goes to wake his daddy up,' said Mrs. Bruening. 'They were on the bed tickling each other. Both of them relaxed on the pil-low for a moment, then Eddy tickled him again. "'James came around with a quick right and hit him on the left side of the jaw.' "Bruening, who weighs 147 pounds, said his jaw hurt and ten minutes after the punch he couldn't hold a cigarette in his mouth. He went to Lutheran Medical Center on the advice of his sister, Janice, a clinician at the hospi-tal. "The doctors told him he had a frac-tured jaw apparently because his son hit him just right. They then used twenty wires to keep his jaw shut for the next six weeks." TICS (Nervous Twitching) Tics (nervous twitching) are a common and usually temporary disorder of children, especially at ages eight and nine. These must be differentiated from motor tics and motor-verbal tics which may be of greater significance. By definition tics are any involuntary muscular movement. Most tics are of the eyelids, face and shoulders, but they may occur also in any voluntary muscle and may form complicated patterns. Tics tend to be short-lived and they vanish in the normal child by the age of ten, to appear again in later life at times of stress. A good night's sleep will often suffice for the temporary tics to disappear. When tics continue for longer than a month, they should be evaluated by a neurologist with a trained eye. Prolonged tics may be related to physical illnesses for which the patient should be treated without delay. The treatment of tics depends on the diagnosis. Tics which are reflective of tension may require the services of a mental health expert, but often thought-ful inquiry by a concerned friend or teacher into the reasons for tension can relieve the condition. Special consideration should be given to the symbolic meaning of the movement for clues. Medication has been found useful for people who have had encephalitis and Gilles de la Tourette's disease. A physician should supervise a course of treatment, including the use of Haldol, L-Dopa, Cogentin and Artane as the condition warrants. The physician-supervision is necessary for monitoring the condition, as well as for control of medication. Tics are of historical interest. Sam Boswell suffered from what was proba-bly Gilles de la Tourette's disease: "He is forever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his awkward paroxyms." Other contemporary witnesses confirm the fact that Johnson had a whole complex of tics that kept him jerking, kicking and flail-ing about in his chair. (From Samuel Johnson: His Friends and Enemies by Peter Quennell.) In literature, tics are often used to convey implicit tension and evidences of guilt, as, for example, in the works of Sherlock Holmes. Historically, tics have been seen as conveying the ebbing of power. Through the centuries the maladie de tiques has been the harbinger of anx-iety and the symbol of discontent. credit: Mary Giffin, M.D., Medical Director of the Irene Josselyn Clinic, Northfield, Illinois. Time How to Manage It (Advice from the head of America's largest corporation, based on his own methods) What success I have had in parceling out the too-few hours of each day I at-tribute to three factors: First, I am not a brooder. Second, the people I work with are the best in the world at what they do. Third, I like my work. In my experience, most decisions are best made now. There are not many problems that solve themselves, nor do they get any easier if shifted to the bottom of the pile. There are, of course, problems too complex and too crucial for immediate decision. Faced with these, I decide not to decide. But after all the facts are in, all the angles have been aired and all the possibilities and ramifications considered, I like to haul off and decide. I don't brood over a problem, pre-ferring instead to confront it and act on it and move on to the next one. I am uncertain whether my preference for dealing with problems on the spot is an ingrained personal characteristic or a practice developed over the years in response to the pressures of business. I suspect it is both. At any rate, I seldom relegate a problem, no matter how complex, to the bottom drawer for consideration at a later time. I like to tackle it now. That leads me to factor number two: delegation. In a business as large and as complicated as A.T.&T., the delegation of major responsibilities is a man-agement must. There is no other way to operate this business successfully. In order to accomplish this you must have people with proved ability to do the jobs you delegate. And we have. As a result, it isn't necessary for me to spend much time second-guessing. If you match the right people with the right responsibilities, you will get the right results. In fact, so important is that principle that I never begrudge the time I spend identifying and develop-ing future managers. It's the most important thing I do. Delegation gives me time for activities that require my personal attention. Spokesman on behalf of my business-and of Business-is one such activ-ity. Accordingly I try to do my part in such organizations as The Business Council, The Business Roundtable, United Way, etc. In addition to these ac-tivities, I serve on a number of corporate boards. Of course, one must be selective. Organizations that simply want my name on their letterheads are of no interest to me. I am attracted to organizations that are doing important serious work to which I can contribute something. Similarly one must be selective with respect to invitations to speak. I prob-ably accept too many, but there is one criterion I apply to all invitations to speak: Do I have something to say worth saying? Beyond that, the demands on my time require that I ask whether it is a significant national audience and whether my appearance will help the operating telephone company serving that particular area of the country. I check this out with the company presi-dent and if he feels my presence might benefit the business in its operations there. If he says yes, I accept the invitation if possible. The trick is to keep internal and external duties in proper balance so they complement one another and contribute to the positive management of time. The third factor I credit with contributing to my own management of time is what I will call, simply, the joy of the job. This may be the most critical el-ement of all. Without it, you're sunk. I truly love what I do. And I have felt that way about every job I have held in this business, all twenty-three of them, over a period of forty-one years. When you feel good about your work, it is really not all that difficult to get the most out of each day. I feel very fortunate to have been in a business and to have held jobs in it that have been so satisfying. There is no question in my mind that my use of time over the years has been a reflection of the way I have always felt about the work I have done. Finally, some general comments about getting things done: I work in the car, on planes and trains, and in helicopters, too. I take a briefcase home every night. Normally I spend a few hours working on Sun-days as well. I arrive at the office a little after eight in the morning, and usu-ally leave by six p.m. It is rare when I do not attend a business-related dinner during the week. Mrs. De Butts attends many of these dinners with me. We have an apartment in New York and manage to meld our social and business lives very comfortably. I don't want to leave the impression that I am a business grind, a workaholic. I'm not. When there is work to be done I like to get it done so I have time to enjoy life-family and friends, a round of golf, skeet shooting. The pressure of work left over weighs heavily on my conscience. There are only so many minutes and hours in a day. To get the most out of them I try to stay pretty loose, both in personal style and in terms of my schedule. I don't like to rigidly structure every day. Of course, when one meeting comes on the heels of another, it is difficult to keep a schedule as open-ended as I would like. But in general I remain flexible rather than me-chanical. It is the only way T can deal with developments that pop up unex-pectedly . . . and they always do. Do I think my way of managing time is best? It seems to be for me, al-though I seldom feel at the end of a day that I have accomplished all that I wanted to. I don't think this is a bad way to feel. I think, in fact, it is a good way. It means I've managed my time pretty well but I could probably do better. credit: John deButts, Chairman, American Telephone and Telegraph Com-pany, New York, New York. Tipping STINGY, MESSY WOMEN DEAR ANN: I have a few words for that idiot who thinks women should not be expected to tip when they eat out. I'm a waitress who has worked most of my life and I'd 10 times rather serve men. Women are stingy tippers. They de-mand more service and request a lot of substitution. (Two vegetables, no potato.) They almost always leave the table in a mess. I think they're getting even with their kids who leave messy tables for THEM to clean up. I'd rather serve males any day. SOUTH DAKOTA DEAR S.D.: In your field you are the authority, and I'll take your word for it. I hope your message gets across to the females out there who recognize themselves. According to most experts on etiquette, the practice began back in medieval England when pubs installed collection boxes inscribed with the words "To Insure Prompt Service." The slogan later was shortened'to "tips." The policy gradually spread to most parts of the globe in one form or an-other. Militant non-tippers may take heart that the situation is even worse in many other countries than here in the United States. In England, for example, the usher who shows you to your seat in a theater usually expects a shilling or two for his service. .The same principle applies in most of Europe as well. Here it applies mostly to major sports events in sta-diums and arenas. In Morocco, guides have been known to leave tourists stranded in the winding marketplace if they are not given a few dirhams for their shopping advice. And in Romania, surgeons expect a large payment if they gave only a small scar following an operation. Most patients are afraid not to shell out for fear they may need further medical care. Americans have made sporadic efforts to curb tipping without much luck. During the early 1900s, six states passed laws prohibiting tipping, but they later were declared unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court. Since then, efforts have been aimed at educating the consumer on alterna-tives to mindless straight 15-percent tipping. The Non-Tipping Society of the United States, a California-based group, for example, advises its members to leave a card saying "thank you" instead of a tip. Waiters rarely say, "You're welcome." Taking another approach. Tippers International, which began in Wiscon-sin, suggests that diners tip 15 to 20 percent only if the service is totally satis-factory. Many consumers seem to approve of tipping. Some more than others. In fact, a lot more than others. Although the Guinness Book of World Records does not include figures on the "biggest tip ever given," stories of enormous gratuities often pop up in the nation's newspapers. In 1969, for example, a waitress in Pueblo, Colorado, served a customer a bowl of soup and received a 1959 Cadillac for her trouble. And in 1972, an English cab driver received a $47,000 tip for chauffeuring an elderly woman around town several times a week. Although few people exhibit such largesse, workers in service-related fields generally agree that there are certain "big-tip" types. Among them are businessmen who are on expense accounts, businessmen who have had a few drinks too many and businessmen who are trying to make time with the waitresses. The biggest of all are people who have worked for tips themselves. credit: Kathleen Begley, Chicago Daily News reporter. WOMEN'S WAITRESS WOES