Got to give my reader credit

A couple of weeks before Evan left I was really worried about how Evan was going to manage to do a good job supervising children at the house when he was so bad at dealing with Brian. Evan found Brian annoying and his entire strategy for dealing with Brian was to give him orders. Evan did not realize that he was giving Brian only two options: simple compliance or rebellion. Of coure Brian did not choose to follow the orders. I worried and one of y'all sent me this:

There is a chance that Evan's alpha-male-ness will allow him to work with
difficult kids by putting him "in charge". Instead of being equal to the kids
(like he is with Brian) and having to "fight" for power etc, he will be part of
the power structure. Chances are good that this will at least bring out a lot of
patience, at least in some contexts. Power does funny things to people... (These
observations are based on my experience training teens to be camp counsellors -
often, those who had problems with peers were quite able to deal with their
charges because of the shift in mind set.)

You were right. Evan seems to be doing wonderfully with the kids at the house. He is tolerant of them. They love that he is this giant teddy bear of a man. They climb on him and wrestle with him and he takes it until he has had enough and then he tells them to stop and they do. It turns out that it is a different sort of relationship than being the not-really-a-brother thing he had with Brian.

It was reassuring to read this, so thanks for sending it then.