PARENTAL ADVICE BY ETGAR KERET (unofficial)

All celebrity mothers out there - please step out, or rather - do step down. Here comes a guy, who might not know how to loose that extra weight or dress to impress, but he certainly knows how to handle his child... The man in question: Etgar Keret is an Israeli fiction writer recognized for his short, abstract stories and great sense of wit. I was delighted to attend an open talk with him as part of Krakow's Conrad Festival.

Keret is everything you'd expect him to be: funny, shy and self depreciative. Joking is the weak's only defense - he said, and you instantly knew he was talking about himself. Then, of course, like every man of *certain age*, he is pretty crazy about his kid, so pretty quickly the conversation went from how to write a novel to how to raise a child. So how do you breed your own Little Me according to Mr. Keret?

1. Do joke about your child

 for (apparently) it means that you care. I don't waste my jokes on people I don't like - said Keret.

2. Do take an occasional look at yourself

This one is about being judgmental. Towards your own self. I've been through a lot of crap in my life, but the worst of all was when I once shouted at my son - said Keret - I suddenly looked at myself as an outsider. I noticed my lack of patience and tendency to take it out on the weaker. I instantly apologized and started crying. My son wasn't so impressed: come on dad you just shouted at me a little bit...

(I'm 50/50 with him on this one. Because it's OK to shout at your child once in a while, right? Right?)

3. Do teach your kid a lesson when it needs to be taught

You know Little Alchemy, the series of lab tools for nerdy kids? Keret's son sort of invented a new , terrible edition: Little Bomb Maker (subtitle: create an explosive gadget to kill your enemies). For Lil' Keret enemies = Palestinians and his reasoning was accurately naive (he's 9 years old): They rip us apart, I want to do the same! At this point you have to go: but, wait a second and that's exactly what  Keret did trying to explain his child the Gaza war, and in fact any war, is not black and white. He went on talking about the check points and the innocents, the children and the mothers... The boy seemed unbreakable. And so Keret and his wife created a few in-flat check points - every time the boy wanted to cross the "border" he'd have to answer before the "guard". As the day finished, Keret the 2nd was an exemplary Pacifist.