Former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, John D Pringle once reminisced about one of his former bosses, A P Wadsworth, a short man whom he intellectually respected and sincerely admired, but who was deemed by some young journalists to be a micro-manager, nitpicker and interferer. For Pringle reports a not-so-subtle poem that was composed about him: “I am little A.P.W. / I don’t really want to trouble you / But will you please just alter that / And that, and that, and that and that?”

The Book especially warns parents, and particularly fathers, to take great care not to issue too many “that’s” in editing the lives of their family circle. In one of his letters, Paul writes: ‘Don’t embitter (provoke, irritate) your children, or they will become discouraged’. And in another, a similar instruction: ‘Don’t exasperate (stir to anger) your children.’ Even polite dads, who say please and wish not to cause trouble, need to take care.

Solomon issued the same advice in the area of marriage. In one of his famous proverbs, he described the nagging spouse as a drip, drip, dripping of rain from a leaky roof, presumably by telling “Honey” one too many times to change that, that, that and that. When said in love and from love and with love and for love, as did Jesus to the seven churches, the request is good and the alteration vital; but when said through churlishness or with a critical spirit, it defies wisdom and spoils much good.