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The Toddler Trials: A Field Manual for Parents Concerned with the Rule of Law
Paperback
HumorGeneral ParentingGeneral Sociology
ISBN13: 9781066962693
Publisher: Fabless Editions
Published: Sep 17 2026
Pages: 152
Weight: 0.35
Height: 0.33 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
The English Constitution meets bedtime.
Somewhere between the second tantrum over the wrong-coloured cup and the fourteenth unauthorised removal of a sibling's toy, a reasonable adult must ask: is this household actually being governed, or is it merely being managed by whoever shouts last?
The Toddler Trials offers a radical alternative. What if your home were run, so far as is developmentally appropriate, on the same principles that govern the United Kingdom itself? Written laws. A presumption of innocence. A hearing before a verdict. Sentencing that fits the offence. An amendment procedure. Even, when things go wrong, an appeal.
This is a field manual, written entirely in earnest, for parents who suspect the answer is yes.
Each chapter takes a real feature of the English legal system - the rule of law, due process, the age of criminal responsibility, judicial review, the small claims court - and translates it into a domestic practice you can implement between now and the end of the school term. There are worked examples. There are three complete mock trials, conducted in full. There is an appendix on how to avoid becoming a cult, which is closer than you think.
What you will find inside:
- A step-by-step method for drafting your Family Constitution
- The Family Judge and the Family Jury: who does what, and when
- A working script for your first kitchen-table trial
- Rules of evidence, cross-examination, and the giving of reasons
- Verdicts, sentencing tariffs, and a formal mechanism for mercy
- How to hear a civil claim: sibling v. sibling, small claims division
- What to do when the system fails, because sometimes the court gets it wrong
- How to raise a loyal opposition under your own roof
- An appendix of three complete mock trials, transcribed in full
Who this book is for:
Parents who have read one too many parenting books telling them to trust their instincts, and who suspect their instincts, on a bad Tuesday, are not to be trusted. Anyone raising a small citizen who will eventually be summoned for jury service. Anyone who has ever tried to explain, to a four-year-old, why a rule that applied on Monday no longer applies on Friday.
What this book is not:
It is not a manual for actually placing children on trial. It is not a substitute for love, patience, or the ordinary decencies of family life. It is not to be taken so seriously that anyone should be actually sentenced to anything by anyone.
On the making of this book.
The Toddler Trials was drafted with the assistance of a large language model and then edited, revised, argued with, and finalised by its author across a period of some time. The jokes are the author's. The statutes are the Crown's. A fuller note on this collaboration appears at the front of the book.
From the preface:
This is a joke book. What is not a joke, and what we would ask you to take from this book despite everything else in it, is the underlying instinct: that children do better under rules that are clear, consistent, explained, and applied the same way on good days and bad ones alike. Everything else is decoration.
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