The lecture helmet.

[dreadedcandiru2]

As we know, John has it in his stupid head that his children have bad attitudes and don't know the value of work or money and need to learn to respect their elders and be grateful and admit that they owe Mommy and Daddy for the great big freaking favor they're doing them putting food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs. Since he's sort of dumb and, as I've suggested before, can hear a story about children working in factories and come away with the impression that his kids are lazy and won't pay their own way because they're selfish, he needs to come up with a way to brow-beat them into not noticing that his thinking is wrong, anti-social and self-serving.

The boring lecture about the mining helmet he gets his dad to send Mike tells us that his path to getting them to not realize that he and Elly have a duty of care and should thus be horsewhipped for suggesting otherwise is to make them feel bad about the truth. Just as he lectured Lizzie about how bad she was feeling bad about something that she could actually do something about by invoking a problem too entrenched for a middle school girl to fix, we're going to get an annoying lecture about how hard Will worked in the coal mine and how he needs a reminder of the great guy who knew the value of honest work and so on into the guilting his son into thinking that a horribly soppy present is the sovereign goods.