Although I very much enjoyed Judy Blume's 1972 Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, when our teacher read the novel to us in grade four in 1976 (and when I then reread the novel myself in 1977), even then, even as a ten and eleven year old, I found Peter Warren Hatcher's little brother Farley Drexel Hatcher (better known as Fudge) to generally be both a royal pain in the neck and yes, that Fudge was being constantly coddled and hardly ever really disciplined regarding his often unacceptable behaviours inappropriately lax parenting (being allowed to pretend to be a dog and demanding to eat sitting on the floor, repeatedly ransacking his older brother's bedroom, and even when Fudge consumes and thereby kills Peter's pet turtle, while his parents finally do understand that Peter deserves sympathy and a replacement pet, I still do not think that especially Peter's mother ever in any way adequately disciplines Fudge and makes him see and understand that it was not only wrong but incredibly nasty and horrid for him to swallow poor Dribble).
Now with the above firmly in mind, I have therefore certainly approached sequel Superfudge with a rather heavy dose of reading trepidation. As for one, aside from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, I did not read any of the series sequels either as a child or as a teenager (and of course, two of the sequels were actually published in the 1990s and early 2000s respectively and thus when I was of course very much an adult) and was therefore rather worried that if the episodes presented by Judy Blume in Superfudge were similarly zany and at times bordering on the ridiculous as they often are in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing I would as an adult more than probably find them no longer all that amusing but for the most part just annoyingly silly, and even more importantly and for two, I was also legitimately worried and concerned that in particular Fudge would be as unmannerly, as undisciplined and as much of a thorn in his older brother Peter's side in Superfudge as he is, as he constantly was in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.
And sadly, my fears have been more than realised. For aside from a few choice scenarios that I have found rather enjoyable and even relatable in Superfudge (such as the Christmas and outing Santa Claus as a fake episode and how Judy Blume really does manage to capture Peter's reaction to having to move and in particular Fudge's negativity when the parents have a third child, how Fudge totally feels displaced by his new baby sister), I have found especially Fudge as a character still incredibly infuriating in Superfudge, still not in any way adequately parented and again in particular the mother way way too often sloughing her parental responsibilities with regard to her now middle son off on older son Peter.
And yes indeed, far far too often, instead of telling Fudge a categorical NO, both parents, both the mother and the father, obviously seem to still consider his behaviour and his repetitively annoying speeches generally cute and funny and sometimes even seem to reward Fudge's mouthiness and his tendency to constantly verbally harass Peter and others (and no, the parents letting Fudge get away with all kinds of problematic and possibly even offensive behaviours until finally losing patience and engaging in physical discipline, in other words making use of spanking, is not acceptable parenting in any manner either, as it also and certainly becomes abundantly clear in Superfudge that Fudge does not really care all that much if he is spanked, considering that he actually never really all that much changes his behaviour even if he has been physically disciplined and still gleefully and joyfully bothers and like a mosquito harasses Peter and his baby sister quite as much as before).