Childrearing

Discipline

• "Secrets Of The Great Families," SlateStarCodex (2021).

Incidents included servants dunking the heads of Tagore and his siblings into drinking water held by giant clay cisterns — used as a means to quiet the children. In addition, Tagore often refused food to satisfy servants, was confined to a chalk circle by the second-in-command servant named Shyam in parody of an analogous forest trial that Sita underwent in the Ramayana, and was told horrific stories telling the bloody exploits of outlaw dacoits.

Money

• Winston Churchill, a cavalry officer and champion polo player in his smaller youth, said in My Early Life,

  “Don't give your son money. As far as you can afford it, give him horses. No one ever came to grief, except honourable grief, through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. Young men have often been ruined through owning horses, or through backing horses, but never through riding them; unless of course they break their necks, which, taken at a gallop, is a very good death to die.”

My middle-class American version is "Don't give your son money. As far as you can afford it, give him a good lawnmower." My Honda GVC-160 power lawnmower and my wife's new MVWP575GW Maytag Commercial Washer make work fun. My son is at Purdue now, and my maiden daughters have other chores to attend to, but now that I think of it, maybe we should splurge on a luxury vacuum cleaner. Writing down advice is a good way to advise oneself!