Family Instructions for the Yan Clan
Love without teaching buries the trouble for later
Set the rule while the relationship is still new
Family Instructions for the Yan Clan - 'Teaching Children', on love without instruction, with the households of Lady Wei and the scholar under Emperor Yuan of Liang
You have said it a hundred times and nothing moves. This chapter says the bill was set the time you laughed instead.
What actually happened?
Yan Zhitui sets two households side by side. Wang Sengbian's mother, Lady Wei, was severe: her son commanded three thousand men at Pencheng and was past forty, and she beat him still when he fell short. He became a great general. In the other house a brilliant young scholar was indulged by his father. One apt remark and the father told everyone he met and praised it for a year; one wrong act and he covered it over, hoping the boy would mend it himself. By the time that son married and took office, careless speech got him killed.
He admits the book is for the middle
The chapter opens by sorting people: the highest need no teaching, the lowest gain nothing from it, and the ordinary do not know unless taught. He is not writing for prodigies or for lost causes, and in the middle group teaching is the whole difference.
'He is bright, he will work it out' is true of very few people.
Love without teaching
He says he has seen too many houses with affection and no instruction. What should be warned is rewarded, what should be rebuked is laughed at. By the time the child understands anything he assumes the rules always looked like this.
What you find charming at three is what you will shout about at thirteen.
Once arrogance sets, force buys nothing
Come back to it after the habit has formed and his verdict is blunt: beat him to death and you hold no authority, while anger and resentment rise together. The cost does not climb evenly. Past that stretch the same thing takes ten times the effort.
The same 'no' takes three seconds at two and three months at sixteen.
Severity and warmth are one prescription
His formula is that parents who are stern and also kind get children who are careful and grow up dutiful. Not harsh and not soft: a line that does not move, and a place to come when it hurts. A line alone is fear, a place alone is chaos.
Say both on the day you set it: this one is fixed, and come to me when it stings.
Uneven love is the expensive kind
He notes that few parents love their children equally and that it has always been so. The able attract affection, the dull deserve pity, and the parent who favours one means to do him good and does him harm instead.
The favourite in the house is often the last to learn how refusal feels.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you have said the same thing many times, he still does not do it, and you have begun to suspect you are simply nagging.
Ask first: when did this first happen, and what did you do that time - did you close it off on the spot, or laugh and let it pass.
Where it goes wrong: reading it as a case for hitting children. What he wants is the first half of the pair present, not force, and his variable is timing rather than strength. While the window is open one sentence will do; once it shuts, raising the pressure will not.
Lines to keep
Affection without instruction buries the trouble for him to find later.
Once the window shuts, more force only buys resentment.
Stern and kind are one prescription; half a dose harms.
Same situation, other people are asking
I've said it a hundred times and it still doesn't happen.How much am I supposed to step in?Every single thing I say comes back at me.Saying it again has never once worked.My kid won't listen · all 10 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.