Cheng Yi's Mother: Why Real Discipline Does Not Run on Emotion
When a child falls, should a mother pick him up immediately? In the later narrative tradition around Cheng Yi’s mother, Lady Hou did not reach out at once. She let the young Cheng Yi stand up on his own. Some readers see coldness in that scene. Others treat it as proof that she was a strict mother. The more useful question is not whether she picked him up, but why she treated that moment as an opportunity to teach.
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