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has an individuality. She is not dependent on the child, and the child is dependent on the mother. Both are not equal... cannot be. The mother has power and the child has no power. Now this is natural... you are not responsible for it. If somebody is responsible, maybe it is god.
If you give too much freedom to the child, he will die from freedom. If you discipline him too much, you will kill him from discipline. And there is no way to know where the demarcation line is. So whatsoever you do is going to be wrong. If you give too much freedom, the child will be spoiled. If you don't give enough freedom, the child will be spoiled.
And down the ages people have tried all alternatives. Sometimes they have tried to discipline the child absolutely. Then whatsoever comes out is an adolf hitler, nazism, fascism; that's what happened in germany. For a hundred years they had been trying to bring up the child according to the perfectionist ideal -- obedience, order, discipline -- so the soul was destroyed. A very very powerful german race was created, but there was no soul. Now that failed.
The pendulum has moved in America. Seeing that it failed... it created Japan -- Japan is a very very disciplined country -- and Germany... seeing that they created such havoc in the world, such hell, the world mind moved. Intellectuals started saying, 'No more order, no more discipline -- freedom!' So the freedom has created the new generation -- the flower children, the hippies, the yippies. Now if they win, the society will be destroyed completely, because no technology can exist with hippies; no clean, hygienic society can exist with the hippies. No sort of family can exist; everything will be simply topsy-turvy.
They will create another ugly world, and again seeing what hippies have done, people will start moving. Then by that time they will have forgotten nazi Germany, and Hitler; they will again start thinking about how to discipline the children. This is how it has been happening down the ages again and again. But whatsoever you do goes wrong.
So my feeling is: please don't try to do anything. Simply love the child, and leave everything else to
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