Today’s article was inspired by a news report. Master Chi won’t go into the details of the story itself. In short: a young girl who was quietly studying at home ended up spending extra time on her phone because she needed to attend online classes. When her mother saw this, she launched into a severe and unrelenting attack of criticism and blame. The girl ultimately chose to end her life — she leaped from the building.
It’s not that this particular news story was especially shocking. What struck Master Chi while reading it was the sense that something in this was deeply, fundamentally broken. Don’t worry — we’re not a detective or mystery-solving community. When Master Chi says “broken,” he means the flaws and blind spots in how many parents approach the mindset of raising children.
Master Chi is no expert in education or child-rearing. But having spent time reading destiny charts (BaZi), he has come to understand “human nature” reasonably well. So today’s article is dedicated to readers who are parents. It has one and only one purpose: how to avoid raising a child who becomes a spineless waste of a human being — ruined by you, their own parent.
At the same time, Master Chi wants to share something with you: how, as a parent, you can cultivate yourself so that from the moment your child is born, they are already one full step ahead of every peer their age — or more. It really is that simple.
Master Chi has always believed that being born into a family is entirely a matter of luck and circumstance — and we’re not even talking about material differences between households. The moment parents have even a slight deficiency of clarity or insight, they will become not a stepping stone for their child, but a man-made ceiling — and they’ll work tirelessly to hold that ceiling down. What’s even more frightening is that these parents will genuinely believe that everything they do, they do for the child’s benefit.
The most classic expression of this is their enthusiasm for using their own authority to impose all kinds of rigid restrictions and controls on their children. Here’s the thing: in the logic of low-quality parents, “my child disagrees with me” = “my child is defying me, rejecting me.” But in the logic of high-quality parents, “my child disagrees with me” = “my child is developing independently and may surpass me.”
So it’s not hard to see that the great dividing line between high-quality and low-quality parents has never really been about the family’s wealth or material foundation. It lies in how much freedom — how much room to breathe — each set of parents is willing to grant their child.
We often wonder: why is it that the higher the caliber of parents, the more they tend to reason with their children, explaining things over and over with tireless patience? Conversely, many low-tier, low-quality parents tend to subscribe to “spare the rod, spoil the child” — “no need for long conversations with kids, just discipline them directly.”
These foolish parents think that patient, step-by-step guidance is simply not efficient. Let Master Chi tell you something. Read the following sentence three times:
One of the great common traits of the underclass is the constant, blind pursuit of efficiency. One of the great common traits of the underclass is the constant, blind pursuit of efficiency. One of the great common traits of the underclass is the constant, blind pursuit of efficiency.
It’s like seeing a stock that’s shooting up and a hot market — you can’t control yourself, you have to get in and grab a piece.
It’s like seeing rising property prices and a buzzing real estate market — you ignore your own financial situation, skip all due diligence, and just buy.
It’s like seeing a disobedient child and immediately launching into verbal abuse or physical punishment — just to get the child to comply with your wishes right this moment.
And yet, reality after reality has shown us that this kind of behavior is the superglue that keeps the underclass permanently fixed at the bottom. Touch it, and you can forget about achieving anything in this lifetime.
Only parents with sufficient patience and wisdom understand: the reasoning you repeat to your child a thousand times today is not for a breakthrough tomorrow — it is for your child’s complete maturity ten years from now. Notice: it’s not today for tomorrow. It’s today, tomorrow, and every day after — all for ten years from now.
At this point, many people say things that reveal their own limitations — things like, “The kid is so young, they don’t even understand reasoning yet. What’s the point of talking so much?!”
Hold Master Chi back — I’m nearly spitting blood with frustration. Don’t worry, I’ll finish, then it’s your turn.
What? Do you think your child is going to wake up one morning, open their eyes, turn to you sitting beside them, and say: “Dad, I get it now.” And just like that, everything is forgiven, both sides understand each other, and the family lives in harmony?
Impossible. Every single day from childhood onward, a child is absorbing information and forming their worldview. Most concepts — given their level of understanding — won’t register after one or two explanations. But after ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred repetitions? They will. Here’s the critical difference between adults and children: with adults, what matters is insight; with children, what matters is patience. (Of course, you’ll eventually realize that most people around you have neither.)
That patience is what keeps you explaining, calmly and methodically, from the very beginning. After hundreds of attempts, most parents give up — but you and a portion of the middle class are still reasoning with your children. After tens of thousands of attempts, nearly everyone has quit — but you and a portion of the elite are still patiently teaching your children, day after day.
From that point on, the gap gradually opens.
Every parent must remember this piece of advice — it sounds like saccharine inspiration, but it has been distilled to its absolute minimum: a child’s maturity is a craft, a discipline. It does not need the self-congratulatory “nudges” that parents think are so clever. What it truly needs is continuous, unrelenting guidance and input from the parent.
And yet, many foolish parents always say the same classic line: “I’ve explained this to you so many times — why can’t you understand it?!”
Yes. But here’s the irony: much of the wisdom others have given these same parents, they themselves don’t understand either. Why? Because their own awareness isn’t deep enough.
A child’s lack of awareness is purely a function of inexperience — they haven’t been shaped by society, they haven’t seen how the world works. If you talk to them about “future prospects and life success,” what do they actually know? They’ve never left the school gates, never earned a single cent.
In an era when economic understanding and exposure to the world were more limited, many people used to think this was a cultural difference between East and West. Later, we realized: it’s a difference between high and low.
Yes — the vast majority of children born into lower-tier families are, in reality, psychologically castrated and constrained by their own parents.
Before going further, there’s a concept worth introducing: love and hatred can, in fact, coexist.
This is why many children, when they talk about their parents, wear that look of irritation, disdain, and resentment. That’s not to say they’re wrong for feeling that way, nor is it to deny the debt of gratitude owed for being raised. What Master Chi is pointing to is this: as you grow through life, you will eventually come to see that your parents gave you enormous amounts of themselves, suffering and sacrificing — that much is true. But none of that can fully erase the incomprehension, the conflicts, and the accumulated grievances they caused you along the way.
Consider this: some people will pick up the phone today and scream, “You useless old thing! If you give the property deed to my brother instead of me, don’t expect me to take care of you in your old age!” And then tomorrow, when they pick up the phone again and hear that their parent has passed — they will cry like a broken animal, overwhelmed with grief. Sound familiar? It happens every second of every day.
Is there hatred? Plenty of children despise their inadequate parents. Is there love? The moment they’re gone, a lifetime of memories floods back — and all you feel is grief for the filial devotion you failed to show.
Why love? However they were, your parents’ tenderness toward you — that painstaking sacrifice — you witnessed it from the very beginning.
Why hate? Their tyranny, their volatility, their coldness, their hysteria, their control, and the limitations they imposed on you throughout your entire life — you witnessed that too.
“You gave me life and raised me — yes, that was you. But the one who made me abandon my gifts and my opportunities, and who chained me to a life of being held back — that was also you.”
This is the unspoken wound of countless people.
The overwhelming majority of parents who are violent and domineering at home are, without exception, complete weaklings in the world outside. Don’t think this statement is too sweeping or exaggerated. Anyone who doubts it simply hasn’t thought deeply enough about human nature.
Let Master Chi explain clearly: why is it that once a domestic abuser, a child-abusing parent, or a parent-abusing child commits violence against someone weaker for the first time — it never stops?
Forget all the flowery language and elaborate theories out there. They all carefully avoid the most “brutal” answer.
The real answer is one word: the thrill of it.
Yes — the sheer, intoxicating rush.
When a man who has accomplished nothing in life, who is mocked and dismissed everywhere he goes, suddenly discovers that at home — with nothing more than his body and his fists — he can exert total dominance and control over another independent human being:
Do you think he won’t enjoy that?
It feels incredible. Every ounce of humiliation and weakness he’s accumulated his entire life pours out in the ecstasy of fist meeting flesh.
So when Master Chi watches some human scum abuser confessing remorse for his past crimes, always saying “it was a moment of impulse, I regret it deeply” — Master Chi is thinking: Get out of here, you piece of garbage. Give you a physically weaker woman as a wife again today, and you’ll lose control of that “impulse” all over again. Like a dog that’s tasted human blood — you don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
When an ordinary couple, fully aware they have no chance of climbing higher in this lifetime — who can’t even bring themselves to push back against a colleague’s bad attitude — comes home and discovers that there exists in this world a being who will completely obey them: a child. Do you think they find no sense of achievement in that discipline and berating? No sense of existence?
It feels incredible! So this is what it’s like to control someone — to confine them — to have a small, fragile life hold you in awe. So satisfying!
Go look at the households on any ordinary street. You’ll find that these tyrannical parents are completely incapable of sitting down with their child to explain a math problem for more than ten minutes — but they absolutely, without question, have the stamina to scold, demean, and beat their child for over an hour.
Many people naively believe that “the evil in human nature” is something only certain people possess — irredeemable monsters, through and through. But only when you’ve truly dissected and understood human nature do you realize: even the most gentle, unremarkable person carries a beast deep within — it is always there and can never be fully removed.
Violence is absolutely addictive.
This is precisely why Master Chi insists, with the greatest conviction, that children can have mediocre grades — but they must, without fail, be exposed to physical confrontation and sports. Violence is everywhere. Only by combining it with sports and physical training will you feel its feedback on your own body. Only when you know firsthand that getting hit hurts will you fear pain, develop empathy, and learn to understand, forgive, and extend tolerance to others.
Now let me address another matter that genuinely makes me furious: what a child should do when they are being bullied.
If Master Chi remembers correctly, he has written two articles on school bullying before. The central argument of both was: equip your child with enough physical strength and spirit — and make them understand that when they are being attacked and bullied, the best response is to hit back immediately, on the spot, without calculating the cost.
Of course, a chorus of sanctimonious voices then responded: “Oh, look — you’re teaching children to believe in violence. My child is a good, obedient kid — we can’t have that! We as parents will handle it!” On and on.
Ninety-nine percent of the people capable of saying that are either chronically passive individuals or spineless men. Because they have forgotten the single most important thing: the harm being inflicted on the child’s body and mind while the violence is happening.
Too many people today use their own logical framework as if it were the operating principle of the entire universe — but they will never understand what lies outside their blind spot. And that blind spot here is: while it’s happening.
Never apply adult reasoning to a child’s situation. When two adults get into a conflict on the street, the fight is quite restrained. They’re getting older, they’ve been sitting at desks — a few punches and they’re already out of breath; they also don’t want legal trouble. But middle school and high school fights? The violence index jumps several times over. Many parents who grew up as “good kids” might not understand this — go search for videos of cockfighting or dogfighting. That’s roughly the level of intensity we’re talking about.
Picture this: your child is surrounded by a group of kids. One punch after another lands on your child’s face. Not the gentle tap you give when you pat their head and worry about being too rough — these are half-grown boys winding up with everything they have, using your child’s face as a punching bag, aiming for the nose bridge. Each punch is enough to cause a concussion, a nosebleed, ringing ears, complete loss of balance. Then comes the second punch, the third, the fourth. Your child goes down. Here it comes — this is where school violence reaches its peak. Your child will have shoes that just walked out of a bathroom pressed onto their face. Then comes spit. Insults. Maybe urine. And they will tell your child, word by word: “From now on, you dog — when you see us, you call us ‘sir.’ You understand?”
Rest assured: a child raised by spineless parents will immediately comply.
Now tell me — after all of that, what are the odds your child ever comes home and tells you?
Don’t assume they will. Children feel shame and humiliation too. Or they simply think: “My parents always taught me to reason my way through things, and they can’t actually do anything about this anyway — there’s no point telling them.”
And even if they do tell you — what exactly are you going to do? Report it to the teacher? Have the other kids lectured? Do you think they’re scared of that? Have you forgotten what it was like to be a rebellious student yourself?
And finally — under either of those outcomes — what happens to your child the next time they’re targeted?
Now tell me again: “We parents will handle it when our child gets bullied! My child is a good kid!”
Good? So they deserve it? Because “good” here means zero resistance, zero ability to fight back. How lovely. How perfect. Unless you transfer them to another school, your child had better prepare to spend the next few years as a completely broken and terrified creature. Two or three years of that kind of fear and horror in school is absolutely sufficient to destroy any vibrant, spirited child.
So what’s the only way to break the cycle?
The instant the bullying begins — the very moment it starts — your child throws a punch. Even if it’s five against one: I will make sure every one of you walks away with a mark. Nobody gets out clean.
Maybe your child has never been in a situation like this before. But in that moment, they will remember what you and your partner taught them: “You are my child. Our job as parents is to protect you. When a crisis happens, don’t think about anything else — just protect yourself with everything you have. We, your parents, will come afterward to handle and take responsibility for whatever follows.”
The meaning of being a parent is this: the moment you give your child life, you accept the full weight of doing whatever it takes for them. Only then will your “good, obedient child” roar out: “My mother told me — if anyone hurts me, I can fight back! I’ll fight to the end!” And that is what will protect them from being trampled.
You and your partner, though not present with your child at that moment, gave them that backbone. That was yours to give.
Of course, you don’t have to. You can tell your child to “find the teacher or come to us afterward.” But then don’t blame your child for being helpless and powerless during the incident.
Remember this, and never forget it: if your child loses the courage to resist those who prey upon them during their youth, they will never again shed the skin of the lamb. Never. Without question. Beyond all reversal.
With that, we come to the closing part of today’s article.
As you can see — Master Chi has been talking to you for quite a while now, but has really only covered three important things:
1 — Patience 2 — Awareness 3 — Self-defense
These three things might seem to lack the precise, clause-by-clause detail of the usual content — but in reality, they have already laid out the full framework a child needs from birth through age eighteen.
And at the same time, this is an assignment for you and your child to face and work through together. In the process, you as a parent will come to understand that nurturing an entirely new life is a rich, vibrant, and deeply fulfilling experience. You will come to understand how a person — every dimension of who they are — gets formed and shaped.
Truly: Master Chi has seen many accomplished, powerful individuals — the difference in them before and after having children is enormous. The biggest change is always in their understanding and mastery of human nature.
Then there’s awareness. I have written about this topic in past articles more times than I can count — and if you read carefully, you’ll notice I haven’t devoted a dedicated section to it in this piece. But if you’ve read through the whole article, you’ll see: I have already merged awareness and self-defense into a single, unified thread.
Yes — throughout the course of our lives, there are things that are invisible, colorless, yet everywhere. They have no reason and cannot be overturned. They are hidden within the instincts of human nature itself. So the question is: how do you teach your child to understand this?
Simply telling them “there are many bad people in the world” — they won’t understand it. And even if they grasp the words, they won’t truly comprehend.
Then take a page from Master Chi’s approach: weave these truths into real cases and stories, and let your child slowly absorb and come to understand them on their own terms.
Finally, if Master Chi has one last thing to say to you, it is this:
For many people in this world, the destination of their entire life is already determined the moment they take their very first step.