According to a new biography, Charles Dickens maintained strict domestic rituals that were tantamount to obsessive compulsive disorder. These included inspecting his children's bedrooms every morning and leaving notes behind if he was unsatisfied. Could this form of discipline work today?
Tim Dowling
Tuesday, 15 September
Sirs:
After completing this morning's inspections of your rooms I find there are one or two points best addressed, I think, by letter. If you will but take the time to apply yourself to the modest adjustments herein suggested, I trust that an air of domestic tranquility may quickly be restored.
1. I shall continue to maintain that while every young man ought to have a collection of some kind, bananas make a poor choice. They do not keep their value even in optimum conditions, they are not distinctively marked enough to warrant collecting in any quantity and, if anything, they seem to grow more alike with age. I have suggested coins in the past, and I beg you to consider it afresh.
2. Your mother and I find it alarming that, having gone to so much trouble to supply you with sturdy beds and comfortable mattresses, one of you still chooses to sleep on the floor under a towel, using a heaped up pile of Monopoly money for a pillow. This is strange, manifestly contrary, and will not serve.
3. I should also like to point out that the robot-shaped bank, the one which is meant to say "Have a nice day" whenever money is deposited into its slotted head, does in fact say "Have a nice day" all day, every day, at random intervals, while you are at school. Please remedy this at your earliest opportunity, or I shall be forced to embrace a solution which may leave you unable to retrieve your savings.
4. There can be no good reason for Blu-Tacking playing cards to the carpet; there is no game I know of which requires it, unless it is an obscure form of Patience in which mine is sorely tried. Desist.
5. CDs, though they may, in your experience, serve rather well as Frisbees, do not subsequently tend to serve very well as CDs. I find evidence of CDs being lately so deployed particularly distressing when the CDs in question are a) brand new and b) mine.
I hope this letter finds you all well. I remain
Your Father
