Following are some readers' views on Jenny Holt's June 23 Zeit Gist article "My nursery nightmares":
With all due respect to the real and imagined concerns of Jenny Holt, I would like to come to the defense of the too-easily-maligned Japanese penchant for discipline and routine.
I am an Indian full-time working mother who enrolled her daughter in a ninka hoikuen (nationally accredited nursery) at the age of 9 months. Now, after almost four years, I have seen her grow from a tiny toddler into an energetic child, but one who just has to wash her hands before eating, and whose nighttime ritual will never change — food, bath, milk, brushing her teeth, in that order — not one activity can get out of place!