The way you control a plant by tying it next to a stick

Satsvarupa Dasa: Prabhupada used to reprimand me gently, with a few sarcastic words. When he once bore down on me in a concentrated way, I broke into tears. Harikesa Maharaja swears that his relationship with Prabhupada was always biff, bam, kick, smash. But Nanda Kumara, Upendra and Srutakirti told me that they rarely got reprimanded by Srila Prabhupada, even when they did something wrong. For his own reasons, Prabhupada taught his disciples in different ways. It would be too simple to say that the ones he reprimanded heavily were more faulty, or those he reprimanded were more in his favor. He saw the temperaments of his disciples and he knew what they could bear and how to teach them best. Prabhupada said that in teaching children, you should apply continual pressure, the way you control a plant by tying it next to a stick. By a gentle, continual pressure, the plant or child will be kept in control, but if you try to apply sporadic pressure of a more violent sort, you may break him.