Extract FIVE from:
This
excerpt from the book begins the explanation of how parental authority should be
exercised and the dangers in failing to demonstrate authority to children:
Let
no reader fall into the error of supposing that the mother’s making her
authority the basis of her government renders it necessary for her to assume a
stern and severe aspect towards her children, in her intercourse with them; or
to issue her commands in a harsh, abrupt, and imperious manner; or always to
refrain from explaining, at the time, the reasons for a command or a
prohibition. The more gentle the manner, and the more kind and courteous the
tones in which the mother’s wishes are expressed, the better, provided only
that the wishes, however expressed, are really the mandates of an authority
which is to be yielded to at once without question or delay. She may say,
“Mary, will you please to leave your doll and take this letter for me into the
library to your father?” or, “Johnny, in five minutes it will be time for
you to put your blocks away to go to bed; I will tell you when the time is
out;” or, “James, look at the clock” - to call his attention to the fact
that the time is arrived for him to go to school. No matter, in a word, under
how mild and gentle a form the mother’s commands are given, provided only that
the children are trained to understand that they are at once to be obeyed.
A
large class of mothers are deterred from making any efficient effort to
establish their authority over their children for fear of thereby alienating
their affections. “I wish my child to love me,” says a mother of this class.
“That is the supreme and never-ceasing wish of my heart; and if I am
continually thwarting and constraining her by my authority, she will soon learn
to consider me an obstacle to her happiness, and I shall become an object of her
aversion and dislike.”
There
is some truth, no doubt, in this statement thus expressed, but it is not
applicable to the case, for the reason that there is no need whatever for a
mother’s “continually thwarting and constraining” her children in her
efforts to establish her authority over them. The love which they will feel for
her will depend in a great measure upon the degree in which she sympathizes and
takes part with them in their occupations, their enjoyments, their
disappointments, and their sorrows, and in which she indulges their child-like
desires. The love, however, awakened by these means will be not weakened nor
endangered, but immensely strengthened and confirmed, by the exercise on her
part of a just and equable, but firm and absolute, authority. This must always
be true so long as a feeling of respect for the object of affection tends to
strengthen, and not to weaken, the sentiment of love. The mother who does not
govern her children is bringing them up not to love her, but to despise her.
If
she is inconsiderate enough to attempt to win a place in her children’s hearts
by the sacrifice of her maternal authority, she will never succeed in securing a
place there that is worth possessing. The
children will all, girls and boys alike, see and understand her weakness, and
they will soon learn to look down upon her, instead of looking up to her, as
they ought. As they grow older they will all become more and more unmanageable.
If
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of fun – or to correct any tendency they are already developing toward
belligerence or rebelliousness – then don’t forget:
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