Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young | Page 8

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 second Objection.
Another 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.
_Effect of Authority._
If, besides being their playmate, their companion, and friend, indulgent
in respect to all their harmless fancies, and patient and forbearing with
their childish faults and foolishness, she also exercises in cases
requiring it an authority over them which, though just and gentle, is yet
absolute and supreme, she rises to a very exalted position in their view.
Their affection for her has infused into it an element which greatly
aggrandizes and ennobles it--an element somewhat analogous to that
sentiment of lofty devotion which a loyal subject feels for his queen.
_Effect of the Want of Authority._
On the other hand, 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. The insubordination of the girls
must generally be endured, but that of the boys will in time grow to be
intolerable, and it will become necessary to send them away to school,
or to adopt some other plan for ridding the house of their turbulence,
and relieving the poor mother's heart of the insupportable burden she
has to bear in finding herself contemned and trampled upon by her own
children. In the earlier years of life the feeling entertained for their
mother in such a case by the children is simply that of contempt; for the
sentiment of gratitude which will modify it in time is very late to be
developed, and has not yet begun to act. In later years, however, when
the boys have become young men, this sentiment of gratitude begins to
come in, but it only changes the contempt into pity. And