Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young | Page 6

uncle that they had found the two apples, and so he would give them three more, which he would take from the tree; whereas, if he knew that they had already had one apiece, then he would only give them two more. Ernest said that his uncle would ask them about it. Anna said, 'No matter, we can tell him that we did not find any.'
"Ernest seemed to be thinking about it for a moment, and then, shaking his head, said, 'No, I think we had better not tell him a lie!'
"So when he saw their uncle coming he said, 'Come, Anna, let us go and tell him about it, just how it was. So they ran together to meet their uncle, and told him that they had found two apples under the tree, one apiece, and had eaten them. Then he gave them two more apiece, according to his promise, and they went home feeling contented and happy.
"They might have had one more apple apiece, probably, by combining together to tell a falsehood; but in that case they would have gone home feeling guilty and unhappy."
The Effect.
Louisa's mother paused a moment, after finishing her story, to give Louisa time to think about it a little.
"I think," she added at length, after a suitable pause, "that it was a great deal better for them to tell the truth, as they did."
"I think so too, mamma," said Louisa, at the same time casting down her eyes and looking a little confused.
"But you know," added her mother, speaking in a very kind and gentle tone, "that you did not tell me the truth to-day about the apple that Bridget gave you."
Louisa paused a moment, looked in her mother's face, and then, reaching up to put her arms around her mother's neck, she said,
"Mamma, I am determined never to tell you another wrong story as long as I live."
_Only a Single Lesson, after all_.
Now it is not at all probable that if the case had ended here, Louisa would have kept her promise. This was one good lesson, it is true, but it was only one. And the lesson was given by a method so gentle, that no nervous, cerebral, or mental function was in any degree irritated or morbidly excited by it. Moreover, no one who knows any thing of the workings of the infantile mind can doubt that the impulse in the right direction given by this conversation was not only better in character, but was greater in amount, than could have been effected by either of the other methods of management previously described.
How Gentle Measures operate.
By the gentle measures, then, which are to be here discussed and recommended, are meant such as do not react in a violent and irritating manner, in any way, upon the extremely delicate, and almost embryonic condition of the cerebral and nervous organization, in which the gradual development of the mental and moral faculties are so intimately involved. They do not imply any, the least, relaxation of the force of parental authority, or any lowering whatever of the standards of moral obligation, but are, on the contrary, the most effectual, the surest and the safest way of establishing the one and of enforcing the other.



CHAPTER III.
THERE MUST BE AUTHORITY.
The first duty which devolves upon the mother in the training of her child is the establishment of her authority over him--that is, the forming in him the habit of immediate, implicit, and unquestioning obedience to all her commands. And the first step to be taken, or, rather, perhaps the first essential condition required for the performance of this duty, is the fixing of the conviction in her own mind that it is a duty.
Unfortunately, however, there are not only vast numbers of mothers who do not in any degree perform this duty, but a large proportion of them have not even a theoretical idea of the obligation of it.
An Objection.
"I wish my child to be governed by reason and reflection," says one. "I wish him to see the necessity and propriety of what I require of him, so that he may render a ready and willing compliance with my wishes, instead of being obliged blindly to submit to arbitrary and despotic power."
She forgets that the faculties of reason and reflection, and the power of appreciating "the necessity and propriety of things," and of bringing considerations of future, remote, and perhaps contingent good and evil to restrain and subdue the impetuousness of appetites and passions eager for present pleasure, are qualities that appear late, and are very slowly developed, in the infantile mind; that no real reliance whatever can be placed upon them in the early years of life; and that, moreover, one of the chief and expressly intended objects of the establishment of the parental relation