All vehemence is weak; quiet, clear decision is strong; and the child not only feels the strength of the quiet, decisive action, but he feels the help from his mother's quiet atmosphere which comes with it. If all parents realized fully that the work they do for their children should be done in themselves first, there would soon be a new and wonderful influence perceptible all about us.
The greatest difficulty often comes from the fact that children have inherited the evil tendencies of their parents, which the parents themselves have not acknowledged and overcome. In these cases, most of all, the work to be done for the child must first be done in the parents.
A very poor woman, who was living in one room with her husband and three children, once expressed her delight at having discovered how to manage her children better: "I see!" she said, "the more I hollers, the more the children hollers; now I am not going to holler any more."
There is "hollering" of the voice, and there is "hollering" of the spirit, and children echo and suffer from both.
The same thing is true from the time they are born until they are grown up, when it should be right for them to be their own fathers and mothers, so far as their characters are concerned, that they can receive the greatest possible help from their parents through quiet non-resistance to their naughtiness, combined with firm decision in demanding obedience to law,--a decision which will derive its weight and influence from the fact that the parents themselves obey the laws to which they require obedience.
Thus will the soul of the mother be mother to the soul of her child, and the development of mother and child be happily interdependent.
It is, of course, not resisting to be grieved at the child's naughtiness,--for that grief must come as surely as penitence for our own wrongdoing.
The true dropping of resistance brings with it a sense that the child is only given to us in trust, and an open, loving willingness leaves us free to learn the highest way in which the trust may be fulfilled.
