he will be grateful to
you for your solicitude, your dreams for his future, the cost of his
nursing, and the splendid dowry that you are amassing for him; such
gratitude would require from his little brain too complicated a
calculation, besides social ideas as yet unknown to him. He will not
be thankful to you for the extreme fondness you have for him; do not be
astonished at it, and do not cry out at his ingratitude. You must first
make him understand your affection; he must appreciate and judge it
before responding to it; he must know his notes before he can play
tunes.

The little man's gratitude will at first be nothing but a simple,
egotistical and natural calculation. If you have made him laugh, if you
have amused him, he will want you to begin again, he will hold out his
little arms to you, crying: "Do it again." And the recollection of the
pleasure you have given him becoming impressed upon his mind, he will
soon say to himself: "No one amuses me so well as papa; it is he who
tosses me into the air, plays at hide-and-seek with me and tells me
tales." So, by degrees, gratitude will be born in him, as thanks spring
to the lips of him who is made happy.

Therefore, learn the art of amusing your child, imitate the crowing
of the cock, and gambol on the carpet, answer his thousand impossible
questions, which are the echo of his endless dreams, and let yourself be
pulled by the beard to imitate a horse. All this is kindness, but also
cleverness, and good King Henry IV did not belie his skilful policy by
walking on all fours on his carpet with his children on his back.

In this way, no doubt, your paternal authority will lose something of
its austere prestige, but will gain the deep and lasting influence that
affection gives. Your baby will fear you less but will love you more.
Where is the harm.

Do not be afraid of anything; become his comrade, in order to have the
right of remaining his friend. Hide your paternal superiority as the
commissary of police does his sash. Ask with kindness for that which you
might rightly insist upon having, and await everything from his heart
if you have known how to touch it. Carefully avoid such ugly words as
discipline, passive obedience and command; let his submission be
gentle to him, and his obedience resemble kindness. Renounce the stupid
pleasure of imposing your fancies upon him, and of giving orders to
prove your infallibility.

Children have a keenness of judgment, and