,
perseverance, and decision on the part of the mother to make it successful,
but, with these qualities duly exercised, it is astonishing what slight and
gentle penalties will suffice for the most complete establishment of her
authority. I knew a mother whose children were trained to habits of almost
perfect obedience, and whose only method of punishment, so far as I know,
was to require the offender to stand on one foot and count five, ten, or
twenty, according to the nature and aggravation of the offense. Such a
mother, of course, begins early with her children. She trains them from
their earliest years to this constant subjection of their will to hers.
Such penalties, moreover, owe their efficiency not to the degree of pain
or inconvenience that they impose upon the offender, but mainly upon their
_calling his attention, distinctly_, after every offense, to the fact that
he has done wrong. Slight as this is, it will prove to be sufficient if it
_always_ comes--if no case of disobedience or of willful wrong-doing of any
kind is allowed to pass unnoticed, or is not followed by the infliction of
the proper penalty. It is in all cases the certainty, and not the severity,
of punishment which constitutes its power.

_Suppose one is not at the Beginning_.

What has been said thus far relates obviously to cases where the mother is
at the commencement of her work of training. This is the way to _begin_;
but you can not begin unless you are at the beginning. If your children
are partly grown, and you find that they are not under your command,
the difficulty is much greater. The principles which should govern the
management are the same, but they can not be applied by means so gentle.
The prison, it may be, must now be somewhat more real, the terms of
imprisonment somewhat longer, and there may be cases of insubordination so
decided as to require the offender to be carried to it by force, on account
of his refusal to go of his own accord, and perhaps to be held there, or
even to be tied. Cases requiring treatment so decisive as this must be very
rare with children under ten years of age; and when they occur, the
mother has reason to feel great self-condemnation--or at least great
self-abasement--at finding that she has failed so entirely in the first
great moral duty of the mother, which is to train her children to complete
submission to her authority from the beginning.

_Children coming under New Control_.

Sometimes, howe