without any manifestation of
sympathy and tenderness for the pain and difficulties which are to be
met. Under such discipline, children grow up to fear their parents,
rather than to love and trust them; while some of the most valuable
principles of character, are chilled, or forever blasted.

In shunning this danger, other parents pass to the opposite extreme.
They put themselves too much on the footing of equals with their
children, as if little were due to superiority of relation, age, and
experience. Nothing is exacted, without the implied concession that the
child is to be a judge of the propriety of the requisition; and reason
and persuasion are employed, where simple command and obedience would be
far better. This system produces a most pernicious influence. Children
soon perceive the position, thus allowed them, and take every advantage
of it. They soon learn to dispute parental requirements, acquire habits
of forwardness and conceit, assume disrespectful manners and address,
maintain their views with pertinacity, and yield to authority with
ill-humor and resentment, as if their rights were infringed.

The medium course, is, for the parent to take the attitude of a
superior, in age, knowledge, and relation, who has a perfect right to
control every action of the child, and that, too, without giving any
reason for the requisitions. "Obey, _because your parent commands_," is
always a proper and sufficient reason.

But care should be taken, to convince the child that the parent is
conducting a course of discipline, designed to make him happy; and in
forming habits of implicit obedience, self-denial, and benevolence, the
child should have the reasons for most requisitions kindly stated;
never, however, on the demand of it, from the child, as a right, but as
an act of kindness from the parent.

It is impossible to govern children properly, especially those of strong
and sensitive feelings, without a constant effort to appreciate the
value which they attach to their enjoyments and pursuits. A lady, of
great strength of mind and sensibility, once told the writer, that one
of the most acute periods of suffering, in her whole life, was
occasioned by the burning up of some milkweed-silk, by her mother. The
child had found, for the first time, some of this shining and beautiful
substance; was filled with delight at her discovery; was arranging it in
parcels; planning its future uses, and her pleasure in showing it to her