stance.

Children are much more sensitive than most people know, and readily
respond to the mother's state of mind; and even though the mother is in
the next room, if she is truly dropping her nervous resistance and
tension, the baby will often stop his crying all the sooner, and
besides, his mother will feel the good effects of her quiet yielding in
her care of the baby all day long. She will be rested instead of tired
when the baby has gone to sleep. She will have a more refreshing sleep
herself, and she will be able to care for the baby more restfully when
they are both awake.

It is a universal rule that the more excited or naughty the children
are, the more quiet and clear the mother should be. A mother who
realizes this for the first time, and works with herself until she is
free from all excited and strained resistance, discovers that it is
through her care for her children that she herself has learned how to
live. Blessed are the children who have such a mother, and blessed is
the mother of those children!

It is resistance--resistance to the naughtiness or disobedience in the
child that not only hurts and tires the mother, but interferes with the
best growth of the child.

"What!" a mother may say, "should I want my child to be naughty? What a
dreadful thing!"

No, we should not want our children to be naughty, but we should be
willing that they should be. We should drop resistance to their
naughtiness, for that will give us clear, quiet minds to help them out
of their troubles.

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