Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young | Page 3

settled--settled
irrevocably--and especially that it is entirely beyond the power of any
demonstrations of insubmission or rebellion that she can make to
change it. She will acquiesce at once.[A] She may be sorry that she can
not go, but she will make no resistance. Those children only attempt to
carry their points by noisy and violent demonstrations who find, by
experience, that such measures are usually successful. A child, even,
who has become once accustomed to them, will soon drop them if she
finds, owing to a change in the system of management, that they now
never succeed. And a child who never, from the beginning, finds any
efficiency in them, never learns to employ them at all.
Conclusion.
Of the three methods of managing children exemplified in this chapter,
the last is the only one which can be followed either with comfort to the

parent or safety to the child; and to show how this method can be
brought effectually into operation by gentle measures is the object of
this book. It is, indeed, true that the importance of tact and skill in the
training of the young, and of cultivating their reason, and securing their
affection, can not be overrated. But the influences secured by these
means form, at the best, but a sandy foundation for filial obedience to
rest upon. The child is not to be made to comply with the requirements
of his parents by being artfully inveigled into compliance, nor is his
obedience to rest on his love for father and mother, and his
unwillingness to displease them, nor on his conviction of the
rightfulness and reasonableness of their commands, but on simple
_submission to authority_--that absolute and almost unlimited authority
which all parents are commissioned by God and nature to exercise over
their offspring during the period while the offspring remain dependent
upon their care.



CHAPTER II.
WHAT ARE GENTLE MEASURES?
It being thus distinctly understood that the gentle measures in the
training of children herein recommended are not to be resorted to as a
substitute for parental authority, but as the easiest and most effectual
means of establishing and maintaining that authority in its most
absolute form, we have now to consider what the nature of these gentle
measures is, and by what characteristics they are distinguished, in their
action and influence, from such as may be considered more or less
violent and harsh.
Gentle measures are those which tend to exert a calming, quieting, and
soothing influence on the mind, or to produce only such excitements as
are pleasurable in their character, as means of repressing wrong and

encouraging right action. Ungentle measures are those which tend to
inflame and irritate the mind, or to agitate it with painful excitements.
Three Degrees of Violence.
There seem to be three grades or forms of violence to which a mother
may resort in controlling her children, or, perhaps, rather three classes
of measures which are more or less violent in their effects. To illustrate
these we will take an example.
Case supposed.
One day Louisa, four years old, asked her mother for an apple. "Have
you had any already?" asked her mother.
"Only one," replied Louisa. "Then Bridget may give you another," said
the mother.
What Louisa said was not true. She had already eaten two apples.
Bridget heard the falsehood, but she did not consider it her duty to
betray the child, so she said nothing. The mother, however, afterwards,
in the course of the day, accidentally ascertained the truth.
Now, as we have said, there are three grades in the kind and character
of the measures which may be considered violent that a mother may
resort to in a case like this.
Bodily Punishment.
1. First, there is the infliction of bodily pain. The child may be whipped,
or tied to the bed-post, and kept in a constrained and uncomfortable
position for a long time, or shut up in solitude and darkness, or
punished by the infliction of bodily suffering in other ways.
And there is no doubt that there is a tendency in such treatment to
correct or cure the fault. But measures like these, whether successful or
not, are certainly violent measures. They shock the whole nervous
system, sometimes with the excitement of pain and terror, and always,

probably, with that of resentment and anger. In some cases this
excitement is extreme. The excessively delicate organization of the
brain, through which such agitations reach the sensorium, and which, in
children of an early age, is in its most tender and sensitive state of
development, is subjected to a most intense and violent agitation.
Evil Effects of Violence in this Form.
The evil effects of this excessive cerebral action may perhaps entirely
pass away in a few hours, and leave no