Indeed, when we reflect upon the subject, we see what a difficult task we undertake in such contests—it being nothing less than that of forcing the formation of a volition in a human mind. We can easily control the bodily movements and actions of another person by means of an external coercion that we can apply, and we have various indirect means of inducing volitions; but in these contests we seem to come up squarely to the work of attempting, by outward force, to compel the forming of a volition in the mind; and it is not surprising that this should, at least sometimes, prove a very difficult undertaking.
No Necessity for these Contests.
There seems to be no necessity that a parent or teacher should ever become involved in struggles of this kind in maintaining his authority. The way to avoid them, as it seems to me, is, when a child refuses out of obstinacy to do what is required of him, to impose the proper punishment or penalty for the refusal, and let that close the transaction. Do not attempt to enforce his compliance by continuing the punishment until he yields. A child, for example, going out to play, wishes for his blue cap. His mother chooses that he shall wear his gray one. She hangs the blue cap up in its place, and gives him the gray one. He declares that he will not wear it, and throws it down upon the floor. The temptation now is for the mother, indignant, to punish him, and then to order him to take up the cap which he had thrown down, and to feel that it is her duty, in case he refuses, to persist in the punishment until she conquers his will, and compels him to take it up and put it upon his head.
But instead of this, a safer and a better course, it seems to me, is to avoid a contest altogether by considering the offense complete, and the transaction on his part finished by the single act of rebellion against her authority. She may take the cap up from the floor herself and put it in its place, and then simply consider what punishment is proper for the wrong already done. Perhaps she forbids the boy to go out at all. Perhaps she reserves the punishment, and sends him to bed an hour earlier that night. The age of the boy, or some other circumstances connected with the case, may be such as to demand a severer treatment still. At any rate, she limits the transaction to the single act of disobedience and rebellion already committed, without giving an opportunity for a repetition of it by renewing the command, and inflicts for it the proper punishment, and that is the end of the affair.
And so a boy in reciting a lesson will not repeat certain words after his mother. She enters into no controversy with him, but shuts the book and puts it away. He, knowing his mother's usual mode of management in such cases, and being sure that some penalty, privation, or punishment will sooner or later follow, relents, and tells his mother that he will say the words if she will try him again.
"No, my son," she should reply, "the opportunity is past. You should have done your duty at the right time. You have disobeyed me, and I must take time to consider what to do."
If, at the proper time, in such a case, when all the excitement of the affair is over, a penalty or punishment apportioned to the fault, or some other appropriate measures in relation to it, are certain to come, and if this method is always pursued in a calm and quiet manner but with inflexible firmness in act, the spirit of rebellion will be much more effectually subdued than by any protracted struggles at the time, though ending in victory however complete.
But all this is a digression, though it seemed proper to allude to the subject of these contests here, since it is on these occasions, perhaps, that parents are most frequently led, or, as they think, irresistibly impelled, to the infliction of bodily punishments as the last resort, when they would, in general, be strongly inclined to avoid them.
The Infliction of Pain sometimes the speediest Remedy.
There are, moreover, some cases, perhaps, in the ordinary exigencies of domestic life, as the world goes, when some personal infliction is the shortest way of disposing of a case of discipline, and may appear, for the time being, to be the most effectual. A slap is very quickly given, and a mother may often think that she has not time for a more gentle mode of managing the case, even though she may admit that if she had the time at her command the gentle mode would be the best. And it is, indeed, doubtless true that the principles of management advocated in this work are such as require that the parents should devote some time and attention, and, still more essentially, some heart to the work; and they who do not consider the welfare and happiness of their children in future life, and their own happiness in connection with them as they advance towards their declining years, as of sufficient importance to call for the bestowment of this time and attention, will doubtless often resort to more summary methods in their discipline than those here recommended.