Hence the first thing in discipline is timely and wholesome command. Guide and train your child properly, and you need seldom resort to coercion. Training and leading are better than forcing. By the former you establish a habit of systematic obedience which will soon become a pleasure to the child. By the latter you jade and vex and burden him. But when the reins will not do alone, then the whip must be resorted to. And the question at once arises, what kind of a whip? We answer, not such as you use to your horses and oxen in the team,—not the horse-whip. Corporeal punishment should be used only as a last resort, when all other corrections have failed, when the child becomes an outlaw, and his reprobate heart can be reached only through the infliction of bodily pain. As a general thing it is even then unavailing, because too mechanical to produce permanent good, and not adapted to mental and moral reformation.
Sometimes, however, there is necessity in the use of this rod. "Every child," says Dr. South, "has some brute in it, and some man in it, and just in proportion to the brute we must whip it." When thus necessary we should not shrink from this kind of correction. "It is pusillanimity, as well as folly, to shrink from the crushing of the egg, but to wait composedly for the hatching of the viper." Yet, on the other hand, in the language of Dr. Bell, "a maximum of attainment can be made only by a minimum of punishment."
In the discipline of home, whether by guidance or by forcing, whether by the rein or the rod, much depends upon the manner in which it is administered. It should always be adapted to the peculiar character and offense of the child. You can restrain some children better by kind words and promises than by rough admonitions and threats. Study, therefore, the peculiarities of your child, and prudently apportion the correction to the offense. If there are sincere penitence and confession, the correction should be purely moral. Let the object of every correction be to produce penitence and reformation of heart as well as of conduct, and a hatred of the offense. Always execute your threats and fulfill your promises at the time and on the occasion designated. Threaten as little as possible, and be not hasty in your threats. Treat your children as rational and moral beings:
"Be obeyed when thou commandest, but command not often;
Spare not, if thy word hath passed for punishment;
Let not thy child see thee humbled, nor learn to think thee false."
Always examine the offense before you punish. See whether it is of ignorance or not,—whether of the head or the heart,—whether intentional or accidental. Examine his motives in committing the offense. If you find he merits correction, before you inflict it, lay before him the nature and enormity of the offense, wherein he disobeyed, the guilt of that disobedience, its consequences, and your duty to correct him for it.
Never correct in a state of anger. Some correct only when they are in a violent passion. This is ruling from passion, not from principle. It is like administering medicine scalding hot, which rather burns than cures. Be judicious and kind in all your discipline; otherwise you may engender in your child the very propensities and improprieties of action you desire to eradicate. A mild rebuke in the season of calmness, is better than a rod in the heat of passion. Let your children know and see that all your discipline is for their own good,—to arrest them from danger and ruin, and to train them up in the way God would have them go. Let your words and deeds show this in the form of parental kindness and sympathy and solicitude. This will do more than the angry look, the stormy threat, and the cruel lash.
"By kindness the wolf and the zebra become docile as the spaniel and the horse;
The kite feedeth with the starling under the law of kindness;