To aid in the development and cultivation of the thinking and reasoning powers is doubtless a very important part of a parent’s duty.  But to cultivate these faculties is one thing, while to make any control which may be procured for them over the mind of the child the basis of government, is another.  To explain the reasons of our commands is excellent, if it is done in the right time and manner.  The wrong time is when the question of obedience is pending, and the wrong manner is when they are offered as inducements to obey.  We may offer reasons for recommendations, when we leave the child to judge of their force, and to act according to our recommendations or not, as his judgment shall dictate.  But reasons should never be given as inducements to obey a command.  The more completely the obedience to a command rests on the principle of simple submission to authority, the easier and better it will be both for parent and child.

Manner of exercising Authority.

Let no reader fall into the error of supposing that the mother’s making her authority the basis of her government renders it necessary for her to assume a stern and severe aspect towards her children, in her intercourse with them; or to issue her commands in a harsh, abrupt, and imperious manner; or always to refrain from explaining, at the time, the reasons for a command or a prohibition.  The more gentle the manner, and the more kind and courteous the tones in which the mother’s wishes are expressed, the better, provided only that the wishes, however expressed, are really the mandates of an authority which is to be yielded to at once without question or delay.  She may say, “Mary, will you please to leave your doll and take this letter for me into the library to your father?” or, “Johnny, in five minutes it will be time for you to put your blocks away to go to bed; I will tell you when the time is out;” or, “James, look at the clock”—­to call his attention to the fact that the time is arrived for him to go to school.  No matter, in a word, under how mild and gentle a form the mother’s commands are given, provided only that the children are trained to understand that they are at once to be obeyed.

A second Objection.

Another large class of mothers are deterred from making any efficient effort to establish their authority over their children for fear of thereby alienating their affections.  “I wish my child to love me,” says a mother of this class.  “That is the supreme and never-ceasing wish of my heart; and if I am continually thwarting and constraining her by my authority, she will soon learn to consider me an obstacle to her happiness, and I shall become an object of her aversion and dislike.”