The way, then, to induce children to attend to such duties as learning to read, is not to reason with them on the advantages of it, but to put it simply on the ground of authority.  “It is very irksome, I know, but you must do it.  When you are at play, and having a very pleasant time, I know very well that it is hard for you to be called away to puzzle over your letters and your reading.  It was very hard for me when I was a child.  It is very hard for all children; but then it must be done.”

The way in this, as in all other similar cases, to reduce the irksomeness of disagreeable duties to a minimum is not to attempt to convince or persuade the child, but to put the performance of them simply on the ground of submission to authority.  The child must leave his play and come to take his lesson, not because he sees that it is better for him to learn to read than to play all the time, nor because he is to receive a reward in the form of compensation, but because his mother requires him to do it.

Indirect Rewarding.

If, therefore, she concludes, in order to connect agreeable ideas with the hard work of learning to read, that she will often, at the close of the lessons, tell him a little story, or show him a picture, or have a frolic with him, or give him a piece of candy or a lump of sugar, or bestow upon him any other little gratification, it is better not to promise these things beforehand, so as to give to the coming of the child, when called, the character of a service rendered for hire.  Let him come simply because he is called; and then let the gratifications be bestowed as the expressions of his mother’s satisfaction and happiness, in view of her boy’s ready obedience to her commands and faithful performance of his duty.

Obedience, though Implicit, need not be Blind.

It must not be supposed from what has been said that because a mother is not to rely upon the reason and forecast of the child in respect to future advantages to accrue from efforts or sacrifices as motives of present action, that she is not to employ the influence of these motives at all.  It is true that those faculties of the mind by which we apprehend distant things and govern our conduct by them are not yet developed in the child; but they are to be developed, and the aid of the parent will be of the greatest service in promoting the development of them.  At proper times, then, the pleasures and advantages of knowing how to read should be described to the child, and presented moreover in the most attractive form.  The proper time for doing this would be when no lesson is in question—­ during a ride or a walk, or in the midst of a story, or while looking at a book of pictures.  A most improper time would be when a command had been given and was disregarded, or was reluctantly obeyed; for then such representations would only tend to enfeeble the principle of authority by bringing in the influence of reasonings and persuasions to make up for its acknowledged inefficiency.  It is one of those cases where a force is weakened by reinforcement—­as a plant, by being long held up by a stake, comes in the end not to be able to stand alone.