(2) Make right-doing delightful.

(3) Establish Fichte’s doctrine of right, see page 64.

(4) Teach by example rather than precept.  Therefore respect the child’s rights as you wish him to respect yours.

(5) Use a low voice, especially in commanding or rebuking.

(6) In chiding, remember Richter’s rule and rebuke the sin and not the sinner.

(7) Confess your own misdeeds, by this means and others securing the confidence of your children.

Finally, remember that this is an imperfect world, you are an imperfect mother, and the best results you can hope for are likely to be imperfect.  But the results may be so founded upon eternal principles as to tend continually to give place to better and better results.

[Footnote A:  Pestalozzi, Educator, Philosopher, and Reformer.  Author of “How Gertrude Teaches Her Children.”]

[Footnote B:  “What a Young Girl Ought to Know” and “What a Young Woman Ought to Know” by Dr. Mary Wood Allen.  “What a Young Boy Ought to Know,” “What a Young Man Ought to Know,” by Rev. Sylvanus Stall.]

PLAY

Although Froebel is best known as the educator who first took advantage of play as a means of education, he was not, in reality, the first to recognize the high value of this spontaneous activity.  He was indeed the first to put this recognition into practice and to use the force generated during play to help the child to a higher state of knowledge.

But before him Plato said that the plays of children have the mightiest influence on the maintenance or the non-maintenance of laws; that during the first three years the child should be made “cheerful” and “kind” by having sorrow and fear and pain kept away from him and by soothing him with music and rhythmic movements.

[Sidenote:  Aristotle]

Aristotle held that children until they were five years old “should be taught nothing, not even necessary labor, lest it hinder growth, but should be accustomed to use much motion as to avoid a indolent habit of body, and this,” he added, “can he acquired by various means, among others by play, which ought to be neither illiberal, nor laborious, or lazy.”

[Sidenote:  Luther]

Luther rebukes those who despise the plays of children and says that Solomon did not prohibit scholars from play at the proper time.  Fenelon, Locke, Schiller, and Richter all admit the deep significance of this universal instinct of youth.

Preyer, speaking not as a philosopher or educator, but as a scientist, mentions “the new kinds of pleasurable sensations with some admixture of intellectual elements,” which are gained when the child gradually begins to play.  Much that is called play he considers true experimenting, especially when the child is seen to be studying the changes produced by his own activity, as when he tears paper into small bits, shakes a bunch of keys, opens and shuts a box, plays with sand, and empties bottles, and throws stones into the water.  “The zeal with which these seemingly aimless movements are executed is remarkable.  The sense of gratification must be very great, and is principally due to the feeling of his own power, and of being the cause of the various changes.”