Lay no injunction upon your child without the ensurance of a
compliance.
Your discipline should never involve impossibilities or uncertainties;
neither should you permit your child to sport with your injunctions. Every
command should produce either obedience or correction. You should be firm
in the infliction of a threatened chastisement, and faithful in the
fulfilment of a promise to reward. Many parents are always scolding,
threatening and promising, but never execute and fulfil. As a consequence
they run from one extreme of discipline to another.
In home-discipline, parents should act harmoniously and cooperate with each
other. They should be of one mind and of one heart, and equally bear the
burden. The one should not oppose the discipline which the other is
administering. This destroys its effect, and leaves the child in a state of
indecision, leading to prejudice against one or the other of the parents.
It too often happens that parents thus take opposite sides,--the father too
severe perhaps, and the mother too indulgent. Thus divided, their house
must fall. Nothing is more ruinous to the child than for the mother to
counteract by soothing opiates, the admonitions of the father. Children
soon see this, and will as soon hate their father. When one parent thus
holds the reins without the rod, and the other uses the rod without the
reins, the very ends of discipline are frustrated.
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