A very poor woman, who was living in one room with her husband and
three children, once expressed her delight at having discovered how
to manage her children better: "I see!" she said, "the more I
hollers, the more the children hollers; now I am not going to holler
any more."
There is "hollering" of the voice, and there is "hollering" of the
spirit, and children echo and suffer from both.
The same thing is true from the time they are born until they are
grown up, when it should be right for them to be their own fathers
and mothers, so far as their characters are concerned, that they can
receive the greatest possible help from their parents through quiet
non-resistance to their naughtiness, combined with firm decision in
demanding obedience to law,--a decision which will derive its weight
and influence from the fact that the parents themselves obey the
laws to which they require obedience.
Thus will the soul of the mother be mother to the soul of her child,
and the development of mother and child be happily interdependent.
It is, of course, not resisting to be grieved at the child's
naughtiness,--for that grief must come as surely as penitence for
our own wrongdoing.
The true dropping of resistance brings with it a sense that the
child is only given to us in trust, and an open, loving willingness
leaves us free to learn the highest way in which the trust may be
fulfilled.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Freedom of Life, by Annie Payson Call
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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