"How often have I told you not to do this thing, but now you have done it again." "Well, what is to follow?" secretly asks the child. "The next time you do it I shall surely punish you." The next time the story repeats itself; and so it is always "the next time." Very often foolish threats are made, which the parents know they cannot and will not carry out; and do you suppose that the children do not know as well as you that the threat you have been uttering is an idle one? We should be extremely careful in deciding what to demand of a child. Our demands should be determined by a scrupulous regard for the child's own good, but when the word has gone forth, especially in the case of young children, we should insist on unquestioning obedience. Our will must be recognized by the child as its law; it must not suspect that we are governed by passion or caprice. There are those that protest that this is too stern a method, that gentle treatment, persuasion, and love ought to suffice to induce the child to obey. Love and persuasion do suffice in many cases, but they do not answer in all; and, besides, I hold it to be important that the child should sometimes be brought face to face with a law which is superior to the law of its own will, and should be compelled to bend to the higher law, as expressed in its parent's wishes, merely because it is a higher law. And so far from believing this is to be a cruel method, I believe that the opposite method of always wheedling and coaxing children into obedience is really cruel. Many a time later on in life its self-love will beat in vain against the immutable barriers of law, and if the child has not learned to yield to rightful authority in youth, the necessity of doing so later on will only be the more bitterly felt. The child should sometimes be compelled to yield to the parent's authority simply because the parental authority expresses a higher law than that of its own will. And this leads me to speak incidentally of a subject which is nearly allied to the one we are now discussing. It is a well-known trick of the nursery to divert the child from some object which it is not to have by quickly directing its attention to another object. If a child cries for the moon, amuse it with the light of a candle; if it insists upon handling a fragile vase, attract its attention to the doll; if it demands a knife with which it might injure itself, call in the rattle to the rescue.