Throughout the Victorian Era, the ideas with regards to disciplining children were varied, and while many experts believed that you needed to chastise your children to make them obedient, others felt that love and kindness were the best tools. Adopting the principles of the First Nations, many Canadian parents led by example and gave respect in order to earn it.
But whatever they were doing, it was working and though in 1853, Mrs. Moodie's In the Clearing sates that Canadian children spoke to their parents in a "too familiar tone", most visitors agreed that "Canadian children were less bold than those across the border."
In 1894, Light on Dark Corners offered the following advice:
start, bears no relation to actual obedience. The inner firmness, that sees and feels a moral conviction and expects obedience, is only disguised and defeated by bluster. The more calm and direct it is, the greater certainty it has of dominion.
2. FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SMALL CHILDREN - For the
government of small children speak only in the authority of love, yet authority, loving and to be obeyed. The most important lesson to impart is obedience to authority as authority. The question of salvation with most children will be settled as soon as they learn to obey parental authority. It establishes a habit and order of mind that is ready to accept divine authority. Children that are never made to obey are left to drift into the seat of passion where the pressure for surrender only tends to drive them at greater speed from the haven of safety.
4. EMPHASIZE INTEGRITY - Keep the moral tissues tough in integrity; then it will hold a hook of obligations when once set in a sure place. There is nothing more vital. Shape all your experiments to preserve the integrity. Do not so reward it that it becomes mercenary. Turning State's evidence (tattle-taling) is a dangerous experiment in morals. Prevent deceit from succeeding.
5. GUARD MODESTY - To be brazen is to imperil some of the best elements of character. Modesty may be strengthened into a becoming confidence, but brazen facedness can seldom be toned down into decency; it requires the miracle of finace.
6. PROJECT PURITY - Teach your children to loathe impurity. Study the character of their playmates. Watch their books Keep them from corruption at all cost. The groups of youth in the school and in society, and in business places, seed with improprieties of word and thought. Never relax your vigilance along this exposed border.
7. THREATEN THE LEAST POSSIBLE - In family government threaten the least possible. Some parents rattle off their commands with penalties so profusely that there is a steady
8. DO NOT ENFORCE TOO MANY COMMANDS - Leave a few things within the range of the child's knowledge that are not forbidden. Keep your word good, but do not have too much of it out to be redeemed.
9. PUNISH AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE - Sometimes punishment is necessary, but the less it is resorted to the better.
10. NEVER PUNISH IN A PASSION - Wrath only becomes cruelty. There is no moral power in it. When you seem to be angry you can do no good.
11. BRUTISH VIOLENCE ONLY MULTIPLIES OFFENDERS - Striking and beating the body seldom reaches the soul. Fear and hatred beget rebellion.
12. PUNISH PRIVATELY - Avoid punishments that breakdown self-respect. Striking the body produces shame and indignation. It is enough for the other children to know that discipline is being administered.
13. NEVER STOP SHORT OF SUCCESS - When the child is not conquered the punishment at best, worse than, wasted. Reach the point where neither wrath nor sullenness remain. By firm persistency and persuasion require an open look of recognition and peace. It is only evil to stir up the devil unless he is cast out. Ordinarily one complete victory will last a child for a lifetime, But if the child relapses, repeat one dose with proper accompaniments.
14. DO NOT REQUIRE CHILDREN TO COMPLAIN OF THEMSELVES FOR PARDON - It begets either sycophants or liars. It is the part ot the government to detect offences. It reverses the order of matters to shirk this duty.
15. GRADE AUTHORITY UP TO LIBERTY - The growing child must have experiments of freedom. Lead him gently into the family. Counsel with him. Let him plan as he can. By and by he has the confidence of courage without the danger of exposures.
16. RESPECT - Parents must respect each other. Undermining either undermines both. Always govern in the spirit of love.
2. How often is this the case in the punishment of children allover this broad land! Death is not often the immediate consequence of this brutality as in the above stated case, but the punishment is often as unjust, and the physical constitution of children is often ruined and the mind by fright seriously injured.
3. Everyone knows the sudden sense of pam, and sometimes dizziness and nausea follow, as the results of an accidental hitting of the ankle, knee or elbow against a hard subtance, and involuntary tears are brought to the eyes; but what is such a pain as this compared with the pains of a dozen or more quick blows on the body of a little helpless child from the strong arm of a parent in a passion? Add to this overwhelming terror of fright, the strangulating effects
of sighing and shrieking, and you have a complete picture of child-torture.
4. Who has not often seen a child receive, within an hour or two of the first whipping, a second one, for some small ebullition of nervous irritability, which was simply inevitable from its spent and worn condition?
5. Would not all mankind cry out at the inhumanity of one who, as things are today, should propose the substitution of pricking or cutting or burning for whipping? It would, however, be easy to show that small jabs or pricks or cuts are more human than the blows many children receive. Why may not lying be as legitimately cured by blisters made with hot coal as by black and blue spots made with a ruler or whip? The principle is the same; and if the principle is right, why not multiply methods?
6. How many loving mothers will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict half a dozen quick blows on the little hand of her child, and when she could no more, take a pin and make the
denials can be applied according to the age and condition of the child, with firmness and without any yielding. Children will soon learn obedience if they see the parents are sincere. Lessons of home government can be learned by the children at home as well as they can learn lessons at school.
8. The trouble is, many parents need more government, more training and more discipline than the little ones under their control.
9. Scores of times during the day a child is told in a short authoritative way, to do or not to do certain little things, which we ask at the hands of elder persons as favors. When we speak to an elder person, we say, would you be so kind as to close the door, when the same person making the request of a child, will say, "Shut the door." "Bring me the chair." "Stop that noise." "Sit down there." Whereas, if the same kindness was used towards the child it would soon learn to imitate the example.
10. On the other hand, let a child ask for anything without saying "please," receive anything without saying "thank you," it suffers a rebuke and a look of scorn at once. Often a child insists on having a book, chair or apple to the inconveniencing of an elder, and what an outcry is raised: "Such rudeness;" "Such an ill-mannered child;" "His parents must have neglected him strangely." Not at all: The parents may have been steadily telling him a great many times every day not to do these precise things which you dislike. But they themselves have been all the time doing those very things before him, and there is no proverb that strikes a truer balance between two things than the old one which weighs example over against precept.
II. It is a bad policy to be rude to children. A child will win and be won, and in a long run the chances are that the child will have better manners than its parents. Give them a good example and take pains in teaching them lessons of obedience and propriety, and there will be little difficulty in raising a family of beautiful and well-behaved children.
12. Never correct a child in the presence of others, it is a rudeness to the child that will soon destroy its self-respect. It is the way criminals are made and should always and everywhere be condemned.
I3. But there are no words to say what we are or what we deserve, if we do this to the little
14. Parents of course love their children, but with that love there is a responsibility that cannot be shirked. The government and training of children is a study that demands a parent's time and attention often much more than the claims of business.
15. Parents, study the problems that come up every day in your home. Remember, your future happiess, and the future welfare of Your children, depend upon it.
16.CRIMINALS AND HEREDITY - Wm. M. F. Round was for many years in charge of the House of Refuge on Randall's Island, New York, and his opportunities for observation in the work among criminals surely make him a competent judge, and he says in his letter to the New York Observer: "Among this large number of young offenders I can state with entire confidence that not one percent were children born of criminal parents; and with equal confidence I am able to say that the Common cause of their delinquency was found in bad parental training, in bad companionship, and in lack of wholesome restraint from evil associations and influences. It was this knowledge that led to the establishing of the House of Refuge nearly three-quarters of a century ago."
17. BAD TRAINING - Thus it is seen from one of the best authorities that criminals are made either by the indifference or the neglect of parents, or both, or by too much training without proper judgment and knowledge. Give your children a good example, and never tell a child to do something and then become indifferent as to whether they do it or not. A child should never be told twice to do the same thing. Teach the child in childhood obedience and never vary from that rule. Do it kindly but firmly.
18. If Your Children Do Not Obey or Respect You in their childhood and youth, how can you expect to govern them when older and shape their character for future usefulness and good citizenship?
19. THE FUNDAMENTAL RULE - Never tell a child twvice to do the same thing. Command the respect of your children, and there will be no question as to obedience.
