The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1906-06-14
BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER.

mistakes when we limit the word
discipline to harshness and punish
1shment. In the minds Of far too
many parents it stands for repressive
measures, for keeping little children
still when we want to talk, and send
ing them to bed when they do what
we do from morning till night; name
ly, try to have their own way. With
older boys and girls, there are fathers
means thwarting inclination, fencing
young lbs about with rigid prohibit
lions, bouncing with sharpness upon
blunders due to inexperience, and gen.
orally making tyrants of ourselves
and puppets of our juniors.
Nature being on their side, those
OF us who have these false ideals OF
discipline seldom come off victorious.
If there is good stuff in the children,
they develop after all along the lines
that nature intends. If they have
been we'll born in the sense of a good
ancestry, If the people back of them
were clean-minded, pure-hearted and
strong-wiiled, the children will thrive,
notwithstanding the biunders of marti-
nets, and the fuss made by over
anxious self-styled disciplinarians.
What is discipline? The old prov
erb: Train up a child in the way
he should 60, and when he is old he
will not depart from it," is an apt
condensation of the whole matter. "As
, the twig is bent, the tree is inclined"
I remember seeing a dwarfed, stunt.
ed, ~ill-shaped pear tree in the orchard
n day. l asked the farmer why it
looked so different from the other
trees. Somebody stepped on it when
1T was a sapling," he answered. There
are dwarfed and stunted lives that
somebody stepped On in the formative
period. Discipline comes from the
same root that gives us disciple. 1t
implies careful, loving, gentle, faith
full, conscientious, daily teaching, pur-
sued year in and year out while chill
dren are growing up. Given an in
FAINT in the first helpless stages of its
being, and why should the parent fail
to shape and mold the little creature
according to his or her pattern of per-
lection?
Unfortunately, too many parents
defer their shaping until it is rather
late in the day., The first years are
the all-important ones. The trend for
fife is indicated before nursery days
are over. We need not go far to OBJ
serve the parsimony which trusts little
children to the care of the ignorant,
irresponsible and illiterate p~easantry
of other lands. I can think of fam
lilies Of little children whose early dis
cipline such as it is has been COM
mitted to some clumsy, untaught and
vulgar person without any fitness for
the position Of nursery maid, except
that she possesses a certain measure of
rough kindness. II we would have
well-bred young people, If Wa would
see our sons and daughters growing
around is in beauty and comeliness
and good behavior, we must not dele
gate their first instruction in the arts
of civilized life to those who are not
at least our equals in refinement.
Fathers and mothers should either
personally train the children, or en-
gage as helpers tutors and governesses,
people socially their equals.
II you would see what discipline does
for those who come under it's sway,
pay a visit to Annapolis or West Point.
Those young men than whom none are
more entitled to be the pride of the
republic, have been subjected to a dis
cipline that is never relaxed, that omits
attention to no detail, that insists on
obedience, truth and honor, and on the
most complete promptness and pune
tuality. We have no finer gentlemen
than the men of the army and navy.
They prove what discipline can do.
Parental discipline in the household
is too often a thing of impulse; parents
do not pull together. If the father is
severe, the mother n%eutraliZes his
strictness by her indulgence. If the
mother be disposed to rigid require
ments, the father renders her efforts
abortive by making fun Of her, or set
ting her authority aside. When par
ents disagree as to spirit and efforts,
they should do sc in private and at
least in the presence Of the children
should act and speak in entire har-
mony.
/ knew a group OF clever children
who, when playing at some distance
from the house and hearing a call,
would stop short, look at n another
and ask, seriously: "Is it mother, or
is it daddy?" II it were the former,
they TRANQUILITY continued their play;
II the latter, they rushed homeward 3;
double-Quick speed. They knew that
mothers call could be indefinitely dis
regarded, but that 1t would never do
not to run when their father sum-
moned them. In this instance a wrong
was done to the children by the lenient
maternal guidance that made 1t pos
sible for the feminine voice to be un-
needed.
Whether or not YOU believe it, most
children are much fonder of the hand
that rules them with a firm and equal
discipline, than Of the other whose
government ia weak and uncertain.