Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-05-06
HOME DISCIPLINE
BIZ MARaAREr E. sAsesrEa.


WE Make one OF our commonest mis-
w takes when we limit the word dis
cipline to harshness and punish
ment. In the minds of FAR too. many par
ents 1t stands for repressive measures. for
keeping little children still when We want
to talk, and sending them to bed when
they do what we do from morning till night
namely. try to have their own way. With
older boys and girls there are fathers and
mothers who fancy that discipline means
thwarting inclination. fencing young lives
about with rigid prohibitions. bouncing with
and generally making tyrants Of ourselves
and puppets OF our juniors.
Nature being on their side those OF US
who have these false ideals of discipline sell
dom come of victorious. II there Is good
stun In the children, they develop after
all along the lines that nature intends. II
they have been we'll born In the sense Of q
good ancestry, II the people back Of them
were clean-minded, pure-hearted and strong
willed, the children will thrive, notwith-
standing the blunders of martinets, and the
fuss made by over-anxious self-styled dis
cfplinarians.
What is discipline? The old proverb:
Train up a child in the way he should CO.
and when he is old he will not depart from
II" IS an apt condensation Of the whole
inclined" I remember seeing a dwarfed,
stunted, ill-shapen pear tree In the orchard
one day. I asked the farmer why 1t looked
so different from the other trees Some
body stepped on 1t when 1t was a sapling,"
he answered There are dwarfed and stunt
ed lives that somebody stepped on in the
formative period. Discipline comes from
the same root that gives US disciple. It i'm
plies careful. loving, gentle faithful, con-
scientious, daily teaching. pursued year in
and year out while children are growing up.
Given an infant in the first helpless stages
of it's being, and why should the parent fail
to shape and mold the little creature accord
ing to his or her pattern of perfection?
Unfortunately. too many parents defer
their shaping until It Is rather late
In the day. The first years are the all-im-
portant ones. The trend for life is indi-
Gated before nursery days are over. We
need not go far to observe the parsimony
which trusts little children to the care Of
tho ignorant, irresponsible and illiterate
peasantry of other lands. I can think of
families of little children whose early dis
cipline such as 1t Is has been committed to
some clumsy, untaught and vulgar person
without any fitness for the position Of
nursery maid, except that she possesses
certain measure of rough kindness. If we
would have well-bred young people, IL we
would see our sons and daughters growing
around us in beauty and comeliness and
good behavior we must not delegate 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 per-
sonally train, or engage as helpers, tutors
and governesses, people socially their
equals.
IF 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 en-
titled to be the pride Of the republic, have
been subjected to a discipline that is never
relaxed: that onits attention to no detail
that insists obedience, truth and honor
and on the most complete promptness and
punctuality. 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 neutralizes his strictness w her