replace them by talks about skates! They are only intended to show
one aspect of the difference of effect produced by the two kinds of
conversation, and that the father, if he wishes to gain and retain an
influence over the hearts of his boys, must descend sometimes into the
world in which they live, and with which their thoughts are occupied,
and must enter it, not merely as a spectator, or a fault-finder, or a
counsellor, but as a sharer, to some extent, in the ideas and feelings
which are appropriate to it.

_Ascendency over the Minds of Children_.

Sympathizing with children in their own pleasures and enjoyments, however
childish they may seem to us when we do not regard them, as it were, with
children's eyes, is, perhaps, the most powerful of all the means at our
command for gaining a powerful ascendency over them. This will lead us not
to interfere with their own plans and ideas, but to be willing that they
should be happy in their own way. In respect to their duties, those
connected, for example, with their studies, their serious employments,
and their compliance with directions of any kind emanating from superior
authority, of course their will must be under absolute subjection to that
of those who are older and wiser than they. In all such things they must
bring their thoughts and actions into accord with ours. In these things
they must come to us, not we to them. But in every thing that relates
to their child-like pleasures and joys, their modes of recreation and
amusement, their playful explorations of the mysteries of things, and the
various novelties around them in the strange world into which they find
themselves ushered--in all these things we must not attempt to bring them
to us, but must go to them. In this, their own sphere, the more perfectly
they are at liberty, the better; and if we join them in it at all, we must
do so by bringing our ideas and wishes into accord with theirs.