trouble. She will perceive at once that the question is settled--settled
irrevocably--and especially that it is entirely beyond the power of any
demonstrations of insubmission or rebellion that she can make to change it.
She will acquiesce at once.[A] She may be sorry that she can not go, but
she will make no resistance. Those children only attempt to carry their
points by noisy and violent demonstrations who find, by experience, that
such measures are usually successful. A child, even, who has become once
accustomed to them, will soon drop them if she finds, owing to a change
in the system of management, that they now never succeed. And a child who
never, from the beginning, finds any efficiency in them, never learns to
employ them at all.

_Conclusion_.

Of the three methods of managing children exemplified in this chapter,
the last is the only one which can be followed either with comfort to the
parent or safety to the child; and to show how this method can be brought
effectually into operation by gentle measures is the object of this book.
It is, indeed, true that the importance of tact and skill in the training
of the young, and of cultivating their reason, and securing their
affection, can not be overrated. But the influences secured by these means
form, at the best, but a sandy foundation for filial obedience to rest
upon. The child is not to be made to comply with the requirements of his
parents by being artfully inveigled into compliance, nor is his obedience
to rest on his love for father and mother, and his unwillingness
to displease them, nor on his conviction of the rightfulness and
reasonableness of their commands, but on simple _submission to
authority_--that absolute and almost unlimited authority which all parents
are commissioned by God and nature to exercise over their offspring during
the period while the offspring remain dependent upon their care.