intermittently and capriciously, with the result that the child's
judgment is clouded and confused. Conduct which is received
indulgently or even encouraged at one moment is sternly reprimanded at
another. Every one who has the management of little children must
above all see to it, whatever the degree of stringency in discipline
which they decide to adopt, that their attitude is always consistent.
The less that is forbidden the better, but when the line is drawn it
must be adhered to. If once the child learns that the force which
restrains him can be made to yield to his own efforts, the future is
black indeed. From that day he sets himself to strike down authority
with a success which encourages him to further efforts. I have known a
child of five years terrorise his mother and get his own way by the
threat, "I will go into one of my furies."

The difficulty of successfully enforcing authority, and of carrying
off the victory if that authority is disputed, should make mothers
wary of drawing too tight a rein. The conflict between parent and
child must always be distressing and must always be prejudicial to the
child, whatever its outcome, whether it brings to him victory or
defeat. He learns from it either an undue sense of power or an undue
sense of helplessness, and the knowledge of neither is to his benefit.
Although frequently worsted in the conflict, nurses will often return
to the attack again and again and hour after hour, restraining,
reproving, forbidding, and even threatening. Nor do they see that they
are really goading the children into disobedience by their misdirected
efforts at enforcing discipline. Reproof, like punishment, loses all
its effect when it is too often repeated, and the child soon takes it
for granted that all he does is wrong, and that grown-up people exist
only to thwart his will, to misunderstand, to reprove, or even to
punish.