We are living in an epoch of extremists. This morning the suffering dyspeptic is told that he will find a complete cure in a two weeks’ fast; this afternoon he is advised that by eating every two hours he will be forever free from his ills. On the one hand is a sect preaching that prayer will bring us peace, power and plenty, and on the other is a schism pleading that supplication, in itself, availeth nothing. Here we have a group of modern disciplinists teaching that corporal punishment is a fading relic of barbaric brutality; there we find a sturdy school of old-timers telling us that if we spare the rod we shall spoil the child.

With these extremists who specialise in the stomach or in the soul I have no quarrel; but coming down to the subject of disciplining the boy I do want to point out to fathers and mothers seriously and earnestly that there is a happy medium, a middle course—a neutral and natural way.

The moral suasion idea is a fine thing in theory and it would be a moderately fine thing actually if parents were all moral suasionists, and if parents and children had nothing else in the world to do but practise it. By this I mean that if all or most parents were naturally equipped to rule by moral suasion, and, secondly, if twenty-four hours of the day could be devoted exclusively to discipline, it would be undoubtedly a commendable method of child-government. Unfortunately, such is not the case, and in dealing with the question collectively we have to take conditions, parents and children as we find them.

Nearly every parent possesses the faculty of governing to some extent—greater or less; and all children are capable of responding to it—but in varying degrees. There is, therefore, no hard and fast rule that can be laid down for the guidance of all parents, to be applied successfully to all children. However, by reducing the subject of this article first to boys, and second to the average boy, I think we can get the discussion down to a practicable basis. The little girl is here absolutely eliminated from consideration. I have studied her assiduously and at close range for a number of years and have succeeded in establishing this much only; first, that she is almost too sweetly complex for paternal comprehension, and second, that she is not amenable to the rules by which we discipline the boy.

My boy, then, is the average boy, old enough to walk and talk and understand what is said to him, moderately sensitive, moderately affectionate, moderately impulsive, moderately perverse, of ordinarily good health, and possessed of the usual amount of animal spirits.

Obedience is the foundation stone of the entire structure of discipline. There is a good deal in discipline besides obedience, but without obedience there is no discipline. It is not the alpha and omega, but is a good deal more than the alpha. Discipline is harmony. Harmony cannot be maintained without perfect obedience, because obedience is a joint affair, a partnership arrangement between you and the boy. All other essentials of discipline are ex parte. In all other essentials you are subjective and the boy is objective. You think and he acts, you direct and he executes, you furnish the plan of living and he lives it. But it is the partnership in obedience that makes this possible. Given perfect obedience, the rest is easy, because the boy’s daily routine is simply a vivification of the principles shaped by your own matured mind.

Let me repeat, then, that discipline is simply harmony and harmony cannot be attained without perfect obedience. Note the adjective, perfect, for this is the obstacle over which we are so prone to stumble. Obedience must be absolute, complete and infallible.

How can we attain it? How can we take the child-boy and so mould him that he will respond to a command instantly and unfailingly? Within him there is a natural, healthy instinct opposed to it. Within him is the natural human tendency to think and act independently, to learn by experiment, to venture unassisted and unrestrained into the unknown.

Punishment other than corporal will not always do it, because at the time when this condition must be established the boy’s baby mentality is not capable of compassing the long distances between cause and effect. At the early age at which it is necessary to establish perfect obedience, the moral penalties are too slow in action, too complex and too much dependent upon local condition to be effective. There are exceptions, of course. For example: You have a box of sweets and you tell the boy he may take one. He takes two. As a penalty for his disobedience you make him return both pieces to the box and you cast the package into the fire. There you have incorporal punishment that is instant, direct and effective; but this incident is made to order and of rare occurrence in fact. Suppose that the boy swallows the two pieces instantly, or suppose the more usual occurrence that you have forbidden him to partake of the sweets at all and he has surreptitiously eaten one. What then? Casting the remainder into the fire will not impress him at the time because his appetite has been satisfied, the desire is dulled. You may deprive him of his allowance on the day following, but the lapse of time dims the relation of the penalty to the offence. This kind of treatment works well with some of the minor errors but not with disobedience. The tendency to disobey is too constant, too persistent and too frequent, and too early in the boy’s process of development.

A mother said: “It is not necessary for me to strike my child. I compel him to sit in a chair for one hour without speaking. He fears that more than the rod.” Of course, he does, poor little chap! And that mother did not realise that she was substituting a barbaric torture for mild punishment. I reverse her reasoning: It is not necessary for me to so torture my boy. Nor shall I deprive him of his play, of the outside air, of his supper, of anything that makes for his health and happiness, nor of any good thing that it is in my power to give him.

Disobedience calls for a punishment that is short, direct and impressive. A sharp tap on the palm of a boy’s hand, or on the calf of his leg—or two or five or ten—is the only kind of penance I know of that fills the requirements. It is the one short and sure road to an immediate result. Naturalists tell us that the sense of touch is the first experienced by a newborn child. It is the first and quickest wire from the outer world to the brain. Then come hearing and smelling and seeing and long after these come the moral perceptions, the power of deduction and the distinction of right and wrong. My experience has been that this first sense continues to be the live wire until well on toward the maturity of the child—if the child is a boy. There are many men, who can undergo the severest mental torture with calm resolution and fortitude, but who tremble at the sight of a dental chair. Not long ago I was chatting with a friend, who is a dentist, when a burly policeman rushed in, plumped himself into the operating-chair and asked the dentist to ease his aching tooth. The dentist looked at the tooth and reached for his forceps. “The only way to fix that is to extract it,” he said. The officer of the law sprang from the chair like a jack-in-the-box and made for the door, remarking apologetically as he went out that he couldn’t spare the time. “That man,” said the dentist, when he had gone, “has a medal for bravery, and three times has been commended for saving lives at the risk of his own.”

It is not that the boy fears pain, but that he fears the certainty of it, he dreads the deliberate, the inevitable punishment, accompanied by no moral stimulus with which to combat it. I have known my boy to take a severe beating from another boy in a struggle for the possession of an apple—and all without shedding a tear. The spat on the hand that I inflicted was a mere flea-bite to that beating, but because of it I could leave an apple within reach of his hand indefinitely and, though he might want it ever so much, he would not touch it if I had forbidden him.

So much for the psychology of corporal punishment. Now for the practice of it.

While I may have been guilty of many literary offences, a list of “Don’ts” has not, up to this time, been among them. But as the word obedience necessarily captions an imposing array of “Don’ts” for the boy, I think his parents may be better equipped to enforce them by considering some very important ones applying to themselves. At any rate, having spoken freely in favour of the use of the rod, it is vitally important to qualify my advocacy of it in accordance with my experience and belief. Every one of the qualifications or conditions that I am about to enumerate is essential to this system of discipline, so much so that if they were not to be considered as part of it, all that I have written would go for naught and I would ask to withdraw it completely.

Corporal punishment is resorted to for one kind of offence only—disobedience. Absolutely for no other.

Corporal punishment consists of a few sharp taps on the palm or calf with a thin wood ruler.

The boy is never punished in the presence of a third person, even a brother or sister.

Punishment is never administered with the slightest sign of anger or under excitement. Any parent incapable of so administering corporal punishment should not employ it.

Punishment must partake of the nature of a simple ceremony rather than of a torture; it must be regarded as a duty, not as a personal retaliation.

Punishment is always prefaced with a simple, brief, but explicit explanation, like this: “My boy, listen: I love you and I do not like to hurt you. But, every boy must be made to obey his father and mother, and this seems to be the only way to make you do it. So remember! Every time you disobey me you shall be punished. When I tell you to do a thing, you must do it, instantly; without a moment’s delay. If you hesitate, if you wait to be told a second time, you will be punished. When I speak, you must act. Just as sure as you are standing here before me, this punishment will follow every time you do not do as you are told.”

Say no more than that. Drive home the inseparability of the cause and the consequence; let the idea of instant, infallible obedience be telegraphed to his brain simultaneously with the sting of the ruler.

Have no fear that this form of chastisement will break your boy’s spirit or will weaken the bond of love between him and yourself. Both will be strengthened by it. For one punishment inflicted, there are hundreds of kind words and deeds to prove your affection.

No child should be punished corporally other than as I have described.

To strike him in the face, to strike him at all with the hand or fist is brutal, and brutality is not only sinful but ineffective. Corporal punishment inflicted impulsively is dangerous because it lacks the earmarks of good intent.

Above all, remember this: That the kind of corporal punishment which I employ is effective, first because it is the only kind the child knows, and in no other way does he feel the weight of a corrective hand; and second, because it never fails to follow the deed.

To waver is unfair to the child. Yesterday he was punished. To-day he commits the same infraction and is not punished. Here is inconsistency and the boy is confused. If it were not deserved to-day, he reasons, it was undeserved yesterday; therefore, he is aggrieved. Every time you miss the atonement you lose a link, and the chain of your discipline is broken.

This is the chief error of parent disciplinarians. We fail to grasp the all-important truth that the unfailing application of corporal punishment is the very thing that can render punishment of any kind unnecessary. Many a boy is punished a hundred times where but a few would have sufficed had the penalty been exacted consistently and unfailingly. The right kind of discipline neither spoils the child nor spoils the rod. It spares both. It is like good dentistry. Every moment of hurt saves years of suffering in later life. And good painless discipline is as rare as good painless dentistry.

Further than this I have but little to say about discipline, for, once you have achieved infallible obedience, you are bound to achieve perfect discipline. The two words are synonyms in effect. No mother can hope for the best results if she seeks to train her boy as she would arrange her hair—to please her vanity—or as she would plan a shopping tour—to suit her convenience. Self must be submerged and the child’s future kept uppermost. For discipline is a mother’s duty to her boy. If she falters in it the boy will suffer. And every penalty that the unwatched boy escapes through a parent’s frailty, he will have to pay, many fold, in the future years.