Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1888 — PUNISHMENT [ARTICLE]

PUNISHMENT

Is Often Unjustly Administered to Children for Faults They Cannot Avoid.

•Youth’ii Companion. The chances are, young people, that in these days of “home rule” by the children you have suffered from having had too little parental discipline rather than from too great severity. Nevertheless, there are cases of misplaced seventy, and even wise and kind parents may sometimes make an error. Well does the writer remember the case of a parent who whipped his little daughter, attempting to overcome in this way her whimsical terror of the dark when left alone at night. The poor little maid sobbed herself to sleep that night. But the next evening, five minutes after she had been left alone with the, to her, fearful dark, her terror overcame her dread of punishment, and a pitiful little voice was heard at the head of the stairs: “0 napa, please come up here and whip me! I’tn so ’fraid of the dark.” This convinced the father that the child’s terror was more than a whim, and he deeply regretted his hasty punishment, which was never repeated. The following incident, related by a father, is of the same nature: “I shall never forget, though I have wished a thousand times that I could, how I punished little Mamie for continually pronouncing a word wrong—as I thought wilfully—after I had tried hard to make her say it correctly. She was quiet for a,few minutes after I had punished her, and then she looked up with a quivering Up and said: “Papa, you will have to whip me again. I can’t say it.” “You can imagine how I felt, and how I kept on remembering the look on her face and the tone of the sad little voice.”