They say a woman always insists on having the last word. I am even worse than that, for I take both the first and the last. A good letter from "Aunt Hope" on child training follows these paragraphs, but I am proceeding it with my answer. It all hinges on the old saying, "spare the rod and spoil the child," which "Ruth Vernon," a modern young mother, denounced in this column not so long ago. Aunt Hope answers her argument with the sound doctrine of the older generation. Aunt Hope quotes Scripture to show that it is our duty to "chasten" our children. It seems to me that the whole matter rests on how we interpret the word "chasten." If it means literally using the rod, Aunt Hope is right: if it can be used in a milder sense, Ruth Vernon, and I are also right.
Now, I am not one of those ultramodern mother mothers, who never says "don't!" to a child. I consider "don't" a very powerful emergency brake. But I do not run a car with the emergency brake on all the time. The more we can avoid the use of "don't" in every day routine, the more powerful the world will be on special occasions.
There is nothing I admire more than a mother who can be severely strict with her children, and yet at the same time kind and just. That sort of mother builds the strongest of characters. Many of us, however, are stern and strict at the wrong time in the wrong place, and are not consistently rigorous at all. I must confess that the only times I've spanked my children have been when I was mad. Literally, plumb irritated, and mad and too rushed to take time to think. By the time I cooled down, I could think of much better ways to handle the situation than corporal punishment. Don't you think a lot of us are that way? And don't you think it is a dangerous habit to get into of spanking the child impulsively in the heat of anger? Or it is a habit that grows like this scolding and nagging habit. It is likely to drive a child into deceitfulness, rather than teach him the error of his ways.
"Chasten"
If we mean by "chasten" to punish a child by using the natural laws of consequences, then Aunt Hope is right. The younger a child learns to meet disappointments and recognize the fact that he cannot have mother and daddy protect him from life itself, the better off he is. It is punishment enough for him to go without a play thing if he has lost or destroyed it. A spanking will hardly impress the lesson on him more. If he has to give up a coveted trip to town because of rain, which not even mother, or daddy can help, the mother can say "well, that gives us a chance to paste those pictures in the scrapbook." But, if the child prefers to make a scene about it, let him go to his room and weep. He will soon come to the philosophical conclusion that he loses more than he gains by rebelling against nature. A nickel or some candy, or a glowing promise of future treat, will only aggravate his troubles. If he gets "anything to make him stop crying," he will assume that whenever he can't have what he wants he will get something just as good by stirring up a fuss, and he will likely grow up believing that the world owes him a living. In such a case as this a mother need not a rod. All she needs is cheerfulness, gentleness and a little patience. Nature will do the chastening.
Some way, I cannot think that the apostle Paul meant for us to use the rod on these tender little bodies before we had given them a chance to learn the why and wherefore. Later, if they persist in evil, the rod may be the only cure. Paul wrote to the Ephesians "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening, in the admonition of the Lord," I think he means, for us to be watchful and gentle, and tender to the babies, and let the Lord through natural laws be the chastener, for Paul also wrote to the Ephesians "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and railing be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another tenderhearted, forgiving each other even as God also forgave you."