Ordinary human experience is made up of small incidents which are of little importance in themselves but which can have great effects for good or ill in the development of character and in the establishment of right conditions for great issues. Many parents fail in these ordinary trials through making a feeble surrender of their own laws. A wise father once gave this excellent and terse advice to a mother. “First cut out about ninety percent of your prohibitions, and then rigidly enforce those that remain.”
Children are quick to detect signs of weakness, and if parents try to prohibit nearly everything and then weakly give way if there is sufficient protest, the children soon learn how to gain their ends and they repidly develop the diabolism that is within them.