I know a mother who had the insight to see this, and the patience to make
it a rule; for it takes far more patience, far more time, than the common
method.
She said sometimes to her little boy, after visitors had left the parlor,
"Now, dear, I am going to be your little girl, and you are to be my papa.
And we will play that a gentleman has just come in to see you, and I will
show you exactly how you have been behaving while this lady has been
calling to see me. And you can see if you do not feel very sorry to have
your little girl behave so."
Here is a dramatic representation at once which that boy does not need to
see repeated many times before he is forever cured of interrupting, of
pulling his mother's gown, of drumming on the piano, &c.,--of the thousand
and one things which able-bodied children can do to make social visiting
where they are a martyrdom and a penance.
Once I saw this same little boy behave so boisterously and rudely at the
dinner-table, in the presence of guests, that I said to myself, "Surely,
this time she will have to break her rule, and reprove him publicly.
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