The headline to one “Dear Abby” column read, “Mom spares the rod and earns child’s contempt.” The letter read:

Dear Abby,

My problem is my mother. She’s too lenient! After she gets angry and punishes me, she often will apologize. Why should she, when I had the punishment coming?

Mixed-Up in Cleveland

Abby replied,

Dear Mixed-Up:

Your mother (like many others) fears you will love her less because she has punished you. (She’s wrong.) No child has ever resented punishment he knew he had coming. Discipline is “proof” of love, … Children “know” this. I wish more parents did.113

Susanna Wesley, mother of Charles and John Wesley, is perhaps the classic illustration of one who pursued discipline early in a child’s life. She believed the assertive self-will of a child must be broken at a young age by the parent. One of her rules in her “plan of education” was:

“When turned a year old (and some before), they were taught to fear the rod and to cry softly, by which means they escaped abundance of correction which they might otherwise have had.…

In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer their will.”