The nervous twitching at the bit and the attempt to govern them by reason of your superior age or knowledge aggravates the evil.

It is a mistake to forget that children are human beings, with sensitive feelings like our own, only not as hardened and used to the ways of this unsympathetic world as we are.

Their government must have love at its beginning, continuing and ending if it would be successful.
You may as well recognize the fact first as last that you are laboring under a disadvantage in that the hyphenized "step" must precede your name of mother.

This being the case, you have need to add to your love patience, and to that tact, and to that pity.

If the children exasperate you, do not let them guess it.