n.

It is true that the children are often under foot when she is busiest,
when, indeed, she is so distracted as to not be able to think about
manners, but if she would acknowledge to herself that she ought to be
polite, and that when she fails to be, it is because she has yielded
to temptation; and if, moreover, she would make this acknowledgment
openly to her children and beg their pardon for her sharp words, as
she expects them to beg hers, the spirit of courtesy, at any rate,
would prevail in her house, and would influence her children. Children
are lovingly ready to forgive an acknowledged fault, but keen-eyed
beyond belief in detecting a hidden one.

[Sidenote: Double Standard]

(3.) The most fertile cause of impudence is assumption of a double
standard of morality, one for the child and another for the adult.
Impudence is, at bottom, the child's perception of this injustice, and
his rebellion against it. When to this double standard,--a standard
that measures up gossip, for instance, right for the adult and
listening to gossip as wrong for the child--when to this is added the
assumption of infallibility, it is no wonder that the child fairly
rages.

For, if we come to analyze them, what are the speeches which find so
objectionable? "Do it yourself, if you are so smart." "Maybe, I am
rude, but I'm not any ruder than you are." "I think you are just as
mean as mean can be; I wouldn't be so mean!" Is this last speech any
worse in reality than "You are a very naughty little girl, and I am
ashamed of you," and all sorts of other expressions of candid adverse
opinion? Besides these forms of impudence, there is the peculiarly
irritating: "Well, you do it yourself; I guess I can if you can."

In all these cases the child is partly it the right. He is stating
the feet as he sees it, and violently asserting that you are not
privileged to demand more of him than of yourself. The evil comes in
through the fact that he is doing it in an ugly spirit. He is not only
desirous of stating the truth, but of putting you in the wrong and
himself in the right, and if this hurts you, so much the better. All
this is because he is angry, and therefor, in impudence, the true evil
to be overcome is the evil of anger.

[Sidenote: Example]

Show him, then, that you are open to correction. Admit the justice
of the rebuke as far as you can, and set him an example of careful
courtesy and forbearance at the very moment when these traits