Explore "The Inhumanities of Parents -- Rudeness" by Helen Hunt Jackson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"_Inhumanity_ Cruelty. _Cruelty_ The disposition to give unnecessary / pain. " -- _Webster's Dict_.
I had intended to put third on the list of inhumanities of parents "needless requisitions; " but my last summer's observations changed my estimate, and convinced me that children suffer more pain from the rudeness with which they are treated than from being forced to do needless things which they dislike. Indeed, a positively and graciously courteous manner toward children is a thing so rarely seen in average daily life, the rudenesses which they receive are so innumerable, that it is hard to tell where to begin in setting forth the evil. Children themselves often bring their sharp and unexpected logic to bear on some incident illustrating the difference in this matter of behavior between what is required from them and what is shown to them: as did a little boy I knew, whose father said crossly to him one morning, as he came into the breakfast-room, "Will you ever learn to shut that door after you?"