Being aware that children like to test the strength of their growing influence upon us, we should try to live a serene life undisturbed by the variations in a child's moods. We ignore his little fit of discontent when it is unreasonable, and are unaffected by his heated remonstrances over some small rule of conduct, which it has seemed to us right to make. This serenity is essential to the proper performance of a parent's part in heroism and in doling out the appropriate penalty for his offence. For a parent ceases to be his child's hero when the child knows that at any moment he can, if he chooses, make her his victim. We are indeed his victims when we add to his fit by responding with our own. -- Karen Andreola in A Charlotte Mason Companion