REWARDING OBEDIENCE.
The mode of action described in the last two chapters for training children
to habits of obedience consisted in discouraging disobedience by connecting
some certain, though mild and gentle disadvantage, inconvenience, or
penalty, with every transgression. In this chapter is to be considered
another mode, which is in some respects the converse of the first, inasmuch
as it consists in the encouragement of obedience, by often--not necessarily
always--connecting with it some advantage, or gain, or pleasure; or, as
it may be stated summarily, the cautious encouragement of obedience by
rewards.
This method of action is more difficult than the other in the sense that it
requires more skill, tact, and delicacy of perception and discrimination to
carry it successfully into effect. The other demands only firm, but gentle
and steady persistence. If the penalty, however slight it may be, _always
comes,_ the effect will take care of itself. But judiciously to
administer a system of rewards, or even of commendations, requires tact,
discrimination, and skill. It requires some observation of the peculiar
characteristics of the different minds acted upon, and of the effects
produced, and often some intelligent modification of the measures is
required, to fit them to varying circumstances and times.
_Obedience must not be Bought_.
If the bestowing of commendation and rewards is made a matter of mere blind
routine, as the assigning of gentle penalties may be, the result will
become a mere system of _bribing_, or rather paying children to be good;
and goodness that is bought, if it deserves the name of virtue at all, is
certainly virtue of a very inferior quality.
Whether a reward conferred for obedience shall operate as a bribe, or
rather as a price paid--for a _bribe_, strictly speaking, is a price paid,
not for doing right, but for doing wrong--depends sometimes on very slight
differences in the management of the particular case--differences which an
undiscriminating mother will not be very ready to appreciate.
A mother, for example, going into the village on a summer afternoon, leaves
her children playing in the yard, under the general charge of Susan, who
is at work in the kitchen, whence she can observe them from time to time
through the open window. She thinks the children will be safe, provided
they remain in the yard. The only thing to be guarded against is the danger
that they may go out through the gate into the road.
_Two Different Modes of Management_.
Under some circumstances, as, for example, where the danger to which they
would be exposed in going into the road was very great, or where the mother
can not rely upon her power to control her children's conduct by moral
means in any way, the only safe method would be to fasten the gate. But if
she prefers to depend for their safety on their voluntary obedience to
her commands, and wishes, moreover, to promote the spirit of obedience by
rewarding rather than punishing, she can make her rewards of the nature of
hire or not, according to her mode of management.
If she wishes to _hire_ obedience, she has only to say to the children that
she is going into the village for a little time, and that they may play in
the yard while she is gone, but must not go out of the gate; adding, that
she is going to bring home some oranges or candies, which she will give
them if she finds that they have obeyed her, but which she will not give
them if they have disobeyed.
Such a promise, provided the children have the double confidence in their
mother which such a method requires--namely, first, a full belief that
she will really bring home the promised rewards, if they obey her; and
secondly--and this is a confidence much less frequently felt by children,
and much less frequently deserved by their mothers--a conviction that, in
case they disobey, no importunities on their part or promises for the next
time will induce their mother to give them the good things, but that the
rewards will certainly be lost to them unless they are deserved, according
to the conditions of the promise--in such a case--that is, when this double
confidence exists, the promise will have great influence upon the children.
Still, it is, in its nature, _hiring_ them to obey. I do not say that this
is necessarily a bad plan, though I think there is a better. Children may,
perhaps, be trained gradually to habits of obedience by a system of direct
rewards, and in a manner, too, far more agreeable to the parent and
better for the child than by a system of compulsion through threats and
punishment.
_The Method of Indirect Rewarding_.
But there is another way of connecting pleasurable ideas and associations
with submission to parental authority in the minds of children, as a means
of alluring them to the habit of obedience--one that is both more efficient
in its results and more healthful and salutary in its action than the
practice of bestowing direct recompenses and rewards.
Suppose, for example, in the case above described, the mother, on leaving
the children, simply gives them the command that they are not to leave the
yard, but makes no promises, and then, on returning from the village with
the bonbons in her bag, simply asks Susan, when she comes in, whether the
children have obeyed her injunction not to leave the yard. If Susan says
yes, she nods to them, with a look of satisfaction and pleasure, and adds:
"I thought they would obey me. I am very glad. Now I can trust them again."
Then, by-and-by, towards the close of the day, perhaps, and when the
children suppose that the affair is forgotten, she takes an opportunity to
call them to her, saying that she has something to tell them.
"You remember when I went to the village to-day, I left you in the yard
and said that you must not go out of the gate, and you obeyed. Perhaps you
would have liked to go out into the road and play there, but you would not
go because I had forbidden it. I am very glad that you obeyed. I thought
of you when I was in the village, and I thought you would obey me. I felt
quite safe about you. If you had been disobedient children, I should have
felt uneasy and anxious. But I felt safe. When I had finished my shopping,
I thought I would buy you some bonbons, and here they are. You can go and
sit down together on the carpet and divide them. Mary can choose one, and
then Jane; then Mary, and then Jane again; and so on until they are all
chosen."
_Difference in the Character of the Effects_.
It may, perhaps, be said by the reader that this is substantially the same
as giving a direct reward for the obedience. I admit that it is in some
sense _substantially_ the same thing, but it is not the same in form. And
this is one of those cases where the effect is modified very greatly by the
form. Where children are directly promised a reward if they do so and so,
they naturally regard the transaction as of the nature of a contract or a
bargain, such that when they have fulfilled the conditions on their part
the reward is their due, as, indeed, it really is; and they come and demand
it as such. The tendency, then, is, to divest their minds of all sense of
obligation in respect to doing right, and to make them feel that it is in
some sense optional with them whether to do right and earn the reward, or
not to do right and lose it.
In the case, however, last described, which seems at first view to differ
only in form from the preceding one, the commendation and the bonbons would
be so connected with the act of obedience as to associate very agreeable
ideas with it in the children's minds, and thus to make doing right appear
attractive to them on future occasions, while, at the same time, they would
not in any degree deprive the act itself of its spontaneous character, as
resulting from a sense of duty on their part, or produce the impression on
their minds that their remaining within the gate was of the nature of a
service rendered to their mother for hire, and afterwards duly paid for.
The lesson which we deduce from this illustration and the considerations
connected with it may be stated as follows:
_The General Principle_.
That the rewards conferred upon children with a view of connecting
pleasurable ideas and associations with good conduct should not take
the form of compensations stipulated for beforehand, and then conferred
according to agreement, as if they were of the nature of payment for
a service rendered, but should come as the natural expression of the
satisfaction and happiness felt by the mother in the good conduct of her
child--expressions as free and spontaneous on her part as the good conduct
was on the part of the child.
The mother who understands the full import of this principle, and whose
mind becomes fully possessed of it, will find it constantly coming into
practical use in a thousand ways. She has undertaken, for example, to teach
her little son to read. Of course learning to read is irksome to him. He
dislikes extremely to leave his play and come to take his lesson. Sometimes
a mother is inconsiderate enough to be pained at this. She is troubled to
find that her boy takes so little interest in so useful a work, and even,
perhaps, scolds him, and threatens him for not loving study. "If you don't
learn to read," she says to him, in a tone of irritation and displeasure,
"you will grow up a dunce, and every body will laugh at you, and you will
be ashamed to be seen."
_Children's Difficulties_.
But let her imagine that she herself was to be called away two or three
times a day, for half an hour, to study Chinese, with a very exacting
teacher, always more or less impatient and dissatisfied with her progress;
and yet the irksomeness and difficulty for the mother, in learning to
decipher Chinese, would be as nothing compared with that of the child in
learning to read. The only thing that could make the work even tolerable to
the mother would be a pretty near, distinct, and certain prospect of
going to China under circumstances that would make the knowledge of great
advantage to her. But the child has no such near, distinct, and certain
prospect of the advantages of knowing how to read. He has scarcely any
idea of these advantages at all. You can describe them to him, but the
description will have no perceptible effect upon his mind. Those faculties
by which we bring the future vividly before us so as to influence our
present action, are not yet developed. His cerebral organization has not
yet advanced to that condition, any more than his bones have advanced to
the hardness, rigidness, and strength of manhood. His mind is only capable
of being influenced strongly by what is present, or, at least, very near.
It is the design of Divine Providence that this should be so. The child
is not made to look forward much yet, and the mother who is pained and
distressed because he will not look forward, shows a great ignorance of the
nature of the infantile mind, and of the manner of its development. If
she finds fault with her boy for not feeling distinctly enough the future
advantages of learning to lead him to love study now, she is simply finding
fault with a boy for not being possessed of the most slowly developed
faculties of a man.
The way, then, to induce children to attend to such duties as learning to
read, is not to reason with them on the advantages of it, but to put it
simply on the ground of authority. "It is very irksome, I know, but you
must do it. When you are at play, and having a very pleasant time, I know
very well that it is hard for you to be called away to puzzle over your
letters and your reading. It was very hard for me when I was a child. It is
very hard for all children; but then it must be done."
The way in this, as in all other similar cases, to reduce the irksomeness
of disagreeable duties to a minimum is not to attempt to convince or
persuade the child, but to put the performance of them simply on the ground
of submission to authority. The child must leave his play and come to take
his lesson, not because he sees that it is better for him to learn to read
than to play all the time, nor because he is to receive a reward in the
form of compensation, but because his mother requires him to do it.
_Indirect Rewarding_.
If, therefore, she concludes, in order to connect agreeable ideas with the
hard work of learning to read, that she will often, at the close of the
lessons, tell him a little story, or show him a picture, or have a frolic
with him, or give him a piece of candy or a lump of sugar, or bestow upon
him any other little gratification, it is better not to promise these
things beforehand, so as to give to the coming of the child, when called,
the character of a service rendered for hire. Let him come simply
because he is called; and then let the gratifications be bestowed as the
expressions of his mother's satisfaction and happiness, in view of her
boy's ready obedience to her commands and faithful performance of his duty.
_Obedience, though Implicit, need not be Blind_.
It must not be supposed from what has been said that because a mother is
not to _rely upon_ the reason and forecast of the child in respect to
future advantages to accrue from efforts or sacrifices as motives of
present action, that she is not to employ the influence of these motives
at all. It is true that those faculties of the mind by which we apprehend
distant things and govern our conduct by them are not yet developed in the
child; but they are _to be_ developed, and the aid of the parent will be of
the greatest service in promoting the development of them. At proper
times, then, the pleasures and advantages of knowing how to read should be
described to the child, and presented moreover in the most attractive form.
The proper time for doing this would be when no lesson is in question--
during a ride or a walk, or in the midst of a story, or while looking at
a book of pictures. A most improper time would be when a command had
been given and was disregarded, or was reluctantly obeyed; for then such
representations would only tend to enfeeble the principle of authority by
bringing in the influence of reasonings and persuasions to make up for
its acknowledged inefficiency. It is one of those cases where a force is
weakened by reinforcement--as a plant, by being long held up by a stake,
comes in the end not to be able to stand alone.
So a mother can not in any way more effectually undermine her authority,
as _authority_, than by attempting to eke out its force by arguments and
coaxings.
_Authority not to be made Oppressive_.
While the parent must thus take care to establish the _principle of
authority_ as the ground of obedience on the part of his children, and must
not make their doing what he requires any the less acts of _obedience_,
through vainly attempting to diminish the hardship of obeying a command by
mingling the influence of reasonings and persuasions with it, he may in
other ways do all in his power--and that will be a great deal--to make the
acts of obedience easy, or, at least, to diminish the difficulty of them
and the severity of the trial which they often bring to the child.
One mode by which this may be done is by not springing disagreeable
obligations upon a child suddenly, but by giving his mind a little time
to form itself to the idea of what is to come. When Johnny and Mary are
playing together happily with their blocks upon the floor, and are,
perhaps, just completing a tower which they have been building, if their
mother comes suddenly into the room, announces to them abruptly that it is
time for them to go to bed, throws down the tower and brushes the blocks
into the basket, and then hurries the children away to the undressing, she
gives a sudden and painful shock to their whole nervous system, and greatly
increases the disappointment and pain which they experience in being
obliged to give up their play. The delay of a single minute would be
sufficient to bring their minds round easily and gently into submission to
the necessity of the case. If she comes to them with a smile, looks upon
their work a moment with an expression of interest and pleasure upon her
countenance, and then says,
"It is bed-time, children, but I would like to see you finish your tower."
One minute of delay like this, to soften the suddenness of the transition,
will make the act of submission to the necessity of giving up play and
going to bed, in obedience to the mother's command, comparatively easy,
instead of being, as it very likely would otherwise have been, extremely
vexatious and painful.
_Give a Little Time_.
In the same way, in bringing to a close an evening party of children at
play, if the lady of the house comes a little before the time and says to
them that after "one more play," or "two more plays," as the case may be,"
the party must come to an end," the closing of it would be made easy; while
by waiting till the hour had come, and then suddenly interrupting the
gayety, perhaps in the middle of a game, by the abrupt announcement to the
children that the clock has struck, and they must stop their plays and
begin to get ready to go home, she brings upon them a sudden shock of
painful surprise, disappointment, and, perhaps, irritation.
So, if children are to be called away from their play for any purpose
whatever, it is always best to give them a little notice, if it be only a
moment's notice, beforehand. "John, in a minute or two I shall wish you to
go and get some wood. You can be getting your things ready to be left."
"Mary, it is almost time for your lesson. You had better put Dolly to sleep
and lay her in the cradle." "Boys, in ten minutes it will be time for you
to go to school. So do not begin any new whistles, but only finish what you
have begun."
On the same principle, if boys are at play in the open air--at ball, or
skating, or flying kites--and are to be recalled by a bell, obedience to
the call will be made much more easy to them by a preliminary signal, as a
warning, given five minutes before the time.
Of course, it will not always be convenient to give these signals and these
times of preparation. Nor will it be always necessary to give them. To
determine how and in what cases it is best to apply the principle here
explained will require some tact and good judgment on the part of the
parent. It would be folly to lay down a rigid rule of this kind to be
considered as always obligatory. All that is desirable is that the mother
should understand the principle, and that she should apply it as far as she
conveniently and easily can do so. She will find in practice that when she
once appreciates the value of it, and observes its kind and beneficent
working, she will find it convenient and easy to apply it far more
generally than she would suppose.
_No weakening of Authority in this_.
It is very plain that softening thus the hardship for the child of any
act of obedience required of him by giving him a little time implies no
abatement of the authority of the parent, nor does it detract at all from
the implicitness of the obedience on the part of the child. The submission
to authority is as complete in doing a thing in five minutes if the order
was to do it in five minutes, as in doing it at once if the order was to do
it at once. And the mother must take great care, when thus trying to make
obedience more easy by allowing time, that it should be prompt and absolute
when the time has expired.
The idea is, that though the parent is bound fully to maintain his
authority over his children, in all its force, he is also bound to make the
exercise of it as little irksome and painful to them as possible, and to
prevent as much as possible the pressure of it from encroaching upon their
juvenile joys. He must insist inexorably on being obeyed; but he is bound
to do all in his power to make the yoke of obedience light and easily to be
borne.
_Influence on the healthful Development of the Brain_.
Indeed, besides the bearing of these views on the happiness of the
children, it is not at all improbable that the question of health may
be seriously involved in them. For, however certain we may be of the
immateriality of the soul in its essence, it is a perfectly well
established fact that all its operations and functions, as an animating
spirit in the human body, are fulfilled through the workings of material
organs in the brain; that these organs are in childhood in an exceedingly
immature, tender, and delicate condition; and that all sudden, sharp,
and, especially, painful emotions, greatly excite, and sometimes cruelly
irritate them.
When we consider how seriously the action of the digestive organs, in
persons in an ordinary state of health, is often interfered with by mental
anxiety or distress; how frequently, in persons subject to headaches, the
paroxysm is brought on by worryings or perplexities endured incidentally on
the preceding day; and especially how often violent and painful emotions,
when they are extreme, result in decided and sometimes in permanent and
hopeless insanity--that is, in an irreparable damage to some delicate
mechanism in the brain--we shall see that there is every reason for
supposing that all sudden shocks to the nervous system of children, all
violent and painful excitements, all vexations and irritations, and
ebullitions of ill-temper and anger, have a tendency to disturb the healthy
development of the cerebral organs, and may, in many cases, seriously
affect the future health and welfare, as well as the present happiness, of
the child.
It is true that mental disturbances and agitations of this kind can not be
wholly avoided. But they should be avoided as far as possible; and the
most efficient means for avoiding them is a firm, though calm and gentle,
establishment and maintenance of parental authority, and not, as many
mothers very mistakingly imagine, by unreasonable indulgences, and
by endeavors to manage their children by persuasions, bribings, and
manoeuvrings, instead of by commands. The most indulged children, and the
least governed, are always the most petulant and irritable; while a strong
government, if regular, uniform, and just, and if administered by gentle
measures, is the most effectual of all possible instrumentalities for
surrounding childhood with an atmosphere of calmness and peace.
In a word, while the mother is bound to do all in her power to render
submission to her authority easy and agreeable to her children, by
softening as much as possible the disappointment and hardship which her
commands sometimes occasion, and by connecting pleasurable ideas and
sensations with acts of obedience on the part of the child, she must not
at all relax the authority itself, but must maintain it under all
circumstances in its full force, with a very firm and decided, though still
gentle hand.