METHODS EXEMPLIFIED.
In order to give a more clear idea of what I mean by forming habits of
obedience in children by methods other than those connected with a system
of rewards and punishments, I will specify some such methods, introducing
them, however, only as illustrations of what is intended. For, while in
respect to rewards and punishments something like special and definite
rules and directions may be given, these other methods, as they depend on
the tact, ingenuity, and inventive powers of the parents for their success,
depend also in great measure upon these same qualities for the discovery
of them. The only help that can be received from without must consist of
suggestions and illustrations, which can only serve to communicate to the
mind some general ideas in respect to them.
_Recognizing the Right._
1. A very excellent effect is produced in forming habits of obedience in
children, by simply _noticing_ their good conduct when they do right, and
letting them see that you notice it. When children are at play upon the
carpet, and their mother from time to time calls one of them--Mary, we will
say--to come to her to render some little service, it is very often the
case that she is accustomed, when Mary obeys the call at once, leaving
her play immediately and coming directly, to say nothing about the prompt
obedience, but to treat it as a matter of course. It is only in the
cases of failure that she seems to notice the action. When Mary, greatly
interested in what for the moment she is doing, delays her coming, she
says, "You ought to come at once, Mary, when I call you, and not make me
wait in this way." In the cases when Mary did come at once, she had said
nothing.
Mary goes back to her play after the reproof, a little disturbed in mind,
at any rate, and perhaps considerably out of humor.
Now Mary may, perhaps, be in time induced to obey more promptly under this
management, but she will have no heart in making the improvement, and she
will advance reluctantly and slowly, if at all. But if, at the first time
that she comes promptly, and then, after doing the errand, is ready to go
back to her play, her mother says, "You left your play and came at once
when I called you. That was right. It pleases me very much to find that I
can depend upon your being so prompt, even when you are at play," Mary will
go back to her play pleased and happy; and the tendency of the incident
will be to cause her to feel a spontaneous and cordial interest in the
principle of prompt obedience in time to come.
Johnny is taking a walk through the fields with his mother. He sees a
butterfly and sets off in chase of it. When he has gone away from the path
among the rocks and bushes as far as his mother thinks is safe, she calls
him to come back. In many cases, if the boy does not come at once in
obedience to such a call, he would perhaps receive a scolding. If he does
come back at once, nothing is said. In either case no decided effect would
be produced upon him.
But if his mother says, "Johnny, you obeyed me at once when I called you.
It must be hard, when you are after a butterfly and think you have almost
caught him, to stop immediately and come back to your mother when she calls
you; but you did it," Johnny will be led by this treatment to feel a desire
to come back more promptly still the next time.
_A Caution._
Of course there is an endless variety of ways by which you can show your
children that you notice and appreciate the efforts they make to do right.
Doubtless there is a danger to be guarded against. To adopt the practice of
noticing and commending what is right, and paying _no attention whatever_
to what is wrong, would be a great perversion of this counsel. There is
a danger more insidious than this, but still very serious and real,
of fostering a feeling of vanity and self-conceit by constant and
inconsiderate praise. These things must be guarded against; and to secure
the good aimed at, and at the same time to avoid the evil, requires the
exercise of the tact and ingenuity which has before been referred to. But
with proper skill and proper care the habit of noticing and commending, or
even noticing alone, when children do right, and of even being more
quick to notice and to be pleased with the right than to detect and be
dissatisfied with the wrong, will be found to be a very powerful means of
training children in the right way.
Children will act with a great deal more readiness and alacrity to preserve
a good character which people already attribute to them, than to relieve
themselves of the opprobrium of a bad one with which they are charged. In
other words, it is much easier to allure them to what is right than to
drive them from what is wrong.
_Giving Advice._
2. There is, perhaps, nothing more irksome to children than to listen to
advice given to them in a direct and simple form, and perhaps there is
nothing that has less influence upon them in the formation of their
characters than advice so given. And there is good reason for this; for
either the advice must be general, and of course more or less abstract,
when it is necessarily in a great measure lost upon them, since their
powers of generalization and abstraction are not yet developed; or else,
if it is practical and particular at all, it must be so with reference to
their own daily experience in life--in which case it becomes more irksome
still, as they necessarily regard it as an indirect mode of fault-finding.
Indeed, this kind of advice is almost certain to assume the form of
half-concealed fault-finding, for the subject of the counsel given would
be, in almost all cases, suggested by the errors, or shortcomings, or
failures which had been recently observed in the conduct of the children.
The art, then, of giving to children general advice and instruction in
respect to their conduct and behavior, consists in making it definite
and practical, and at the same time contriving some way of divesting it
entirely of all direct application to themselves in respect to their _past_
conduct. Of course, the more we make it practically applicable to them in
respect to the future the better.
There are various ways of giving advice of this character. It requires some
ingenuity to invent them, and some degree of tact and skill to apply them
successfully. But the necessary tact and skill would be easily acquired by
any mother whose heart is really set upon finding gentle modes of leading
her child into the path of duty.
_James and his Cousins_.
James, going to spend one of his college vacations at his uncle's, was
taken by his two cousins, Walter and Ann--eight and six years old--into
their room. The room was all in confusion. There was a set of book-shelves
upon one side, the books upon them lying tumbled about in all directions.
There was a case containing playthings in another place, the playthings
broken and in disorder; and two tables, one against the wall, and the other
in the middle of the room, both covered with litter. Now if James had
commenced his conversation by giving the children a lecture on the disorder
of their room, and on the duty, on their part, of taking better care of
their things, the chief effect would very probably have been simply to
prevent their wishing to have him come to their room again.
But James managed the case differently. After going about the room for
a few minutes with the children, and looking with them at their various
treasures, and admiring what they seemed to admire, but without finding any
fault, he sat down before the fire and took the children upon his lap--one
upon each knee--and began to talk to them. Ann had one of her picture-books
in her hand, some of the leaves torn, and the rest defaced with dog's-ears.
"Now, Walter," said James, "I'm going to give you some advice. I am going
to advise you what to do and how to act when you go to college. By-and-by
you will grow to be a young man, and will then, perhaps, go to college."
The idea of growing to be a young man and going to college was very
pleasing to Walter's imagination, and brought his mind into what may be
called a receptive condition--that is, into a state to receive readily, and
entertain with favor, the thoughts which James was prepared to present.
James then went on to draw a very agreeable picture of Walter's leaving
home and going to college, with many details calculated to be pleasing
to his cousin's fancy, and came at length to his room, and to the
circumstances under which he would take possession of it. Then he told
him of the condition in which different scholars kept their respective
rooms--how some were always in disorder, and every thing in them
topsy-turvy, so that they had no pleasant or home-like aspect at all; while
in others every thing was well arranged, and kept continually in that
condition, so as to give the whole room, to every one who entered it, a
very charming appearance.
"The books on their shelves were all properly arranged," he said, "all
standing up in order--those of a like size together. Jump down, Ann, and go
to your shelves, and arrange the books on the middle shelf in that way, to
show him what I mean."
Ann jumped down, and ran with great alacrity to arrange the books according
to the directions. When she had arranged one shelf, she was proceeding to
do the same with the next, but James said she need not do any more then.
She could arrange the others, if she pleased, at another time, he said.
"But come back now," he added, "and hear the rest of the advice."
"I advise you to keep your book-shelves in nice order at college," he
continued; "and so with your apparatus and your cabinet. For at college,
you see, you will perhaps have articles of philosophical apparatus, and a
cabinet of specimens, instead of playthings. I advise you, if you should
have such things, to keep them all nicely arranged upon their shelves."
Here James turned his chair a little, so that he and the children could
look towards the cabinet of playthings. Walter climbed down from his
cousin's lap and ran off to that side of the room, and there began hastily
to arrange the playthings.
"Yes," said James, "that is the way. But never mind that now. I think you
will know how to arrange your philosophical instruments and your cabinet
very nicely when you are in college; and you can keep your playthings in
order in your room here, while you are a boy, if you please. But come back
now and hear the rest of the advice."
So Walter came back and took his place again upon James's knee.
"And I advise you," continued James, "to take good care of your books when
you are in college. It is pleasanter, at the time, to use books that are
clean and nice, and then, besides, you will like to take your college books
with you, after you leave college, and keep them as long as you live, as
memorials of your early days, and you will value them a great deal more if
they are in good order."
Here Ann opened the book which was in her hand, and began to fold back the
dog's-ears and to smooth down the leaves.
_The Principle Involved_.
In a word, by the simple expedient of shifting the time, in the imagination
of the children, when the advice which he was giving them would come to its
practical application, he divested it of all appearance of fault-finding
in respect to their present conduct, and so secured not merely its ready
admission, but a cordial welcome for it, in their minds.
Any mother who sees and clearly apprehends the principle here illustrated,
and has ingenuity enough to avail herself of it, will find an endless
variety of modes by which she can make use of it, to gain easy access to
the hearts of her children, for instructions and counsels which, when they
come in the form of fault-finding advice, make no impression whatever.
_Expectations of Results must be Reasonable_.
Some persons, however, who read without much reflection, and who do not
clearly see the principle involved in the case above described, and do not
understand it as it is intended--that is, as a single specimen or example
of a mode of action capable of an endless variety of applications, will
perhaps say, "Oh, that was all very well. James's talk was very good for
the purpose of amusing the children for a few minutes while he was visiting
them, but it is idle to suppose that such a conversation could produce any
permanent or even lasting impression upon them; still less, that it could
work any effectual change in respect to their habits of order."
That is very true. In the work of forming the hearts and minds of children
it is "line upon line, and precept upon precept" that is required; and it
can not be claimed that one such conversation as that of James is any thing
more than _one line_. But it certainly is that. It would be as unreasonable
to expect that one single lesson like that could effectually and completely
accomplish the end in view, as that one single watering of a plant will
suffice to enable it to attain completely its growth, and enable it to
produce in perfection its fruits or its flowers.
But if a mother often clothes thus the advice or instruction which she has
to give to her children in some imaginative guise like this, advising them
what to do when they are on a journey, for example, or when they are making
a visit at the house of a friend in the country; or, in the case of a boy,
what she would counsel him to do in case he were a young man employed by a
farmer to help him on his farm, or a clerk in a store, or a sea-captain in
charge of a ship, or a general commanding a force in the field; or, if a
girl, what dangers or what undesirable habits or actions she should avoid
when travelling in Europe, or when, as a young lady, she joins in picnics
or goes on excursions, or attends concerts or evening parties, or in any of
the countless other situations which it is pleasant for young persons to
picture to their minds, introducing into all, so far as her ingenuity and
skill enable her to do it, interesting incidents and details, she will find
that she is opening to herself an avenue to her children's hearts for the
sound moral principles that she wishes to inculcate upon them, which she
can often employ easily, pleasantly, and very advantageously, both to
herself and to them.
When a child is sick, it may be of little consequence whether the medicine
which is required is agreeable or disagreeable to the taste. But with moral
remedies the case is different. Sometimes the whole efficiency of the
treatment administered as a corrective for a moral disorder depends
upon the readiness and willingness with which it is taken. To make it
disagreeable, consequently, in such cases, is to neutralize the intended
action of it--a result which the methods described in this chapter greatly
tend to avoid.