secretiveness. Children just love to have secrets, and if there are
none on hand, they have to be invented. A child will tell another a
secret on condition that it be kept a secret; but when the secret is
told it turns out to be a falsehood--perhaps even something
libellous. Now, the child cannot feel that he has done anything
wicked, for to his mind the big thing is that Nellie promised not to
tell, and she broke her promise! If she had not broken her promise
to keep the secret, it never would have come out, and no harm would
have been done. Perhaps we have not yet sufficiently driven secrets
from our common life to demand that the children shall be without
secrets. When we set the children an example of perfect frankness
and open dealing in all matters, we may perhaps be in a position to
discourage the invention of secrets by the young people.
Secretiveness leads naturally to deceit; but it is not in itself
serious enough to make much ado about. Healthy children in healthful
social surroundings will outgrow this instinct; where the atmosphere
is charged with intrigue and scheming and dissimulation, this
instinct may survive longer, but its manifestation is in itself not
a trait that should give its concern.
Some children lie because they are inclined to brag or show off;
others for just the opposite reason--they are too sensitive or
timid. And a lie that comes from either side of the child's nature
cannot be taken as a sign of moral depravity; the treatment which a
child is given must take into consideration the child's temperament.
Charles Darwin tells of his own inclination to make exaggerated
statements for the purpose of causing a sensation. "I told another
little boy," he writes in his autobiography, "that I could produce
variously-colored polyanthuses and primroses by watering them with
certain colored fluids, which was, of course, a monstrous fable, and
had never been tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little
boy I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this
was always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I
once gathered much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid it
in the shrubbery and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news
that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit."
For the vaunting lie it is usually sufficient to defeat its purpose
by showing that the boast cannot be carried out. The braggart is
made to descend from the pedestal of the hero to the level of the
fool.
How the other extreme in disposition may lead to a "lie" is shown by
the little girl who was sent to the store for a loaf of bread and
came back saying that there was no more to be had. The mother was
very sure that that could not be, but soon found out, on
questioning, that the child had forgotten what she was sent to get
and was then afraid of being ridiculed for having forgotten. Here
the cause of the lie was timidity. To punish this child would only
make her more timid. In a case of this kind the mother should try to
cultivate the self-confidence of the child instead of punishing her
for untruthfulness.
Perhaps the most common kind of lie is the one that a child tells in
order to escape punishment. It is often chosen as "the easiest way"
without realization of any serious wrong-doing. And even when a
child is taught the wrong of it, it is still too helpful to be
entirely dropped. As a little boy once said, "A lie is an
abomination to the Lord, and an ever-ready help in time of trouble."
The first lie of this kind that a child invents comes without any
feeling of moral wrong-doing. He has only an instinctive shrinking
from pain. To cure a child of this kind of lie, we must take his
disposition into consideration; there is no one remedy that suits
all children. In some cases it has worked very well to develop the
courage of the child, so that he will fearlessly accept the
consequences of his deeds. We all know of cases where children can
be physically very brave and stand a great deal of pain if they are
made to see the necessity for it--as when they are treated by a
dentist or physician. Children of that type surely can be taught to
be brave, also, about accepting the consequences of misdeeds. With
another type of child the desired result can be obtained by making
him see that he will be happier and that his relations with others
will he pleasanter if he always tells the truth. In some children
the sense of honor can be very easily aroused, and they can be made
to see how truthfulness and reliability help human beings to get
along with each other in their various relations. A great many
temptations for this kind of lie can be entirely avoided if your
child feels from earliest infancy that you always treat him justly.
Yet a child who is neither afraid of punishment nor inclined to
deceive may often be tempted to lie when his wits are challenged.
There is something about your tone of voice, or in the manner of
asking "Who left the door of the chicken-house open?" that is an
irresistible temptation to make you show how smart you really are.
You think you know, and your manner shows it; but you may be
mistaken, and your cocksureness arouses all the cunning and
combativeness of the child. There is a vague feeling in his mind
that he would like to see you confirm your suspicion without the aid
of an open confession--and the result is a "lie." Indeed, any
approach that arouses antagonisms is almost sure to bring out the
propensity to dissimulate or even to deceive. In such cases the
mother should learn how to approach the child without a challenge,
instead of trying to teach the child not to lie.
The worst kind of lies are those caused by selfishness or the desire
to gain at the expense of another, or those prompted by malice or
envy, or the passion for vengeance. Although such lies often appear
in the games of children, the games themselves are not to be held
responsible for this. Indeed, the games of the older children, when
played under suitable direction, are likely to be among the best
means for remedying untruthfulness. Yet it may be wise sometimes to
keep a child from his games for a time, not so much to "punish" him
for lying as to give him an opportunity to reflect on the close
connection between truthfulness and good playing. Special
instruction may sometimes be needed as a means to arousing the
conscience. The lies of selfishness are bad because, if continued,
they are likely to make children grasping and unscrupulous. But it
is in most cases wiser to try to make the child more generous and
frank than to fix the attention on the lies. If he can be made to
realize that his happiness is more likely to be assured through
friendly and sincere relations, the temptation to use lies will be
reduced.
One type of lying that is very irritating and very hard to meet is
that known as prevarication. This consists in telling a part of a
truth, or even a whole truth, in such a way as to convey a false
impression, and is most common at about twelve or thirteen years.
When a child resorts to prevarication he is already old enough to
know the difference between a truthful statement and a false
statement. Indeed, it is when he most keenly realizes this that he
is most likely to prevaricate, for this is but a device by which the
childish mind attempts to achieve an indirect purpose and at the
same time keep his peace with his conscience. It is when he already
has a certain fear of lying, and is not yet thoroughly sincere and
truth-loving, that he will come home from the truant fishing party
and ingeniously tell you that a "friend of Harry's" caught the fish,
instead of saying that he himself did it. His conscience is quite
satisfied with the reflection that he _is_ a friend of Harry's.
In this stage of his career the child is quite capable of
understanding a direct analysis of what is essentially a deception,
and a good heart-to-heart talk that comes to a conclusion is about
the best thing he can get.
I hope you will not think, from what I have said, that I have been
trying to justify lying, or that I do not consider lying a serious
matter; nor, on the other hand, that you will consider a single
application of the remedies suggested sufficient to make any child
truthful. Thoroughgoing truthfulness comes hard and generally comes
late. But for the majority of children truthfulness is attainable,
although it will not be attained without a struggle. The finer
instincts often enough lead to violations of strict veracity; but
they may be made also to strengthen the feeling of scrupulous regard
for the truth.
I have tried to show that what we call a lie is _not_ always a
lie; and that some of the very methods we use in training our
children themselves produce lies. The inflicting of severe
punishments is one of the chief of these, and the most common lie is
that which is due to fear of punishment. Lies that arise from bad
habits should be treated by an attempt to remedy the bad habit. Lies
that arise from ignorance should be treated by attention to
necessary knowledge.
Even more important than the right kind of treatment for
untruthfulness is the necessity for an atmosphere in which the
spirit of truthfulness is all-pervading. Some day watch yourself and
notice how often you tell untruths to your child; how often he hears
you tell so-called "white lies" to your neighbors; how often he
hears you prevaricate and exaggerate. If you will keep track of
these things you will realize that it is a trifle absurd of you to
expect your child to be a strict speaker of the truth. Part of our
campaign against the lies of our children must therefore consist in
our attempt to establish truthful relations among adults, and
between adults and children.
V.
BEING AFRAID
The heroes of history and the heroes of fiction whom all of us like
to admire are the men and women who know no fear. But most of us
make use of fear as a cheap device for attaining immediate results
with our children. When Johnny hesitates about going upstairs in the
dark to fetch your work-basket, you remind him of Columbus, who
braved the trackless sea and the unknown void in the West, and you
exhort him to be a man; but when Johnny was younger you yourself
warned him that the Bogeyman would get him if be did not go right to
sleep. And it is not very long since the day when he tried to climb
the cherry tree and you attempted to dissuade him with the alarming
prophecy that he would surely fall down and break his neck.
Thus our training consists of countless contradictions: we set up
noble ideals to arouse courage and self-reliance--when that suits
our immediate purpose; and we frighten with threats and warn of
calamity when the child has the impulse to do what we do not wish to
have him do. This at once suggests the effect of fear upon character
and conduct. We instinctively call upon courage when we want the
child _to do_ something; we call upon fear when we want to
_prevent action_. In other words, bravery stimulates, whereas
fear paralyzes.
The human race is characterized by an instinct of fear. Very young
infants exhibit all the symptoms of fear long before they can have
any knowledge or experience of the disagreeable and the harmful
effects of the things that frighten them. Thus a sudden noise will
make the child start and tremble and even scream. And all through
life an unexpected and loud noise is likely to startle us. An
investigation has shown that thunder is feared much more than
lightning. Children will laugh at the flashes of lightning, but will
cower before the roaring thunder.
The feeling of fear is closely associated with what is _unknown_. It
is not noise in general that frightens the children, but an
unexpected noise from an unknown source. Indeed, the children like
noise itself well enough to produce it whenever they can by heating
drums, or barrels, or wash-boilers. The frightful thing about thunder
is that the cause remains a mystery, and it is frightful so long as
the cause _does_ remain a mystery, if the child lives to be a hundred
years old. During a thunder-storm children will picture to themselves
a battle going on above. Some think of the sky cracking or the moon
bursting, or conceive of the firmament as a dome of metal over which
balls are being rolled.
[Illustration: Neither are girls afraid to climb.]
The influence of the unknown explains also why that other great
source of fear, namely, darkness, has such a strange hold upon
children. Fear of darkness is very common and often very intense.
There are but few children who do not suffer from it at some time
and to some extent. This fear is frequently suggested by stories of
robbers, ghosts, or other terrors, but even children who have been
carefully guarded sometimes have these violent fears that cannot be
reasoned away.
In order to discover what it is about the darkness that frightens
children, a large number of women and men were asked to recall their
childish experiences with fear, and from the many instances given
the following may be used to illustrate the various terrors of the
dark.
One woman described her fears of "an indistinct living something,
black, possibly curly," which she feared would enter the room in the
darkness from somewhere under the bed. Another could see dark
objects with eyes and teeth slowly and noiselessly descending from
the ceiling toward her. One little boy, when he had finally overcome
fear, said to his father that he thought the dark to be "a large
live thing the color of black." A girl of nineteen said she
remembered that on going to bed she used to see little black figures
jumping about between the ceiling and the bed.
It is well known that the feeling of fear is often very intense
among children; and where it is due to ignorance it is not right to
laugh it away. Doing so affords no explanation. The ridicule may
cause the child to _hide_ his fear, but will not drive the
feeling away. Since the feeling of fear is so closely connected with
the strange and unknown, the only way that it may be directly
overcome is by making the child familiar with the objects that cause
such feelings.
In the case of young children with whom we cannot reason it is best,
wherever possible, to remove the cause or gradually to make the
child familiar with the darkness, or whatever it is that makes him
unhappy. One very young child became frightened when he was
presented with a Teddy bear. Every time the Teddy bear was produced
he would cry with terror. The mother was perplexed about what to do.
Now, as the Teddy bear is not a necessary part of the child's
surroundings, there is no reason why it cannot be removed altogether
and produced again upon some future occasion, when the child is old
enough to be indifferent to it. Very many children are frightened by
the touch of fur, or even of velvet; but this lasts only a short
time, and they soon learn to like dogs and cats.
The fear of darkness is different; we cannot eliminate darkness from
the child's experience, and we must patiently try to help the child
to overcome his fear, since he will suffer greatly so long as it
lasts. The help you give him will also constitute one more bond of
sympathy between you and your child, and we cannot have too many
such bonds.
One mother got her boy used to going into a dark room by placing
some candy on the farther window and sending him for that. Here the
child fixed his attention on the goal and had no time to think of
the terrors of the dark. After making such visits a few times the
boy became quite indifferent to the darkness.
Another ingenious mother gave her little daughter who was afraid a
tiny, flat, electric spotlight which just fitted into the pocket of
her pajama jacket She took it to bed with her, slipped it under the
pillow, and derived such comfort from it that the whole family was
relieved. The child soon outgrew her timidity.
A child who from infancy has been accustomed to going to sleep in
the dark and suddenly develops a fear of it ought to be indulged to
the extent of having a light for a few minutes to show him that
there is nothing there to be afraid of. It may take a few evenings
and several disagreeable trips to the child's bedroom, but in the
end he will be victorious and you will have helped him to win the
victory.
A child that is not in good health is likely to be possessed by his
fears much longer than one who is well. In the latter case there is
a fund of energy to go exploring, and the child thus becomes more
readily acquainted with his surroundings, and as his knowledge grows
his fears vanish. Again, the sickly child has not the energy to
fight his fears, as has the healthy child. Indeed, the high spirits
of the healthy child often lead him to seek the frightful, just for
the exhilaration he gets from the sensation.
The period of most intense fears is between the ages of five and
seven, and while imaginative children naturally suffer most, they
are also the ones that can call up bright fancies to cheer them.
Robert Louis Stevenson must have had a lovely time in the dark,
seeing circuses and things, as he tells us in his poem which begins:
All night long and every night
When my mamma puts out the light
I see the circus passing by
As plain as day before my eye, etc.
Although fear is a human instinct, it is not universal, and once in
a while we find a child who has no instinctive fear. If such a child
is not frightened he may remain quite ignorant of the feeling for
many years. I know a boy who, at the age of five, was unacquainted
with the sensation of fear, and, never having been frightened, also
did not know the meaning of the word "fear." He had heard it used by
other children and knew that it was something unpleasant, but when
one day at dinner he said to his mother, "You know, I think I am
afraid of spinach," meaning that he did not like it, it was evident
that the feeling of fear was quite foreign to him.
Many parents have a feeling of helplessness in the face of a trait
that is said to be "instinctive," as though there were some fatal
finality in that classification. But, while it is true that fear is
instinctive, it is equally true that it can often be successfully
fought by having recourse to other instinctive traits. Thus the
instinct of curiosity, which is more widespread even than the instinct
of fear, may be used to counteract the latter. Since fear rests so
largely on ignorance, curiosity is its enemy, because it dissipates
ignorance. A little boy who had a certain fear of the figures in the
mirror that were so vivid and yet so unreal used to try to come into a
room in which there was a large mirror, and steal upon the causes of
his curiosity unawares. His double was always there as soon as he, and
caught his eye; but the child lost his fear only after he became
familiar with the characters in the looking-glass. In the same way
curiosity will often compel the child to become gradually so well
acquainted with the source of his fears as to drive the latter quite
out of his experience.
We must be careful to avoid confusing fear and caution. Fear arises
from ignorance, and is not necessarily related to any real danger.
Caution, on the other hand, is a direct outcome of the knowledge of
danger. Two little boys were watching a young man shooting off
fire-crackers. Whenever a bunch was lit the older boy stepped away,
while the younger one held his ground. Someone taunted the older boy,
saying, "You see, Harry is not afraid, and you are." To which he very
sensibly replied, "I ain't afraid neither, but Harry doesn't know that
he might get hurt, and I do."
Therefore, while we do not wish our children to be cowards, neither
do we want them to feel reckless. Caution and courage may well go
together in the child's character. Constantly warning the child
against possible danger does not develop caution; it is more likely
to destroy all spontaneous action. Too many mothers are always
saying to their children, "Don't do this, you might hurt yourself,"
or "Don't go to the stable, the horse may kick you," and so on. If a
child is properly taught, he will get along with the ordinary
knowledge concerning the behavior of things and animals that might
be injurious, and he will learn to be careful with regard to these
without being constantly admonished and frightened.
The fear of being considered afraid has its evil side as well as its
good side. While it may often make the child "affect the virtue"
when he has it not, it does, on the other hand, make many a boy and
girl, especially in the early teens, concede to the demands of
prevailing fashions in misconduct, when the conscience and the
knowledge of right and wrong dictate a different course. The taunt
"you dassent" is stronger than the still small voice saying "_thou
must not_." And so Harry plays truant for the first time not so
much because he is tired of school, or because the smell of the
young spring allures him, as because Tommy "dares" him to go
swimming on the risk of getting caught and licked. Harry yields for
fear of being called a "cowardy custard."
It is important to guard against the moral effect of fear when it is
directed against the judgments of others. By always referring the
child to "what others will think" of him, we are likely to make
moral cowards. A child can be taught to refer to his own conscience
and to his own judgment, and, if he has been wisely trained, his
conscience and judgment will be at least as effective guides in his
relations with human beings as his attempt to avoid misconduct for
fear of what others will think or say.
The use of fear as a means of discipline is being discarded by all
thoughtful parents and teachers. We have learned that authority
maintained by fear is very short-lived; when a child gets past a
certain age, the obedience based upon fear of authority is almost
certain to turn into defiance. The fear of punishment leads directly
to untruthfulness and deception; parents who rely upon affection and
good-will to assure the right conduct of their children get better
results than those who terrorize them.
Fear and hatred are closely connected, and in cultivating fear we
are fostering a trait that may in a critical moment turn to hatred.
The only things that we should teach our children to fear are those
we should be willing to have them hate. Let your children learn to
fear and hate all mean and selfish acts, all cunning and deception,
all unfairness and injustice. But even better than teaching them to
hate these vices, teach them to love and admire and to aspire to
realize the positive virtues.
When we observe the undesirable physical effects of fear, such as
the effect upon the heart and blood-vessels, the effect upon the
nerve currents, etc., we can hardly expect it to have a beneficial
effect upon the mental or moral side of the child's nature. Fear
always cramps and paralyzes; it never broadens or stimulates. All
the progress made by our race has been accomplished by those who
were _not_ afraid: the men and women of broad vision and
independent, fearless action. Every mother has lurking in some
corner of her heart the fond hope that her children will in some way
contribute to the advancement of humanity, to make our life here
better worth living. To contribute in this way, our children must be
without fear.
VI.
THE FIRST GREAT LAW
When you have had a scene with your disobedient Robert, you are apt
to wonder how Mrs. Jones ever manages to make her children obey so
nicely. If all secrets were made public, you would know that Mrs.
Jones has often wished that she could make her children mind as
nicely as do yours. For we always imagine that making children mind
is the one thing that other mothers succeed in better than we do.
Why is it that we consider obedience of such great importance in the
bringing up of our children? Is it because obedience itself is a
supreme virtue which we desire to cultivate in our children? Or is
it because we find it convenient to receive obedience from those
with whom we have to deal?
That obedience is a virtue cannot be denied. But it is a virtue only
under special kinds of human relationship. The obedience required of
a fireman or a sailor is of the same kind as that which we demand of
a child exposed to a danger that he does not see. The work of the
fireman and of the sailor is such that these people must be
constantly prepared to obey instantly the orders given by those in
authority over them. The life of the child, however, is such as to
make his work or his safety depend upon his obedience only under
exceptional circumstances. To justify our demand for _habitual_
obedience, we must find better reasons than the stock argument so
often given, namely, that in certain emergencies the instant
response to a command may result in saving the child from injury or
even from death.