to the age of about three years has no will; he can only have strong
desires or impulses, or pet aversions. During this period the
mother's will must be his will, and there can be no clash of wills.
But, to be his will, the mother must guide the child in accordance
with _his_ needs, _his_ instincts,--that is, in accordance
with his nature, and not in accordance with her convenience or
caprice. She must bear constantly in mind that the child is not
merely a miniature man or woman, but that each stage in his
development represents a distinct combination of instincts, impulses
and capacities. If, for example, your little girl is digging in the
dirt--a very _natural_ and healthful activity--and you stop her
for no better reason than that she will soil her hands or clothes,
you are unduly interfering with her, and if you continue in that
way, you will either make a defiant, disagreeable youngster or a
servile, cringing slave to arbitrary authority. On the other hand,
if Johnny should wish to play with a knife or a box of matches, it
manifestly devolves upon you to take these objects away from him, no
matter how strong his desire to have them may be. But it also
devolves upon you to see that such harmful objects are not very easy
for him to obtain and to see to it that plenty of other harmless
things are provided for him.
This suggests a common mistake parents and loving friends often make
in meeting the uncomfortable assertions of the child's will. When
the child cries for the moon, you try to get him interested in a
jack-in-the-box; and when he wants a fragile piece of bric-a-brac--
you try to substitute for it a tin whistle. With a very young child,
that is about all you can do. But a time comes when the child is old
enough to know the difference between that upon which he has set his
heart and that which you have substituted for it in his hand. At
this time you must stop offering substitutes. The child is now old
enough to understand that some things are _not_ to be had, and
that crying for them will not bring them. To offer him a substitute
is now not only an insult to his intelligence, but it is
demoralizing to his will; it makes for a loose hold upon the object
of his desire--and it is the firmness of this hold that is the
beginning of a strong will. It does not take the child long to learn
that he is not to have a knife or a lighted lamp; nor does it take
him long to get into the way of scattering his desires, so that he
has no will at all.
In the second place, the assumption that stubbornness is a sign of
strength is false, even for older children. Stubbornness is, in
fact, a sign of weakness. It indicates that the child is either
incapable of adjusting himself to the appeal that is made to his
judgment or feelings, or that his weakness will make it impossible
for him in the presence of his immediate desire to recognize the
superior judgment and authority of his elders, at home or in school.
It takes much more will power to give in than to carry one's point.
But we must always make sure that _we_ are not the obstinate
and wilful ones. If you have a very good reason for not wanting
Helen to go to the dance--even if she is too young to understand
that reason--you are perfectly justified in carrying your point. If
your reason is a wise one, she will come to see it in time and will
honor and respect you all the more for not having given in to her
impetuous and immature desire. If she gives in gracefully, because
she can understand the reasons, or just out of respect for your
wishes, having found your guidance wise before, hers as well as
yours is the triumph. The only thing of which we must make sure is
that we are right to the best of our understanding, and that we do
not insist upon having our way just because,--oh, well, just because
we have a right to have our way, being in authority. As G. Stanley
Hall, the father of child study in this country, has so well said:
"Our will should be a rock, not a wave; our requirements should be
uniform, with no whim, no mood or periodicity about them." Having
made sure of ourselves, we need not fear that training our wilful
children will weaken their will.
We must not neglect to consider the very close relation that exists
between the health of the body and the health of the spirit. A
strong will, showing itself in ability to concentrate its efforts on
a chosen purpose, is not to be expected in a child whose muscles are
flabby and whose nerves quickly tire. Since the will expresses
itself in action, it can be best cultivated in a body capable of
vigorous action.
The young child is not only a bundle of bones and muscles; it is
also a bundle of impulses. And some of these impulses lead to
actions that are quite desirable, while others lead to actions that
are indifferent, and still others to actions that are decidedly
undesirable. But, so far as the child is concerned, he has no means
of discriminating between one kind of impulse and another. He would
just as soon carry poison to his mouth as good food; he would rather
grasp at a flame than at a harmless rattle. One of the essentials
then becomes suitable knowledge. As the child grows older he should
gradually learn that knowledge is necessary to wise choice. It is
not so much the knowledge of what is commonly called "good" or
"evil" as the knowledge of relations and needs that will enable him
to choose ends, and to choose effective means toward those ends. Yet
we cannot begin too early to have such considerations as "It is
right," or "It is best," rather than "I want it," influence the
conduct of our children. But, in order to do the right, we have to
_know_ the right, and the children who get these moral lessons
in their homes are fortunate indeed. It is here the child should
acquire his feeling of loyalty to duty, for such lessons learned in
the home are the most impressive and the most enduring. We must also
make certain that children all through their lives at home are given
opportunity for choice and decision.
In this matter of making decisions there is a great deal of
individual variation, and even distinct types of persons have been
described, according to the way they reach decisions. At one extreme
is the child--or the grown person--who apparently without any effort
balances the reasons that may be given on the opposite sides of a
problem, and makes his choice solely on the strength of the reasoned
argument. Herbert Spencer tells in his Autobiography how, when a
young man, he wrote down, as in a ledger, all the advantages and all
the disadvantages he could think of in regard to the married state.
After checking off the items on the two sides of the account, he
found a balance in favor of remaining single. Later in life he had
his doubts as to whether the decision was a wise one, but it was the
best he could make under the circumstances, for he made use of all
the knowledge at his command and stood by his reasoned decision.
At the opposite extreme is the person who resolves to do what is
right (although he may have no systematic means of discovering what
is right), and carries out his resolution at the cost of frequently
painful effort. To such persons there is a kind of association
between what is easy and what is wrong on the one hand, and between
what is difficult and what is right on the other. Our early Puritans
were men of this type, and there is much to admire in the sturdiness
with which they crushed their impulses in the resolve to carry out
their ideals of the right.
Almost complete lack of will is shown by those who reach their
decisions--by not reaching them. That is, there are those doubting,
hesitating souls who postpone making a decision until action is
forced upon them by some accidental event. These let other persons
or the course of events make their decisions for them. There is such
a delicate balancing of the desires--usually because all desires are
equally weak--that none stands out to dominate the choice of a line
of action. George wanted to go to the circus, and had saved enough
from his weekly allowance; but he was saving up to buy a rifle, and
he was undecided now as to whether he would go to the circus or add
to his savings and get the rifle so much the sooner. The sight of
some other boys on the way to the circus made the decision for him.
This decision was not a reasoned one, but an accidental one.
Similar in its weakness is the will that reaches no decisions except
as the balance is upset by later impulses from within. The girl or
boy who allows a slight headache or a tired feeling to make
important decisions cannot be said to have much strength of
character. On Saturday Mabel was to have gone on a steamboat
excursion--or on a visit to a friend, to stay over night. When she
went to sleep Friday night she had not yet made up her mind; but she
finally went to visit her friend because she had over-slept and was
too late to join the excursion party.
Children that have not acquired habits of making definite decisions
will find themselves badly adrift when they reach the adolescent
period, with its rapid changes of mood and the masses of frequently
conflicting impulses. To be able to restrain each impulse to action
as it arises, and to hold it in abeyance until all the alternatives
have been canvassed, is a power that comes only after years of
thought and practice.
However, it is not enough to be able to refrain from doing what one
is impelled to do. Many mothers think that they are training the
child's will when they prohibit the taking or handling of various
things about the house. It is true that the child should learn when
quite young to avoid certain objects. But if the prohibitions are
too general the child will be frequently tempted to break the rules,
and then he will fall in his own esteem; or he will observe the rule
and have too little outlet for his activity and initiative. The will
does not thrive on what the child is _prevented_ from doing,
but on what the child _actually does do_.
The child's need is for practice in doing and in choosing what he
will do. When activities or games are suggested to a younger child,
it is best to give him a choice of two or three. When the children
are older they can be consulted about the purchase of their clothes,
and they ought gradually to assume their share--a small one at
first--of the responsibility of the household. As early as possible
they should have their own money to spend, as in no other way can
they learn the use of judgment and decision in the spending of
money. In the households wherein children do not have such
opportunities, but in which the parents rule everything with a high
hand, the children grow up very inefficient in managing their time
and their money; they have become accustomed to being ruled and
flounder helplessly when called upon to decide for themselves.
The will, which is at the heart of moral conduct and which is so
much in need of training, cannot, as we have seen, be trained as a
thing by itself. All training and all education must contribute to
the training of the will. Still, there are some definite points that
we can profitably keep in mind when we are concerned with the
child's will:
First of all comes sound bodily health.
Then there must be sound habits for most of the everyday activities,
that the will may not be dissipated upon trivial matters, and that
the common duties and virtues may be assured.
There must be constant practice in sustained effort and
concentration upon useful tasks, in order to fix the habit of
holding the attention upon the chosen purpose.
We must not confuse wilfulness with strength of will; and, finally,
There must be constant opportunity for making decisions that the
child may feel responsibility in making of decisions as the highest
type of conduct.
VIII.
HOW CHILDREN REASON
"Those children will not listen to reason," said a friend whom I
discovered in an agitated state of mind one afternoon, when I came
to make a call; and she was by no means the first to make this
observation. Indeed, it is one of the characteristics of children
that they will not listen to reason,--that is, _our_ reason.
Which is not, however, saying anything against the children's good
sense, for people with much more experience have refused to listen
to reason--the children's reason.
Margaret told me her troubles. Her sister had rented a farm near the
city for the summer and had offered to let Walter spend his vacation
with her in exchange for such bits of help as he was able to render.
But Walter had made up his mind to go to work in an office that
summer, and, although he loved the country and had always wanted to
drive a horse and go fishing, his mother's attempts to convince him
of the wisdom of her choice were without avail. He would not listen
to her reasons. She pointed to the health argument, to the
opportunities for play, the free time, the driving, the fishing, and
the fruit without limit. Knowing Walter as I did, I could not
understand why it was so hard to convince him.
But every story has at least two sides to it, and of this story I
had heard only one. The mother was so concerned with giving her son
her good reasons for going to the country that she never even
thought of finding out his equally good reasons for going to the
office. Presently, however, Walter came in, and my first leading
question brought out the true secret of the disagreement.
"What is there about working in an office," I asked the boy, "that
you care so much about?"
"Oh, it isn't working in an office that I care about; I just want to
earn some money. I never did make any money myself, and now I have a
good chance and mother won't let me."
This was really too simple; here two sane persons had spent several
days on the problem without coming to any solution. By placing
Walter's services on the farm on a financial basis and making him
pay for his board he managed to spend his vacation, healthfully and
happily and profitably in every sense; and everybody was satisfied.
Over and over again we are impressed with the fact that most
disagreements between people--whether between adults or between
children, or between children and adults--are due to misunderstandings.
As soon as parents resolve not to treat their children arbitrarily,--
that is, on the basis of their superior strength and authority,--they
adopt a plan of "reasoning" with them. This plan might work very well,
if the parents only understood the children's way of reasoning, if
they but realized that the child does not reason as do adults, that he
reasons differently in each stage of his development.
Our manner of reasoning depends very closely upon our language. But
every significant word that we use has a distinct meaning in the
mind of the individual, depending altogether upon his experience. As
the experience of the child is very meagre, compared to that of the
grown-up person, it is no wonder that our everyday remarks are
constant sources of misunderstanding to children.
The little girl who had been frequently reproved for not using her
_right_ hand came to have a positive dislike for her other
hand, which she naturally understood to be _wrong_ hand, and
she did not wish to have anything wrong about her person. A boy was
trying to tell his sister the meaning of "homesick." "You know how
it feels to be seasick, don't you? Well, it's the same way, only
it's at home."
Children are apt to attach to a word the first meaning that they
learn in connection with it. Only with the increase of experience
can a word come to have more than one meaning. Moreover, the child
will apply what he hears with fatal exactness and literalness.
Two little girls were at a party and the older one found occasion to
slap her sister's hand. The hostess reproved her for this, whereupon
the little girl asked, "Isn't she my own sister?" The hostess had to
admit that she was. "Well, I heard papa say that he can do what he
likes with his own."
Doing what we like with our own meant to the child exactly what the
words said, without those qualifications which we naturally put in
because of our greater experience.
Children learn with wonder that mother was once a baby, and that
father was once a baby, and so on. Dr. Sully tells of the little
girl who asked her mother, "When everybody was a baby, then who
could be the nurse if they were all babies?" Thus shows real
reasoning power; it was not the child's fault that she had no
historical perspective, and so could not see the babyhoods of
different people in their proper relations in time.
A little boy who was beginning to read deciphered a sign in a
grocery store, "Families supplied." He asked his mother whether they
could not get a new baby there.
When Herbert was passing through the scissors stage he cut a hole in
his father's coat. The father scolded him for spoiling his suit;
Herbert calmly replied, "I did not cut your suit; I only cut the
coat." He resented this accusation, which in his mind was not merely
an exaggeration, but entirely false, since a suit is a suit and a
coat is a coat.
A little girl, while out with her nurse and brother, got lost by
separating herself from the nurse's side. When she was at last found
she was reprimanded for running away from the nurse. She felt that
she was being unjustly treated, for she said, "I did not run away; I
only _stood_ away," meaning, she had stepped around the corner
to look in a window. If she had been scolded for getting out of
sight of the nurse, she would have felt justly reproved; but,
accused of doing something she never did and never thought of
doing,--that is, running away,--she naturally resented this.
Those who have to deal with children in an intimate way cannot be
too scrupulous about how they use their words.
The logic of children often appears to us all wrong until we take
the trouble to see how they come to their queer conclusions.
The story is told of a boy who was sent to the circus in the
neighboring town by his uncle, who gave him an additional quarter
"so you can ride back in case it rains." Well, it did rain, and
Howard came back riding on the top seat, next to the driver, wet to
the skin. Now, any grown-up person knows why he was to ride back "in
case it rains"; but to Howard the association of ideas was directly
between raining and riding, and not between riding and coming home
dry.
This illustrates a very common difference between the reasoning of
children and that of adults. We _select_ ideas from a situation
and combine them and come to conclusions. The child combines ideas,
but he does not make any selection, and the simple explanation for
this lies in the fact that the child has not enough experience to
enable him to select what is significant. Thus a little girl, who
had been too boisterous in her play, was called in by her mother and
made to sit quietly in a chair for about ten minutes. At the end of
this time her mother asked her whether she would "be good now." The
child promised that she would, and was told that she might then go
out to play again. As she arose she affectionately turned to the
chair and said, "Thank you, dear chair, for making me so good."
Having been declared "good" after sitting in the chair, she
attributed the beneficent change in her behavior to the chair; and,
being a polite little girl, she thanked the chair.
Very often these simple types of reasoning have their humorous
aspects and we do not take them seriously. One winter a little boy
who had always gone to bed regularly (he was four and a half years
old then) began to call for some one to come to him after he was
supposed to be asleep. He wanted to sit up and play, he wanted to
get dressed, and he wanted something more to eat. This continued for
several evenings, and it seemed impossible to get him back into his
good habits. At last he was asked, "_Why_ do you want to get up
now?" and he answered at once, "Because it is winter now."
"Yes, it is winter now, but it is time for you to be asleep," he was
told.
"But it says in the book that I must get up," he insisted.
"Which book?"
"I will show you," and he took from his shelf a copy of Stevenson's
"Garden of Verses," and turned to the picture opposite the poem that
begins:
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle light.
To him this meant that in winter, after going to bed, _at
night_, one must get up and dress. It is very likely many
children who have had this delightful poem read to them have
interpreted it in the same way, but probably very few parents have
taken the pains to trace their children's unaccountable
"misbehavior" at bedtime to such a source.
This same poem produced in another child quite a different train of
reasoning, for "Why did the little girl get up at night and sleep in
the daytime?" he asked, "Was she a trained nurse?" It then became
necessary to recall that an aunt of the child's, who _was_ a
trained nurse, often slept at home during the day, after having
worked with some patient at night.
There is no doubt that many of the crotchets and "perversities" of a
child have their origin in chains of reasoning that are perfectly
legitimate, in view of the past experiences of the young mind,
although not in harmony with the reasoning of more mature minds. The
parent spends much time and energy, and much heartburning,
sometimes, to overcome these whims. What is needed is a patient and
sympathetic attempt to discover how the child has come to his queer
ideas and desires.
The annoyance that children cause us with their questionings is due
very largely to the fact that we cannot answer their questions,
since the reasoning that prompts them is too searching. A little boy
shocked and vexed his grandmother, who was trying to teach him the
elements of theology, by asking "Who made God?" It is very likely
that every normal child has asked the same question in one form or
another. This attempt to reach back to the very beginning of causes
resembles in many ways the speculations of the mediaeval
metaphysicians, and should certainly not be discouraged. We need
not, on the other hand, make the effort to answer every question a
child may ask, for at a certain stage in his development he will get
the habit of asking questions without really caring for the answers.
But the questions are worth hearing, in most cases, just to help us
understand how the child _does_ reason. Some of the questions
indicate a great deal of reasoning of a very valuable kind. When the
little boy asks, "Why don't I see two things with my two eyes?" or
when the little girl looks up from her dolls and asks, "Am I real,
or just pretend, like my doll?" they show that they have been
thinking. When a child has passed through the metaphysical stage of
reasoning, he will be more interested in animals and other objects
of Nature; and his questions will have to do more with the operation
of processes--how he grows, and how fishes breathe in the water, and
how birds fly. Later, he wants to know how things work, what makes
the locomotive go, how the noise goes through the telephone, how the
incubator makes chickens come out of eggs. The reasoning of the
child may lead to weird conclusions, but it is real reasoning, and
can be improved not by being ridiculed, nor by being suppressed, but
by being sympathetically understood and encouraged.
Perhaps the most serious phase of the peculiarities of children's
reasoning appears with older children when it comes to reasoning
about right and wrong conduct. Professor Swift, of Washington
University, has made a careful study of this subject, from replies
given by many men to questions about their ideas as boys. It seems
that men who are irreproachable in their moral standards pass
through a stage in which they consider it legitimate fun to rob
orchards or to commit petty thefts.
Children draw fine distinctions between _wrong_ acts and acts
that are _not very wrong_, though they may not be _quite
right_. One man says, "I distinguished between _taking money_,
_real stealing_, and _taking fruit_." Another says of fruit
taking, "I only partly regarded it as stealing." One man writes,
"When a close-fisted employer refused to let me have my clothes at
cost, I pocketed enough of his change to bring my clothes down to
the cost mark." Few regarded taking money from their parents as
"very bad," and distinguished between such stealing and taking money
from strangers.