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ON THE TRAINING OF PARENTS
by
ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT
"And they shall live with their children."
[Illustration: Logo]
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
Copyright 1908 by Ernest Hamlin Abbott
All Rights Reserved
Published April 1908
Tenth Impression
_No man has the right to dedicate to another what is not his own.
All that is mine in this little book is its infelicities. These
I dedicate to oblivion. The rest belongs to those two women from
whom I, as son and as husband, have learned all that I know of the
training of parents._
CONTENTS
I. SPASM AND HABIT 1
II. THE WILL AND THE WAY 19
III. BY RULE OF WIT 40
IV. PEACE AT A PRICE 72
V. FOR 'TIS THEIR NATURE TO 93
VI. THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM 114
ON THE TRAINING OF PARENTS
I
SPASM AND HABIT
A voice like a knife cut the still, warm air. "Now you just go right
down and get that canned salmon." I turned my head and saw a little
girl, in a fluffy dress with a skirt like a parachute, standing in the
midst of the long grass. She was evidently frightened and hesitating.
There was a whimper and a whining protest. A young woman in a wrapper,
with a menacing switch in her hand, was advancing. Her voice grew
sharper: "You do what I say, quick, or I'll whip you good!" The child
beat a retreat toward me; then timidly stood her ground. "It's so
far!" she wailed. The enemy again approached; but the little feet of
the child were nimble enough to keep her at a safe distance. "If you
don't hurry, I'll whip you anyway." Fear of the switch was evidently
mastering the dislike of the task. The little girl burst out crying,
turned down the dusty road, and disappeared in the direction of the
village.
That incident was the result of government by collision. If that mother
had any principle at all, it might be expressed thus: Wait till the
child does wrong, then collide with her. Of course none of us would
deliberately collide in just this fashion. We should not be so vulgar.
When we have an altercation with a child, we choose less publicity and
have some regard for refinement of phrase. Perhaps, too, we ordinarily
avoid altercation entirely except concerning some grave matter. We
should prefer to do without canned salmon rather than exhibit our
impotence and our temper before the neighbors. When, however, we have
the child in seclusion at our mercy, are we deterred from trying the
collision method by any considerations of principle? If not, we belong
to the same school of parents as the young woman in a wrapper. The
only difference is that we have not her courage of conviction--or of
indolence.
Now, those who believe in government by collision need read no further;
for I shall assume that such government is only just better than
no government at all, and that, if we fall into its methods, we do
so by accident or because of the frailty of our temper; that every
altercation with a child is a confession of weakness; and that our
principal task is to train ourselves so that we may be able to govern
a child without colliding with him. Of course, in the training of
children, as in managing a railway, it may sometimes be necessary to
occasion a disaster in order to avoid a great catastrophe. If a freight
car is running wild down a grade, it is better to throw it off the
track than to allow it to smash a loaded passenger train. So it may
sometimes be better to let a child collide with you, rather than have
him collide with the community. But in both cases it is better to have
the collision well planned, to recognize it as a disaster, though the
lesser of two possible ones, and, best of all, to prevent any occasion
of resorting to destructive measures.
The only alternative I know to government by collision is government by
habit. To show what I mean, may I cite an instance in contrast to the
episode of the switch and the canned salmon? That same summer a small
boy, six years old, was playing with his blocks. His mother in the next
room suddenly realized that she had not ordered the fruit that was
needed for the household. "Max!" she called. Now Max is no prig, but
he had learned that he was expected to come when called; so, with an
injunction to his playmates not to disturb the bridge he was building,
he appeared at the doorway. "What is it?" (He ought to have said, "Yes,
mamma;" but, as I have remarked, Max is thoroughly human.) "I want
you to do an errand for me--something you've never done before. I want
you to go to the grocery and get six oranges." Max started off. "Wait
a moment. You've never gone alone on such a long errand before. Do you
believe you can do it quickly, and not dawdle?" Max thought he could,
and in fact did the errand as promptly as could be expected. He had
been accustomed to obedience; in addition, he had become accustomed to
accepting some measure of responsibility. The mother controlled him,
not by violence, but by habit. The occurrence was the result of a long
process, and became in turn a cause of future occurrences of similar
character. Reduced to its simplest terms, then, the process of training
children is the process of forming habits.
The earliest habits are physical. The whole duty of man during the
first few weeks of his existence consists in feeding and sleeping
regularly; and most of the rights of man during that period consist in
being let alone. Listen to the eminent French psychologist, Th. Ribot:
"The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed, diffluent
brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in
him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the sensory centres
are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain isolated, for
a long time after birth." Doesn't it make you shudder to think of
dandling such a creature as that on a hard-gaited knee? Does not that
"unformed, diffluent brain, composed largely of water," plead to be
let alone? Yet the impulse of most parents when they encounter their
new possession is to do something to it,--to take it up, to carry it
about, and, as soon as its eyes are really open, to try and show it
things, to evoke from it some kind of human expression. It seems as if
we were all beset by a doubt that our offspring is really a creature
of our own kind, and that we were bound to make it establish, by some
proof, its right to a place at the top of creation. Now, the instincts
of the infant are all in other directions. Yielding to these, the
mite seems to be utterly indifferent to the honors of its station
in animal life, and even to the attention it receives. It wants to
cry occasionally, to feed periodically, and to sleep a great deal.
And, in spite of our experience, we are wrong, and the diminutive
thing, with a cortico-motor system only hinted at, with sensory
centres undifferentiated, and with the extraordinary disadvantage of
having completely isolated associational centres, is right. The first
habits, therefore, which the parents have to form in the training of
their child are their own; and the most important of these is the
habit of non-interference, which is another name for the habit of
self-restraint. Fortunately, we parents can at the outset devote our
attention chiefly to this for several months. If we wish to avoid,
in later years, the necessity for resorting to government by spasm,
and to establish instead government by habit, we do not have to begin
by experimenting on a helpless child; we can begin, fortunately, by
experimenting on ourselves.
It is during this period that we have the best chance of learning the
difference between governing children and interfering with them; for
though that midget will not thrive under interference, he will thrive
under government. He does not need to be told what to do, but he does
depend on us to teach him when to do it. While, therefore, we are
forming in ourselves the habit of non-interference, we are also forming
in him the habit of regularity. If we begin that way, we save both him
and ourselves a great deal of trouble.
One mother, for instance, when she hears her baby cry, runs to him,
picks him up, dances him up and down, offers him food, dangles a bell
in front of him, talks to him, takes him to the window, tries every
imaginable device to quiet him. "It's wicked, I think," says she, "to
try to stifle my maternal instincts. The poor little dear! how could
I be so cruel as not to respond to his cry for me?" She is assuming
several things. She assumes, first, that the baby is crying for her,
whereas he is probably crying because he needs the exercise. That is
the only way he can expand his lungs. When he cries because of pain,
or anger, or nervous irritability, the cry will be unmistakable;
and the response ought to be, not a wild series of spasms, but an
intelligent treatment of the cause. She assumes, in the second place,
that the impulse to rid herself of the annoyance of hearing the cry is
a maternal instinct. If that were so, a lot of gruff old bachelors on
railway trains are frequently moved by maternal instinct. The maternal
instinct, in fact, is something quite different--it is the instinct of
care, watchfulness, nurture, and it does not call for spasms. In the
third place, she assumes that it would be cruel not to experiment with
her child--at least so it appears; for what she does is to try in quick
succession a series of experiments, no one of which is continued long
enough to be of any value, and all of which, as she might easily learn,
have been proved to be of no permanent value in producing placid,
contented babies.
The other mother, when she hears the cry, listens. If it is a cry of
pain, she knows it in an instant. It is amazing how quickly a mother
learns that language. It is a mystery to most men, though even to
them not unsearchable. Physicians, after experience in children's
wards, understand it; and even a father, if he is patient, can
acquire a moderate knowledge of it. But a mother, or even a nurse,
if she is moved by a genuine maternal instinct and not by a selfish
desire for her own comfort, is almost an adept at the start. At the
cry of pain, that mother in a moment is looking for the misplaced
pin, or rearranging the irritating bit of clothing, or remedying the
uncomfortable position, or searching for a more hidden cause. If it
is a cry of irritability, she blames herself for having rocked the
child a few moments before, and steels herself against repeating the
indulgence. If it is a cry of hunger, she looks at the clock to see
if it is the hour for another feeding. If it is just "plain cry,"
she smiles, for she knows that he is doing that in lieu of playing
baseball or riding horseback. When it is meal-time, she, exercising the
discretion which he is not always able to exercise for himself, gently
withdraws the food supply when he has had all that is good for him. And
when it is time for him to go to sleep, she arranges him comfortably in
his crib, darkens the room, and leaves him. If then he emits another
"plain cry," she is not disturbed. He has as much a right to cry as
he has to sleep. If she lets him go to sleep in her arms, for the love
of feeling him there, she will not complain later, when it is more
inconvenient, if he remonstrates against going to sleep in any other
way. She will know that in that respect, as in respect to his regular
feeding, she has governed him by habit. Either she will have to pay the
penalty of having established in her kingdom an inconvenient law, or
else she will have to inflict upon him, as well as herself, the penalty
of establishing later, and at greater cost, another and more convenient
custom which might just as well have been established in the first
place. This penalty may involve a collision--though possibly a mild
one. Even in that case, however, in the very difficulty of supplanting
an old custom by a new one, she will have evidence of the strength of
her government by habit.
There is no reason why regularity once established should not become
for all future years a routine. We all know how hard it is to break up
a bad habit. Happily, it is just as hard to break up a good one. The
difference between the child who teases for every new variety of food
on the table, pushes away the dishes that are set before him, whines
when he is told it is bedtime, eats and goes to sleep only after much
coaxing, and the child who accepts his food and his hours for sleep
as a matter of course, as he accepts the house he lives in, is simply
the difference between a bad habit and a good one. It is no easier to
change the one habit than it is the other. After a child has learned
to get his food and go to bed with whining and teasing, it is very
difficult for him to learn to eat and sleep in any other fashion; it
is equally difficult for a child who has learned to eat and enjoy food
adapted to him, and to go to bed at a suitable hour, to understand
why all sorts of strange decoctions should be offered to him, and
why he should not get undressed when his bedtime comes. Of course
the spirit of adventure, which is strong in most normal children,
will lead them sometimes to sample some things that they see their
elders--or, for that matter, the animals--eating; and to race about
the halls, exploring the domain of the dark, after they are supposed
to be asleep; but even this spirit of adventure, which sometimes
brings discouragement to the mother, is a tribute to regular life; and
it is denied to those children whose whole life consists in a series
of parental experiments. The little lad who at a children's party
declines the sweetmeats is no angel. Nor is his companion, who grabs
the dainties an imp. They are both, like the rest of us, creatures
of habit. The theory of total depravity, by which our forefathers
explained the unpleasant doings of youngsters, is, I have concluded, a
doctrine which parents devised in order to shift the burden of their
own failures to the shoulders of their offspring.
This practice of regularity in the physical care of children[1] will
lay the foundation, not only of health and contentment, but also
of moral discipline. When we have eliminated the opportunities for
collision with our children at meal-times and bedtime, we are well
on our way toward eliminating government by collision altogether.
The quiet exercise of authority involved in carrying out a simple
regimen of diet and of rest will almost automatically extend to other
matters. The most difficult part of this exercise of authority will be
overcome when the parent learns self-restraint. Not to run to a child
every time he cries is the beginning of learning not to yield to a
child every time he wants something. In many cases authority is thus
exercised by doing nothing. The mother, for example, has left the baby
creeping about alone in his nursery. She has left him a ball and two
or three blocks with which he can experiment, and another ball hanging
from a cord within his reach which he can swing to and fro. He is
learning that the ball is soft and can roll, that the blocks are hard
and cannot roll, and that the pendulum swings regularly. He is as well
occupied in his work as the mother is in hers. Suddenly she hears a cry
of vexation. If it continues, she steps to the door to see what has
happened. He has raised himself up by the window and is trying to reach
the tassel at the end of the cord on the window-shade, and finds it
above his outstretched hands. She might go to the window, draw down the
shade, and, holding it firm, let him play with the cord till he tires;
but she knows that it would be inconvenient to have him continually
playing with the window-shade in the house, and she does not want him
to begin. She might then take him up and distract his attention till
he forgets. But she knows that if she does this once, she will be
called upon to do it again. So she shakes her head and says "No," which
she has taught him to understand, and, after making sure that he is
in no danger of a fall, leaves him and returns to her work. By doing
nothing she has done what for the time being is the hardest thing. As
she closes the door she hears another wail of vexation, but she does
not interfere. She has exercised her authority simply by exercising
self-restraint.
It all depends on what we want our children to be whether we employ
the method of spasm or the method of self-restraint. Of course those
of us who think pertness in a child is a virtue, who regard a fit
of teasing as "smart" or "cunning," who enjoy the exhilaration of
encountering a child as an adversary and breaking down his opposition,
can develop in children habitual pertness, teasing, and disobedience
with the utmost ease. It requires, however, no especial genius to
avoid these qualities. Other traits, it may be, require something like
genius--something at least beyond persistence and self-restraint--to
create; but to provide children with a contented acquiescence in a
regular life and an habitual disposition to obedience requires of the
parents no qualities of mind which are not common to all of us mortals.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] For directions in this matter I know of no book to compare with Dr.
L. Emmett Holt's _The Care and Feeding of Children_, published by D.
Appleton & Co. Intelligently followed by a mother, with due regard to
the individual peculiarities of the children under her care, the system
outlined in that volume will save the mother an enormous amount of
energy and worry and the child a great deal of injustice. It ought to
arrive in every household with the first-born baby, or, better, a few
weeks in advance. The physician who sees that it does, in every family
he attends, will win a wealth of gratitude and confidence. In my own
household it came that way. As a supplement, not a substitute, I also
recommend Dr. Emelyn L. Coolidge's _The Mother's Manual_ (A. S. Barnes
& Co.)
II
THE WILL AND THE WAY
Parents regard their children with all sorts of feelings, with love
of course, with indulgence, with amusement, and even, so it is said,
with self-complacency and admiration; but it sometimes seems as if very
few regard them with respect. No one who respects another will lie to
him, or visit him with empty threats, or make to him vain promises;
yet fathers and mothers in all parts of the country are at this moment
lying to their children, threatening them with punishments they do not
mean to inflict, and making promises they do not intend to fulfill.
The faith of a child ought to be proverbial. It is the only substance
of things hoped for which many children ever get. I sometimes wonder
if it is really just to lay the Fifth Commandment upon all American
children. Somehow, there seems to be something reciprocal implied
in it. If that commandment is of universal application, it can be
considered so, I imagine, only on the ground that it states a duty
owed ultimately not to the parents but to the Almighty. Certainly that
parent who does not respect his children has no personal claim upon
their honor.
What I mean by respect for a child I can perhaps explain best by an
instance. Marshall, aged seven, had yielded to temptation in the form
of a preserved pear. Instead of putting the temptation behind him,
he had put it within him; and he had been caught. The maternal court
decided that a fair equivalent for this pear was a week of desserts.
For two days the culprit sat inactive at the close of dinner while his
comrades ate with relish their portions of pudding. Then unexpectedly
came an invitation to dinner from a friend. On the return homeward an
aunt remarked, "I noticed that Marshall ate dessert with the others."
"Yes," replied his mother, "I think he must have forgotten. I noticed
it too, but I did not speak to him because there was no expectation of
this treat when the punishment was determined upon. Besides, I do not
think it would have been just to add to his punishment by humiliating
him before the others."
In this case respect for the youthful Marshall meant, first,
attributing the failure to observe the rule to something besides
deliberate intent; second, recognizing that he was to be treated not
merely with severity, but also with justice; and, third, appreciating
the individuality of the child, which included special sensitiveness
to the attention and opinion of others. The very fact that Marshall
was accustomed to regularity of discipline, to invariableness in
punishment, and even to ridicule of vanity or silliness, made it
possible for his mother to do something that smacked of irregularity
and of variableness, and to save him from unnecessary abasement.
Just because she had a rule which she habitually followed, she could
break it. She could not have broken it if she had not had it. The
effectiveness of this act of omission lay in the very fact that it was
an exception. It was a case in which fairness to the boy depended upon
inconsistency. This only illustrates the truth that in dealing with a
child you may violate any principle so long as you keep your respect
for the child inviolate. And the secret of respect for a child lies in
regarding him as a human being.
The limitation of the devotee of "child study," the scientific
investigator of "child nature," the observer of "the child mind,"
is that he cannot regard a child as a human being. In other words,
his limitation consists in being too broad. He observes individuals
only for the sake of disregarding their individuality. He is busy
establishing some general laws of childhood. He must choose to know
nothing of children that he may know the Child. As soon as he begins
to respect an individual child he becomes personal and biased; and as
soon as he becomes personal and biased he ceases to be scientific. A
good mother, on the other hand, is good just because of her prejudices.
She knows so much about her child that her testimony is scientifically
worthless. In everything the child does she sees something he, and not
another child has done before; and she makes her judgments accordingly.
And it is just because her observations would be vicious in a table of
statistics that they are the best possible basis for conduct. In other
words, she is dealing, not with a subject, a cadaver, so to speak, that
can be classified, but with a live being that for her purposes belongs
in a class by himself. That is what I mean by respecting a child.
It is here that the teacher and the parent are at odds. The teacher
is dealing with childhood, the parent is dealing with Dick-hood or
Mary-hood. The teacher is engaged chiefly in providing each child with
the equipment that belongs by right to all civilized children; the
parent, on the other hand, is bound to bring each child to his, and
not another's, highest development. The teacher is responsible for the
school or the class; the parent, for the boy or girl. The difference in
point of view makes the difference in duty. It was from the parental
point of view that the ancient sage wrote his proverb--"Train up a
child in the way he should go." He was not thinking of the way of
universal obligation, for what he really said was, "Train up a child
in the way he [that particular individual] is to go;" in other words,
prepare him for the kind of life for which he is fitted. In order
to do this, one must have regard for that child's temperament, his
distinctive traits.
The severest test of our respect for a child comes when we find his
will conflicting with ours. It is easy enough to overbear a child's
will; it is difficult to educate it. The hardest task of a parent is
to retain respect for a child while administering a spanking. It is
easy to roll out the cant saying, "I spank you because I love you," but
it is very difficult to bring one's self into that frame of mind in
which it would be the mere truth to say, "I spank you because I respect
you." Anybody, by simply being persistent, can thwart a child; and any
one with the ordinary strength of an adult can beat him; but no one who
is unwilling to do him the courtesy of regarding him as an individual
can master and direct a child, or really punish him.
Not long ago I was traveling in a day coach. In front of me were a
man, a woman, and a small boy of about five years. The woman was the
dominant member of the group. Her face, with its thin, compressed
lips and its hard gray eyes, had a look of indolent selfishness with
a suggestion of latent high temper. The man seemed rather dull, weak,
and unhappy. The boy had the rotund, insensitive countenance of his
father; but he had not yet lost interest in life. He was no more
restless than a boy of his age ought to be. When his mother found
his movements disturbing, she darted a rebuke at him. For the moment
he sat still or moved out of the way. Finally he edged out into the
aisle. The woman made a pretense of ordering him back into the seat.
The boy, evidently realizing that his mother, since she was now put to
no inconvenience by him, had no intention of enforcing her command,
remained passively where he was. When his mother's attention was
distracted, he made use of his freedom to get a little mild gymnastic
exercise. The train as it drew up to a station jerkily stopped. The
lurch of the car threw the boy backward on the floor. Stunned for but
an instant, the little lad sent forth a wail. Some of the passengers
turned around; others started forward to the child. The woman was
obviously annoyed by the disturbance. Before the father had fairly
picked him up, she seized the child, roughly brushed off his clothes,
and set him violently down on the seat. "You're a bad boy." She spat
the words out at him and shook him. She turned to her husband: "I told
him not to stand there." The man was silenced before his dull wits
allowed him the chance to speak. "Now," to the boy, "stop your crying."
The youngster could not repress his sobs; he was still somewhat dazed.
The man gently rubbed the back of the lad's head. The woman glanced at
the spectators. She must have noticed that her method of avoiding a
scene was not altogether successful. She leaned toward the boy. "Did
you hurt yourself?" she asked, and took him into her lap. He let his
head fall indifferently on the woman's shoulder. Her tardy and rather
formal caresses aroused no response. She put him back on the seat, less
ungently than before. "Now will you be good?"
If any but the fool is ever tempted to doubt the existence of God,
it is when he reflects that children are intrusted to the mercy of
such women as this. None of us is of her breed. We do not like her
coarseness. We should never allow ourselves to make the mistake she
made--of being found out. She was too frank with her emotions. She had
not the skill to conceal the springs of her conduct. What difference,
at bottom, however, is there between her and us when we are governed,
in disciplining a child, by the degree of our own displeasure? Every
one of us has been, on occasions, at heart as incompetent as this
vulgar female. We have all of us judged children, at one time and
another, by their conformity to our will. A very good woman it was,
of the straitest New England doctrines, who sent a boy supperless to
bed because, while putting on his overcoat, he accidentally toppled
over and smashed a prized vase. That boy is now a man gray with years
and laden with honors; but to this day he has not forgotten the fact
that he was made to suffer, not for his own fault, but for his aunt's
disappointment.
The only thing that will free us from the futile way of the ogreish
woman on the railway car and the austere Puritan lady is an abiding
respect for our children. This will save us from attributing to our
children our own willfulness! To be authoritative with children
is something else besides being opinionated. The opinionated may
compel obedience; but only the authoritative secure it. And even the
opinionated find obedience not easy of compulsion. When caprice assumes
command, I have a sly conviction that disobedience becomes a virtue.
Preliminary to teaching children how to obey is the process of learning
how to command. When a child is intransigent, it is worth while to
consider whether it is not he that is administering a rebuke.
Sometimes resistance to even rightful authority is not as depraved as
we, who do not fancy being resisted, delude ourselves into thinking.
There comes the time when any child will exult at the discovery that
he is a being apart. He naturally wants to measure his will, and his
mother's or his father's will is the handiest standard of comparison.
A test of that sort is sometimes disconcerting. A five-year-old, too
much given to sliding down from his chair at meal-time, was warned
by his father that whenever in the future he should leave his chair,
he should not be allowed to return to the table. Soon afterwards the
boy disappeared from his place. He had evidently renewed his slippery
ways, and had made up his mind to lurk beneath the table and await
results. Intent upon the enforcement of the decree, his father said
sternly, "You may be excused." Forthwith a head of tousled hair was
thrust above the level of the table. "But I didn't leave my chair."
Sure enough, there he lay prone across the seat, like a bag of meal
on an ass's back. His father had to find what scant refuge he could in
the permissive form of his sentence of dismissal. The lad's wits had
won a victory for his will. Those who enter such an engagement without
reconnoitring must accept the risk, and, if they wish to preserve the
advantage of a commanding position, must abide by the results of any
such skirmish. To turn it into a battle of wills is to commit the
blunder of underestimating their opponent's strength. A child's will is
not a fragile thing. It is not "broken" when it is overcome by another
will reinforced by physical strength. An old lady of Maine, now gone to
her own place,--which I venture to say is not far from that of Luther
and Knox and Jonathan Edwards,--once told me how, when a small girl,
she had had her will broken; she recounted the passionate resistance,
the screaming protestation, the convulsive and futile rage exhausted
only by hours of kicking and pounding the floor, and her final
capitulation, announced by her picking up the toy which, in defiance
of her father's order, she had at first refused to touch. She gloried
in this Spartan training, and deplored the lack of it in the present
degenerate generation. It was this same old lady, with the "broken"
will, who, rejecting all advances, stanchly maintained her side in a
family feud to, I believe, her dying day. Her will, it is plain, had
not even been cracked; it showed not so much as a suture; neither had
it been trained. The only treatment it had received had been one of
contumely. The old lady was not exactly to blame for the outcome.
If we respect a child's will, we shall give it a chance to operate. We
do not thereby surrender a pea's weight of authority. A certain young
mother, let us say, believes that there is a sort of unselfishness
that has no part in love: she will not relieve her children of effort
and responsibility. One of her brood, a lad of seven, with a touch
of dreaminess in his mobile face, with impatience of the material
restraints of time and space, with a will of his own that is the harder
to direct because it is seldom aggressive, is engaged in propelling a
vast tow of block barges along the river that winds across the nursery
floor. Of his companions, one is umpiring a game of football between
teams of leaden soldiers, and the other is constructing a fearsome
dungeon ten blocks deep. At the door appears Authority. "It is now four
o'clock," she announces. "At a quarter past four I want to have all the
blocks and toys put away." The football umpire and the dungeon-builder,
sniffing a prospective treat, bring their operations to an abrupt
close. The lad of dreams listens abstractedly, and then turns with
great puffing and snorting to his labors of navigation. Inattention?
Partly; but partly, too, a deliberate choice of present pleasure and
a willful rejection of the words of authority. Ten, eleven, twelve
minutes pass. Again sounds the authoritative voice. "In three minutes
it will be a quarter past four. I shall want you then to begin to wash
and dress for a drive. Eric, I am afraid you won't be able to go with
us; your blocks are not put away." She might, of course, justly tell
him then and there that he will not be allowed to go; she chooses,
however, the better way, and lets him wrestle with the situation.
"You had better not stop to cry," she warns him; "there is no time to
waste." In fractious misery he hurriedly begins his belated task. His
will, so far from being broken or weakened, is actually stiffened; but
it is now enlisted on the side of authority. The others--not a whit
more virtuous, by the way, but only more sagacious--are half dressed
before he has put his blocks in order. If he fails to overtake them, he
will stand disconsolate, abject, perhaps tempestuous, and watch them
depart. He has had his way, but he has won no victory; he has simply
learned the cost of willfulness. If he succeeds in overtaking them, he
will not have lost his lesson. His mother, it is true, will not exactly
have had her way; but she reckons that no loss, as her way was not her
end; she will have enlisted his will. The victory which the boy will
have won is not over her. The only antagonist he has had is himself.
Because of her respect for him, he will now have a new respect for
himself and for her. He is on the road to acquiring the will to obey.
If it had been one of the other two who had disobeyed, her course
might have been different. A sullen, recalcitrant will, open-eyed,
calculating, defiant, might easily suggest a different treatment. "You
have chosen your leaden soldiers; now leaden soldiers it shall be.
Since you did not make your duty your choice, then I shall arrange
matters so that your choice shall be your duty. Nothing but leaden
soldiers till we return." Such a variation in the treatment of
children smacks not in the least of partiality. It simply means that
respect for the child has involved respect for his individuality. The
maxim, Let the punishment fit the crime, may express a principle of
action useful for the government of a State or of a school; but for
the purposes of the home it should be altered so as to read, Let the
punishment fit the child.
This ought to be the answer whenever that question arises that still
serves the purpose of discussion in the correspondence columns of the
newspapers, Is corporal punishment defensible? The conventional answer
nowadays is, No. This is supposed to betoken the benignant mind. Any
other answer nowadays classifies one as an autocratic brute. It seems
to be assumed that corporal punishment must necessarily be administered
in the jaunty spirit of the Chinese proverb which runs: "A cloudy
day--leisure to beat the children." Real tenderness of heart, so
runs the accepted modern doctrine, forbids the infliction of physical
pain. In all these discussions, however, one consideration seems to be
ignored--a decent respect for children. To one who is governed by this
consideration, there is only one answer to the question, Do you believe
in spanking a child? That answer is comprised in another question, What
child? It is not necessary to go as far as Menander, who declared, "He
who is not flogged is not educated," to be convinced that a good many
children have been deprived of their rights because they have never
been spanked.
There was once a little girl who could never forget the indignity
she suffered in a spanking she had received. She grew up with her
mind resolutely set against all corporal punishment. In the course of
time she was married and had two children. With one of them she had
no problems of discipline; but with the other, a daughter, she had
problems that taxed her wits to the utmost. At times the little girl
seemed verily possessed. At last, in desperation, this harassed mother,
driven into recreancy to her own principle, resorted to the form of
chastisement she had forsworn. The effect was instantaneous. The child
was relieved, as it were, from herself. With some temperaments in some
moods the rod is like the wand of a magician. The childish petulance,
the outburst of temper, the streak of almost malicious perversity, is
but the child's way of expressing his quarrel with himself; and when
the sharp physical pain comes, it seems to announce the subjugation of
an enemy. In a household there are three children. One, sensitive to
physical pain, shrivels and warps at the very prospect of it; a second
is deterred from no act by the fear of it, and is altered not a whit by
the memory of it; the third seems to find in it the comforting sense
of being mastered at those times when he is out of sorts with himself,
and responds to it with renewed affection and restored sweetness of
temper. For the mother of that trio academic discussions on corporal
punishment are not only uninteresting--they are positively irritating.
She has paid her children the decent respect of considering their
temperaments.
III
BY RULE OF WIT
At a dinner-table one evening, a man who was interested in his own
children stated a rule by which he made sure that no child of his would
disobey him. The rule is infallible. He remarked to his companion:--
"I never give a command to my children."
"What do you do?" he was asked.
"I tell them stories."
That expresses a perfectly intelligible policy: Abdicate, and you will
never have a disobedient child. You will also never have an obedient
one. The fact that the man who made this statement was an Anarchist
explains his theory. He regarded obedience not as a virtue, but as
a defect. He was altogether consistent. A disbeliever in government
for society, he declined to establish any government for his family.
In place of government, however, he at least took pains to establish
something else. This was a systematic appeal to the child's imagination.
If one had to choose between government and influence over
children through the imagination, there might be some reason for
discarding government. As a matter of fact, however, the use of the
imagination, so far from being antagonistic to effective government,
is indispensable to it. The reason why we parents so often fail in
securing obedience, and, what is more important still, in developing
in our children the spirit of obedience, is that we are deficient in
imagination--or at least that what imagination we have is untrained.
In this faculty in which we are weak, children are strong. A little
four-year-old I know, in making letters for his own amusement,
frequently attaches arms and legs to them; it is his way of
pictorially representing the animation he ascribes to them. Indeed,
he sometimes goes so far as to transfer in mind these limbs to the
object which the letters spell. Thus, he laboriously prints the letters
P-I-G, adds to each letter a lively pair of legs, and exclaims: "See,
the pig is running!" Mental processes like that, complicated though it
is, are common with children. A child left alone in the nursery with
his blocks will find them transformed into trains, steamboats, people,
trees, animals, whatever he wills. In this picturesque form imagination
may be called fancy; but it has many other phases. Imagination is an
element in memory. Ability to recall a sound requires imagination.
When, for instance, a child repeats a word he has heard some one use,
his imagination has enabled him to summon up the sound of that word.
Imagination is an element in emulation. When a child is trying to outdo
another, or outdo his own past performances, he has to picture to his
mind what he or his competitor has done and what the desirable outcome
of the struggle would be. Imagination is an element even in fear and
hope. When a child dreads a punishment or eagerly awaits a reward, it
is his imagination that gives him the power to anticipate.
Like every other instinct, imagination needs training. We all carry
about with us a menagerie of instincts. Some of them have been
ill-treated. In what a pitiable shape is the dyspeptic's food instinct!
It has died of over-indulgence, and its corpse mocks him at every
meal. The instinct of fighting has been given a bad name, and in many
a well-conducted menagerie is kept chained; but it has been known to
survive the most rigorous repression, and to spring out with most
abounding vitality in the midst of a meeting on behalf of peace. We
have learned to avoid those people whose instinct of curiosity is
not bridle-wise; and we all have recourse at times to those who
have nourished, groomed, and trained their play instinct. The fact
is, that the process of education consists largely in transforming
these instincts of ours, which in their original state are wild and
unmanageable, into domesticated and useful habits.
Now, imagination is a vigorous beast. Its youthful antics are very
picturesque and amusing; it is sometimes whimsical and troublesome; but
it can be made of the greatest service. Indeed, for all kinds of work,
I know of no species of instinct which I would more highly recommend.
As a draught animal it is indefatigable; and nothing else can take its
place for pleasure-driving. Yet I have heard of a private school for
young women from which all fairy books are excluded, on the ground
that a girl's imagination needs repression. Like some other instincts,
imagination cannot be altogether repressed, though it can be tamed and
guided. If it is left boxed up and wild, it is apt to break out and
take a canter through dangerous regions. Since, then, we cannot take a
child's imagination from him, and we run into peril if we neglect it,
the profitable course is to show him how to break it to harness and
make it serve him.
We cannot do this, however, unless we have paid some attention to the
training of our own imagination. As a wild young colt will trot about
beside its dam, so a child's imagination will readily follow that of an
older person. But the two must be at least in the same lot. If we are
going to appeal to a child's imagination in teaching him how to obey,
we must exercise some imagination in giving commands. We thus come
upon that recurrent principle that the chief task in the training of
children is the training of ourselves.
That imagination may be used in maintaining strictness of discipline
seems to some to be almost a contradiction in terms. It seems like
invoking an imp of dreams to assist in adding up a column of figures.
In many minds imagination suggests dreaminess, wool-gathering,
waywardness, irresponsibility. That is one reason why we parents who
like to be obeyed, who are inclined to believe that it is a virtue
to be dictatorial, and who sometimes confuse our own will with the
immutable principles of righteousness, so often fall into error.
To a child there is nothing more serious, nothing more real and
regular, than the products of his imagination, and nothing more vague,
whimsical, irregular, than the unexplained orders which he receives
from grown people. If we wish to impress a child with the seriousness
and reality of our authority, we had better put our imagination into
condition.
There were two small boys in a town of the Middle West. Active,
spirited, mischievous, and in other respects healthy, these two
tads--the younger about four years old, I believe--gave their father
and mother much concern. One day an old drill-sergeant established
in the neighborhood a class for boys, and in a short time received
these two as pupils. The transformation was sudden. The boys were
soldiers. Happily, their mother was imaginative. They were therefore
soldiers not merely in the class, but also at home. The standards of
conduct put before them, the punishments dealt out to them, and the
rewards bestowed upon them were such as befitted defenders of the
home. Obedience, promptness, chivalry, order, courage, regularity,
honor, truthfulness, were not unreasonable qualities to expect from
such as they. When one of these warriors was absent without leave
for the greater part of a day--in other words, ran away--it was not
inappropriate that he should be kept in solitary confinement on
short rations. The discipline meted out to those youngsters was,
from any point of view, severe. Even corporal punishment, which, as
ordinarily applied, is crudely devoid of the imaginative element,
became measurably glorified; it was a part of the hardship which they
were called upon to endure as good soldiers. Of course this régime
was accompanied with plenty of instruction in military traditions
and practices. A constant visitor to that household has found in the
manliness and good breeding of these children a source of amazed
gratification. In another family, who had no access to a drill-sergeant
with a streak of poetry, a somewhat different method has been in vogue.
The boys in that family do not belong, as it were, to the regular
army, but rather to the militia. They are not always under a military
régime, but are liable to a summons at any time. When they hear the
command, "Fall in," they know they are expected to stand in line and
await orders. In the absence of their parents, they know that the older
person left in charge is their commanding officer; and upon their
parents' return they know that they will be called upon to fall into
line, salute, and report to their father. Each is supposed to report
any infraction of discipline which he himself--not his comrades--has
committed. No punishment is administered as a result of such report,
except for deliberate concealment. Each also reports some especial
pleasure he has had. A good report is followed by formal and official
congratulation. A reminder in the form of a sign, marked "Remember
the Report," and placed in a conspicuous position in the nursery, has
helped to train and direct their imagination. Since the report includes
a record of enjoyments as well as of offenses, this reminder is not so
threatening as to many people it would seem. Indeed, the proposal that
such a sign be used met with instant approval from the young militiamen.
Those who object to tin soldiers as toys will have little patience with
this metamorphosis of real children into creatures of militarism.
Very well, let them be monks instead, or members of a labor union, or
railway employees, or idealized legislators, or even honest policemen,
anything that will not put too great a strain on the imagination--of
the adults. The point is simply that the exercise of the strictest
authority over children is compatible with the most lavish use of the
imagination.
There is nothing necessarily soft or flabby about the imaginative life.
There is no special reason why little children should be afflicted
with continual talk about the dear little birdies or the sweet little
flowers. Indeed, the natural taste of children seems to be attracted in
the opposite direction. One small boy, when he inquired about a bloody
Bible picture, and was put off with the explanation that it was not a
pleasant story, expressed the views of many of his age when, looking up
angelically, he exclaimed with ecstasy, "I like to hear about horrid
things."