A child, let us say, wakes in the morning. If he is accustomed to an
adjustable household, there is an end of sleep for those who have the
care of him. For the sake of peace to the others some one has to keep
him quietly amused until the time of rising. That some one, we all
can guess, is the mother. At breakfast it is the child that is first
served, and when he is finished with eating it is his new demands that
interrupt the meal. The mother does her household tasks under the
child's supervision. In order to avoid the necessity of leaving them
to rush upon every demand to the nursery, she manages to have him in
the room with her. Tethering him to the leg of a table, barricading
him behind chairs, occupying his mind now with one bauble, now with
another, she succeeds, with the exercise of an acquired versatility,
in securing for him safety from harm, for the furniture measurable
immunity from damage, and for herself a comparatively noiseless
morning. When the time for his nap arrives, she, as the available
member of the household, leaves everything else and puts him to
sleep. After he wakes and is dressed, a caller arrives. For an instant
forgetful, she starts to leave the young ruler. A wail recalls her.
A gurgle of satisfaction rewards her for taking him in her arms. The
visitor is now a part of the household and must be properly adjusted.
At the sight of the caller the baby makes violent protest. Then comes
the period of coaxing, unsatisfactory to the child, troublesome to the
mother, and disconcerting to the guest. Irreconcilable, the youngster
is handed over to some one for the nonce, and the visitor concludes the
call and departs to the accompaniment of mourning. The despot is easily
restored to good humor as soon as he sees again his favorite subject.
The one annoying episode of the day is easily set down against the
account, not of the child, not of his mother, but of the caller. "That
black gown she wore" many a time does duty as an explanation for what
is really the product of an adjustable household. Aside from the more
immediate and obvious disadvantages of the adjustable household, there
is this: that it hardly fits the child for living in an unadjustable
world.
The child who greets the morning in an unadjustable household finds
at hand enough to amuse him until it is time for his bath. His mother
has not led him to expect anything else. I remember a little fellow
whom I used to see a few years ago. Of delicate organism, decidedly
high-strung, very sensitive to sound and motion, he needed as much
attention as any well baby ever did. Regularly every morning, after
giving him his breakfast and getting him ready for the day, his mother
took him to the nursery, left him on the padded floor, gave him his few
blocks, and left him to his devices. She was free to go downstairs then
about her work. She was not beyond earshot. When the sun was high, she
wrapped him up well, put him in his carriage, and, wheeling him out
on the porch, left him again alone. In the afternoon the process was
reversed: first the sunny porch, then the quiet nursery. Times for play
with him came to an end according to her judgment, not his. Because she
loved him and understood her vocation as mother, she established in
this nervous child the habit of encountering the world with placidity.
This is the way of the mother who determines that her household shall
be unadjustable.
There are those who regard childhood as a period when the individual
becomes, to use Stevenson's phrase, "well armored for this world." It
is this conception of childhood as a preparation for after-life that
underlies Huxley's essay on liberal education. There are others who
would say, with a recent writer, that childhood is not to be regarded
as a preparation for youth that in turn becomes a preparation for
manhood, but rather is to be made "beautiful and glorious in and for
itself, not a vestibule to a vestibule to a vestibule." Whichever of
these two views we take, we shall find, I think, that the only way of
escape from disorder and confusion is not by adjusting the child's
environment to him, but by adjusting him to his environment.
The one unescapable part of our children's environment is--ourselves.
Over them we are always impending. At inconvenient times we rise
in their way and impede their most absorbing occupations. On their
excursions into the wilds of fancy it is we who obtrude and with
philistine complacency drive them back into the gross world of
wash-basins and table manners. Three small boys are busy blasting. One
is a workman; a second is the fuse; the third is the hole, and is about
to explode for the sixth time. Who interrupts with some trivial but
insistent remark about less noise or clean clothes? One of us. And the
worst of it is that we who are so troublesomely recurrent, and who
are their source of supplies, seem to be incapable of appreciating the
delights of becoming at will a trolley-car, an alligator, a goblin,
or a hole in the ground. That is the sort of environment we are; and
if we are going to adjust our children to it, we ought to understand
how knurly it is. When we understand that, we shall perhaps see the
importance of giving our children a chance to explode without being
flung repeatedly against our prosy protuberances. Sometimes we can
manage that by simply giving them room for their own Arcady. (And it is
not our business to insist that their Arcady be our sort.) Sometimes
it will be necessary to manage this otherwise. We may, for instance,
live in a flat. In that case we may actually have to exercise some
imagination and suggest to them an occupation which will keep them from
a too rasping contact with us. The first requisite, then, for peace is
a reasonable degree of non-interference.
Interference, however, we cannot always avoid. Then the question
becomes one of interfering without friction. Any one can give commands
to a child, or instruct him after a fashion, or punish him; but to
exercise authority over a child and at the same time keep on good terms
with him, that is an art in which we are not all equally adept. But it
is an art we must master if we are to be free of unnecessary annoyance
and a great deal of fruitless pother. We cannot be on good terms with
a healthy child except on the basis of justice. That is one reason why
an altercation with a child is a sign of failure in discipline: it is
not sportsmanlike. It lacks the prime element of justice, an equal
chance for each opponent. When we take a child for an antagonist, we
do not enter a square fight; we have him at an unfair advantage. He
knows it as well as we, and that is why, even if we win--as win we
ought with size and strength and wit on our side--our victory is an
inglorious failure. When he succumbs in the struggle, he has learned
only one thing--that he must enlarge his resources. A small boy leaves
his sled in the front hall. He is ordered to remove it and he refuses.
Then comes the tussle. Rather than go to bed, he finally complies. The
next time he awaits the approach of a visitor. This time he leaves his
sled in the front hall and flees. He has learned his lesson--to pick
the place and moment for battle when the enemy is at a disadvantage.
The visitor, serenely unconscious of the fact, has diverted the enemy.
The sled is whisked out of sight. No penalty now inflicted on the boy
can be to him other than the manifestation of resentment and chagrin on
the part of an outwitted adversary. In such a case what does justice
suggest? There is the voice of one in authority.
"Your sled is in the front hall; put it away."
"But I don't want to. I'm playing."
The affair seems to be at an end. There is no insistence; there are no
threats.
A day later. "Mamma! Mamma! Where's my sled?"
"Did you look in its place?"
"Yes, and it isn't there."
"Where did you leave it?"
"I don't know."
"Think."
(With shamed face) "I guess in the front hall."
"You had better look in the front hall, then."
"It isn't there."
"Did you expect to find it there?"
"No-o."
There is no ground for altercation here. Perhaps there may be need
for explanation. The loss of a day's coasting in this case may be
actually a severer punishment than the threatened hours in bed in the
other case, but it comes in the course of justice, and the boy knows
it. Nobody has won a victory, because there has been no struggle; but
somebody has learned a lesson. And through it all the boy remains on
good terms with his environment.
Of course it would never do for a child to live in too just a world;
his awakening upon entrance into the world that we grown folks have
made for ourselves would be cruelly rude. He must have ample chance to
learn how to meet injustice. Happily, such chance will frequently come
his way without any solicitude on our part. One can discern something
almost purposeful in the fact that the sense of justice is no part
of the parental instinct. Indeed, it seems as if it had been made
especially difficult for grown people to deal justly with children. For
one thing, in order to be just with a child one must be prepared to
believe anything, no matter how preposterous. Once on a time a little
girl was going downstairs. In her arms she held a precious doll. She
knew that it was a prized family possession. To her consternation she
suddenly felt it leave her hold, and in an instant she saw it lying
broken upon the stairs. When she was questioned by her mother, she
announced simply that the doll had jumped from her arms. In spite of
all that her mother said to her on the evil of willful untruth, she
persisted in her story. Whether she was punished I do not know; but if
she was, it was not because of an accident, but because of a falsehood.
In any case, she suffered the indignity of being disbelieved. For a
long time the feeling of injustice rankled in her. It was not until
she had grown old enough to learn that a doll cannot leap that she
relinquished her faith in the statement which had been treated by her
mother as a lie. A dash of credulity would have established a good
understanding with that child; but that was too much to expect. It is
not easy to be credulous at the right times. That is one reason why we
need never take pains lest we be too just with our children.
With the best of intentions, the most competent of us will now and then
lapse into deeds of injustice. If we discovered them all, we should
lead uneasy lives. A kind Providence, however, keeps us oblivious of
most of them; and our children are slow in learning to preserve a
grudge. When one of us, however, discovers that he has been unjust
toward his child, what does he do? That depends on his standards. If
his ambition is to be omniscient and infallible, he keeps the discovery
to himself, and, if he corrects the injustice, manages by some
subterfuge to make the correction, not an act of justice, but an act
of grace. His policy might be epitomized in Jowett's motto for public
men: with children his practice is, "Never retract, never explain; get
it done, and let them howl." For one who does not care to pay the price
of courage and self-respect, this rule can be made to work very well.
One whose ambition, however, is to be authoritative with children will
value sincerity with them as a principle and not as an expedient.
Karl has apparently been guilty of willful disobedience; he has done
something he was told not to do. The punishment which regularly
follows rebellion is announced. It then transpires that what seemed
disobedience was really misunderstanding. What can be done? Since the
maternal court does not crave infallibility, the error in sentence
is acknowledged. So far from impairing confidence in the court, this
proceeding actually tends to buttress it. The next time an adverse
judgment is declared and sentence is inflicted, the culprit, even if
he believes himself guiltless, will, if he thinks about it at all,
suspect that the judge is attempting, not to preserve her dignity, but
honestly to administer justice. A child can pay his parents no greater
honor than by protesting, in the belief that he will be heard, that a
threatened punishment would be unfair.
Even that mother who finds other occupations more dignified and
gratifying than that of motherhood cannot wholly escape the necessity
of deciding whether the ground of her dealings with her children shall
be justice or something else. In delegating responsibility to servants,
she must decide whether she will delegate authority also. The woman
who puts her children in the charge of a hired maid and then declares,
"I will never require a child of mine to obey a servant," deliberately
chooses to be unjust to her children. That she is also unjust to the
servant is not so grave a matter. The servant can, if she wishes, find
another mistress; but the child is compelled to be content as he can
with that mother. Such a woman is usually quite powerless to secure
obedience toward herself. When her daughters are grown, she wonders why
they do not become her friends; when her sons are grown, she wonders
why they exhibit no desire for her companionship.
The only footing for comradeship is fair dealing. Even a sense of
humor, essential as that is, will not take its place. Who would be a
comrade with his children must first be just with them.
V
FOR 'TIS THEIR NATURE TO
Why we expect children to be more tranquil than a parliamentary body
or a ministers' meeting I do not know and cannot imagine. To be
troubled because children quarrel is to deplore one of their chief
prerogatives--the prerogative of being themselves. The time to be
troubled is not when they quarrel merely, but when they quarrel in the
wrong way or about wrong things. To teach children how to quarrel and
what to quarrel about is one of the duties of parents.
Together with some compensating advantages, an only child has one
indisputable misfortune: there is no one in the family he can really
quarrel with. No altercation he might have with a grown-up could be
dignified with the name of quarrel. All his quarreling he must do
outside his home. Consequently, he cannot receive from his parents
all the attention that he might receive if he were, say, one of six.
When he finally encounters other children, he does not know the
bounds either of expediency in tolerating their idiosyncrasies, or
of right in maintaining his own. With skill his parents may acquire
artificially for themselves, as well as for him, the experiences which
naturally befall a larger household. It is plain, therefore, that those
parents are fortunate who have quarreling children. To them avenues of
education are open which are closed to the parents of an only child.
I do not refer to those roads which, originating in the nursery, have
led to the depths of theology or to the heights of moral discourse.
The road which has landed more than one theologian in meditation upon
the depraved nature of the child may well have had its beginning in
childish quarrels. There was Jonathan Edwards, for instance; he had
ten sisters and about as many children. This suggests a fit subject
for a thesis. Then that pleasanter if less picturesque way, bordered
with the flowers and the weeds of rhetoric, which has brought the
preacher and the versifier to sermons and rhymes for the edification of
the young, must have received many a traveler from tributary paths of
domestic strife. Isaac Watts, for instance, who being dead yet speaketh
of dogs and bears and lions and children, was the eldest of nine.
The avenues of education to which I refer, however, are open only to
parents or vice-parents, and lead only to parental skill.
Some parents act as if they did not even know that these avenues exist.
Consequently, when they encounter contention among their offspring,
they fly in all directions at once. This undoubtedly makes for agility.
For example:--
Waves of turmoil burst through the closed doors of the playroom, flood
the stairway, and whelm to the ears the placid group of grown-ups
in the living-room. As the visiting cousin nervously halts her small
talk, and the tired mother lays down her knitting, the master of the
house, with an air of finality, gesturing the others into subsidence,
breasts the billows of sound. Upward, two steps in a stride, he makes
an assault upon the playroom.
"What's all this about?" as he flings open the door. "Bless me!
everybody can hear you all over the house. Your mother and I aren't
undertaking to keep a zoo. Do you suppose that somebody can be running
up here every five minutes? Besides, don't you know that your mother's
cousin Bettina is visiting us, and that she is distracted by this
sort of uproar? Now don't try to interrupt. What did you say? That
Ruth threw a coal-car at you? Why, Ruth, my little girl! that's a
very dangerous thing to do. If you had struck one of the boys in the
eye, you might have made him blind. I shall have to take the cars
away, if you are going to do dangerous things with them. What's that?
They're not Ruth's cars? What of it? Does that make them any the less
dangerous? Now, don't interrupt again. Besides, Ruth, that was a very
unladylike thing for a little girl to do. And, boys, you are at fault,
too. Ruth would never have done that if you hadn't done something to
her. Is that the way young gentlemen should treat a young lady? And
Ruth is younger than you. She can't defend herself unless she does
something like that. I shall have to punish you all; perhaps that will
help you to learn how to behave. Now, you boys, go over to Ruth and ask
her pardon; and, Ruth, you kiss them and tell them you're sorry. And
now play together properly. See if you can't get along till tea-time
without making a disturbance."
Satisfied that he has settled an acute difficulty, this composite
father, in whose voice has sounded some tones that I dare not disown,
descends the peaceful stairs. What he has actually done has been to
throw into hopeless unsettlement a situation that was after a fashion
already half settled. If the children are quiet, it is because they are
dazed by the feats of an acrobatic adult mind. They have watched their
father make a circuit of the situation, cross at least a half-dozen
paths that led safely out, and, ignoring all, return to the point of
departure. The benefit they have received from the performance is
not at all the benefit he believes he has imparted. It has not been,
as he fancies, the benefit of discipline; it has been the benefit
of diversion. As for himself, he has received that most welcome of
benefits--a mental frame of complacency.
Not being as nimble as he, we may find it worth our while to stop for
a moment at each path that he passed and explore it. What we are prone
to forget is that from almost every difficulty of this kind there are
several exits, and that there is no progress made in attempting to
travel more than one at a time. In this case, all need for the display
of gymnastics might have been avoided by the consideration of a few
simple questions.
One question has precedence of all others: Shall I interfere or not?
To decide that question in the negative is to eliminate all the
others. That it is necessary to do this, the conjunction of a quarrel
and a luncheon party may demonstrate. The critical time comes when
there is no luncheon party. To allow children some chance to settle
their own differences is as certainly an act of discipline as it is
to settle every difference for them. It is none the less discipline
for the children because it seems to be chiefly self-discipline. A
younger sister once had a grievance; she made her protest with a
strident whine. Annoyed by the outburst, her mother descended upon the
whole crew, wormed out the merits of the case, and with an even hand
apportioned among the offenders penalty or reproof. Having profited,
as it happened, by this occurrence, the small girl, the next time she
wished to gain an advantage over the others, resorted to the same
whining outcry. Immediately the three older children fell to playing
church. With a loud and discordant hymn, they designed to drown the
sound of protest. Though at this time in the right, they preferred not
to take the risk. Already well trained by her children, that mother
was quick to remain where she was. It sometimes requires alertness to
do nothing. Just though her interference had been, she saw that it not
only had encouraged in one child an annoying mode of complaint, but
also had suggested to the others a noisy mode of averting judgment.
Thereafter it seemed easier for her to hesitate before participating
in her children's controversies. How can children experiment with the
principles with which their elders have tried to endow them, except
upon those occasions when those didactic elders do not interfere?
How, on the other hand, can those same elders see what effect their
precepts have had, unless the children can begin a quarrel on the
chance that they may end it themselves? Deliberately to determine not
to interfere in a children's quarrel comes not of grace but of labor.
Any one can lapse into indifference as to the merits of a dispute
between two youngsters, but only one who has come through affliction
to self-control can at the same time maintain an acute interest in
the triumph of the just cause and keep his hands off. The virtue of
non-interference is not a gift, it is an achievement.
Occasions which demand interference, however, occur frequently enough
to supply with plenty of exercise any normally active parental mind.
Whenever it is clearly best that the children should not be allowed to
end their quarrel themselves, the parent who is not in search merely
of self-complacency can ask himself a number of questions. Usually,
the time for asking and answering those questions is very brief. The
exercise is vigorous while it lasts. On the way from the living-room
to the nursery, the hastening parent can, for example, perform this
rapid mental scale passage: To what purpose am I interfering? Is it
to suppress a noise? or to avert a danger? or to teach courtesy? or
to instruct in morals? or to do justice? or to establish an amicable
basis? Later, and perhaps more deliberately, he will run over this
scale of questions: What means shall I use? Shall it be force? or
argument? or ridicule? or explanation? or advice? or instruction? or
command? or punishment? It requires practice to pounce upon the note
principally out of tune in a wealth of discord, and then to choose the
one tool that will set it right; but then, there is no vocation more
exciting than parenthood.
The noise of a quarrel may be its most serious offense. We can admit
that fact without accepting as an invariable rule the maxim of our
nervous, overwrought ancestors, Children should be seen and not heard.
At times it seems, indeed, as if the present age were too phlegmatic.
There are people for whose nerves children should be made to have
some regard; there are invalids who do not thrive on din; there is
necessary work which cannot be done in the midst of a racket; there
are neighbors who declare, with some show of right, that they regard
monopoly in noise as against public policy. So, whether for the sake of
cousin Bettina's nerves, or a tired mother's rest, or a busy father's
conference with a creditor, or merely for the sake of reputation with
the neighbors, it may be best to disregard all other factors and insist
on quiet. That seems clear enough. The trouble with us pretentious
grown-ups is that usually when we undertake to stop a quarrel because
it is disturbing, we delude ourselves into thinking that we have some
high moral purpose. We can expose our own fatuity by simply inquiring
of ourselves, when we begin our preachment, Would we have interfered if
this quarrel had not been so strepitous? It is one of the annoyances
in the training of children that if we are to be honest with them, we
must be honest with ourselves. I do not see how that can be helped. And
with children honesty is prerequisite to authority. To pretend that
we chiefly want them to be good at a time when really we chiefly want
them to be quiet is to renounce all influence over them when really
we arrive at the point of chiefly wanting them to be good. That is
reason enough for being honest with them. So when we set out towards
a quarrel with the determination of suppressing a noise, we shall, if
we are honest, deal with the quarrel, not as turpitude, but as noise.
We may not be able to persuade the contestants of the existence of
nerves, or headaches, or creditors, or neighbors, or even of our own
reasonableness; but we shall at least probably succeed in conveying to
them the genuineness of this single idea that is uppermost in our own
mind: if you can't quarrel quietly, you shall not quarrel at all. If
later we wish to impress upon them the necessity of being considerate
of others, we can use that specific quarrel as an illustration without
risking with them our reputation for singleness.