CARE OF THE POWERS: PATIENCE--INFIRMITY.
The smaller misfortunes which we now turn to, under the head of
Infirmity--the loss of a limb, the partial loss of a sense, deformity
and sickness--are scarcely less afflictive to the parent than those we
have considered, because they are even more trying to the child. The
sufferer is fully conscious of these: and the parents' heart is sore at
the spectacle of its mortifications. What can be done to help it to a
magnanimous patience?
First, there must be the fullest confidence between the parents and the
child. It can open its swelling heart to no one else; for the depth of
its feeling renders it quite unable to speak of its sufferings to any
one, unless allured to do so; and no one can or ought to allure it to
this confidence, except its parents, or in case of failure from them. It
may be thought strange that this apparently natural act should be set
before the parents as a duty: but I speak from knowledge; and from the
knowledge of so many cases that I am compelled to believe that the very
last subject on which parents and child speak together is that on which
it is most necessary to the sufferer to have spoken sympathy. Some
parents have not courage to face the case themselves, and evade the
painful thought from day to day. Some feel for their child that sort of
deference which it is natural to feel for the afflicted, and wait for
the sufferer to speak. Some persuade themselves that it is better for
the child not to recognise the trial expressly, and repel by forced
cheerfulness the sufferer's advances towards confidence. All this is
wrong. I have known a little crippled girl grow up to womanhood in daily
pain of heart from the keen sense of her peculiarity, almost without
uttering a syllable to any human being of that grief which cursed her
existence; and suffering in mind and character irreparably from the
restraint. She got over it at last, to a considerable degree, and became
comparatively free and happy; but nothing could ever compensate to her
for her long bondage to false shame, or repair the mischief done to the
action of her mind by its being made to bear unrelieved weight which it
had naturally power to throw off. I know another sufferer from the same
misfortune whose heart was early opened by genial confidence, and who
throve accordingly. She had to bear all the pain which a lively and
sensitive child must feel in being unable to play and dance as others
do, and being so marked an object as to be subject to staring in the
street, and to the insulting remarks of rude children as she passed. But
the sympathy of her protectors bore her through till her mind was
strong enough to protect itself; and she has come out of the struggle
free and gay, active and helpful to a marvellous degree--even graceful,
making a sort of plaything of her crutch, and giving constant joy to her
friends, and relief to strangers, by her total freedom from false shame.
I have known deafness grow upon a sensitive child, so gradually as never
to bring the moment when her parents felt impelled to seek her
confidence; and the moment therefore never arrived. She became gradually
borne down in health and spirits by the pressure of her trouble, her
springs of pleasure all poisoned, her temper irritated and rendered
morose, her intellectual pride puffed up to an insufferable haughtiness,
and her conscience brought by perpetual pain of heart into a state of
trembling soreness--all this, without one word ever being offered to her
by any person whatever of sympathy or sorrow about her misfortune. Now
and then, some one made light of it; now and then, some one told her
that she mismanaged it, and gave advice which, being inapplicable,
grated upon her morbid feelings; but no one inquired what she felt, or
appeared to suppose that she did feel. Many were anxious to show
kindness, and tried to supply some of her privations; but it was too
late. She was shut up, and her manner appeared hard and ungracious while
her heart was dissolving in emotions. No one knew when she stole out of
the room, exasperated by the earnest talk and merry laugh that she
could not share, that she went to bolt herself into her own room, and
sob on the bed, or throw herself on her knees, to pray for help or
death. No one knew of her passionate longing to be alone while she was,
for her good, driven into society; nor how, when by chance alone for an
hour or two, she wasted the luxury by watching the lapse of the precious
minutes. And when she grew hard, strict, and even fanatical in her
religion, no one suspected that this was because religion was her
all--her soul's strength under agonies of false shame, her wealth under
her privations, her refuge in her loneliness: while her mind was so
narrow as to require that what religion was to her--her one pursuit and
object--it should be everybody else. In course of years, she, in a great
measure, retrieved herself, though still conscious of irreparable
mischief done to her nature. All this while, many hearts were aching for
her, and the minds of her family were painfully occupied in thinking
what could be done for her temper and her happiness. The mistake of
reserve was the only thing they are answerable for: a mistake which,
however mischievous, was naturally caused by the very pain of their own
sympathy first, and the reserve of the sufferer afterwards.
From the moment that a child becomes subject to any infirmity, a special
relation between him and his mother begins to exist: and their
confidence must become special. She must watch for, or make occasions
for speaking to him about his particular trial; not often, nor much at a
time, but so as to leave an opening for the pouring out of his little
heart. If he is not yet conscious of his peculiarity, this is the
gentlest and easiest way in which he can be made so. If he is conscious,
he must have some pain at his heart which he will be the better for
confiding. Hump-backed people are generally said to be vain, haughty,
fond of dress, forward and talkative, irritable and passionate. If not
so, they are usually shy and timid. I cannot see anything in their
peculiarity to cause the first-mentioned tendencies: and I believe they
arise from the mismanagement of their case. The fond mother and pitying
friends may naturally forget that the child does not see himself as they
see him, and fancy that they soothe his mortifications by saying
whatever they can say in favour of his appearance--letting him know that
he has pretty hair, or good eyes. They may even dress him fine, to make
up to him in one way for his faults of appearance in another. Under the
idea of encouraging him under his supposed mortifications, they may lead
him on to be forward and talkative. And then again, his mortifications,
when they come upon him unprepared, may well make him irascible. How
much of this might be obviated, as well as the shyness and timidity of
those who are left to themselves, by timely confidence between the
mother and child! When they are alone together, calm and quiet, let her
tell him that he does not look like other children, and that he will
look less like other people as he grows older. Never let her tell him
that this is of no great consequence--never let her utter the cant that
is talked to young ladies at schools, that the charms of the mind are
everything, and those of the form and face nothing. This is not true;
and she ought to know that it is not: and nothing but truth will be
strong enough to support him in what he must undergo. Let her not be
afraid to tell him the worst. He had better hear it from her; and it
will not be too much for him, if told in a spirit of cheerful patience.
The child, like the man, never has a happier hour than that which
succeeds the reception of bad news, if the nobler faculties are allowed
their free play. If such a child hears from his mother that he will
always be ugly-shaped and odd-looking,--that he will not be able to play
as other boys do, or will be laughed at when he tries; that he will be
mocked at and called "My lord" in the streets, and so on, and yet that
all these things will not make him unhappy if he can bear them; and if
they go on to consult how he may bear them, and she opens out to him
something of the sweet pleasures of endurance, he will come out of the
consultation exhilarated, and perhaps proudly longing to meet his
mortifications, and try his strength. Such pride must have a fall,--like
all the pride of childhood,--and many an hour of depression must he
know for every one of exhilaration: but his case is put into his own
hands, and there is every hope that he will conquer, through patience,
at last. And what a refuge he has in his mother! How well she will now
know his feelings and his needs! and how easy and natural it will be to
him henceforth to confide in her! And her knowledge of his secret mind
will enable her to oversee and regulate the conduct of the rest of the
household towards him, so as to guard against his being treated with an
indulgence which he can dispense with, or his receiving in silence
wounds to his feelings which might rankle. The object is, with sufferers
under every kind of conscious infirmity, to make them hardy in
mind,--saving them from being hardened. They must know in good time that
they have a difficult and humbling lot, and what its difficulties and
humiliations are,--their noblest faculties being at the same time roused
to meet them. It is the rousing of these noble faculties which makes the
hour of confidence one of exhilaration: and when the actual occasion of
trial arises, when the cripple is left out of the cricket-match, and the
deaf child misses the joke or entertaining story, and the hump-back
hears the jibe behind him,--there is hope that the nobler faculties will
be obedient to the promised call, and spread the calm of patience over
the tumult of the sufferer's soul.
But, while the infirm child is encouraged to take up the endurance of
his infirmity as an object and an enterprise, he must not be allowed to
dwell too much on it, nor on the peculiar features of his condition; or
his heroism will pass over into pride, and his patience into
self-complacency. Life and the world are before him, as before others;
and one circumstance of lot and duty, however important, must not occupy
the place of more than one,--either in his confidences with his mother,
or in his own mind. The more he is separated from others by his
infirmity, the more carefully must his interests and duties be mixed up
with those of others, in the household and out of it. Companionship in
every way must be promoted all the more, and not the less, because of
the eternal echo within him, "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and
the stranger intermeddleth not with its joy."
What has been said thus far about patience will serve for cases of
sickness, as well as for other trials among children. I may add that I
think it a pity to lavish indulgence--privileges--upon a sick child, for
two reasons;--that such indulgence is no real comfort or compensation to
the suffering child, who is too ill to enjoy it: and that it is
witnessed by others, and remembered by the patient himself when he has
forgotten his pain, so as to cause sickness to be regarded as a state of
privilege; a persuasion likely to lead to fancies about health, and an
exaggeration of ailments. All possible tenderness, of course, there
should be, and watchfulness to amuse the mind into forgetfulness of the
body: but the less fuss and unusual indulgence the better for the
child's health of body and mind, and the purer the lesson of patience
which he may bring out of his sickness. Illness is a great evil, little
to be mitigated by any means of diversion that can be used: and a child
usually trained to patience, may be trusted to bear the evil well, if
not misled by false promises: and it is much kinder to him to let him
rest on a quiet and steady tenderness, than to promise and offer him
indulgences which will be longed for hereafter, but which wholly
disappoint him now, and add another trial to the many which put his
patience to the proof.