A NEW WAY OF BRINGING UP CHILDREN
"Only a thought, but the work it wrought
Could never by tongue or pen be taught,
But it ran through a life like a thread of gold,
And the life bore fruit a hundredfold."
Not long ago there was on exhibition in New York a young horse which
can do most marvelous things; and yet his trainer says that only five
years ago he had a very bad disposition. He was fractious, and would
kick and bite, but now instead of displaying his former viciousness, he
is obedient, tractable, and affectionate. He can readily count and
reckon up figures, can spell many words, and knows what they mean.
In fact this horse seems to be capable of learning almost anything.
Five years of kindness have completely transformed the vicious yearling
colt. He is very responsive to kindness, but one can do nothing with
him by whipping or scolding him. His trainer says that in all the five
years he has never touched him with a whip but once.
I know a mother of a large family of children who has never whipped but
one of them, and that one only once.
When her first child was born people said she was too good-natured to
bring up children, that she would spoil them, as she would not correct
or discipline them, and would do nothing but love them. But this love
has proved the great magnet which has held the family together in a
marvelous way. Not one of those children has gone astray. They have
all grown up manly and womanly, and love has been wonderfully developed
in their natures. Their own affection responded to the mother's love
and has become their strongest motive. To-day all her children look
upon "Mother" as the grandest figure in the world. She has brought out
the best in them because she saw the best in them. The worst did not
need correcting or repressing, because the expulsive power of a
stronger affection drove out of the nature or discouraged the
development of vicious tendencies which, in the absence of a great
love, might have become dominant and ruined the life.
Love is a healer, a life-giver, a balm for our hurts. All through the
Bible are passages which show the power of love as a healer and
life-lengthener. "With long life will I satisfy him," said the
Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me."
When shall we learn that the great curative principle is love, that
love heals because it is harmony? There can be no discord where it
reigns. Love is serenity, is peace and happiness.
Love is the great disciplinarian, the supreme harmonizer, the true
peacemaker. It is the great balm for all that blights happiness or
breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all the
brutal propensities. As cruelty melts before kindness, so the evil
passions and their antidote in sweet charity and loving sympathy.
The mother is the supreme shaper of life and destiny.
Many a mother's love for her children has undoubtedly stayed the
ravages of some fatal disease. Her conviction that she was necessary
to them and her great love for them have braced her, and have enabled
her to successfully cope with the enemies of her life for a long time.
One mother I know seems to have the magical art of curing nearly all
the ills of her children by love. If any member of the family has any
disagreeable experience, is injured or pained, hurt or unhappy, he
immediately goes to the mother for the universal balm, which heals all
troubles.
This mother has a way of drawing the troubled child out of discord into
the zone of perpetual harmony. If he is swayed by jealousy, hatred, or
anger, she applies the love solvent, the natural antidote for these
passion poisons. She knows that scolding a child when he is already
suffering more than he can bear is like trying to put out a fire with
kerosene.
Our orphan asylums give pathetic illustration of how quickly the child
mind matures and ages prematurely without the uplift and enrichment of
the mother love, the mother sympathy,--parental protection and home
influence.
It is well known that children who lose their parents and are adopted
by their grandparents and live in the country, where they do not have
an opportunity to mingle much with other children, adopt the manners
and mature vocabulary of their elders, for they are very imitative, and
become little men and women before they are out of their youth.
Think of a child reared in the contaminating atmosphere of the slums,
where everything is dripping with suggestions of vulgarity and
wickedness of every description! Think of his little mind being filled
with profanity, obscenity, and filth of all kinds! Is it any wonder
that he becomes so filled with vicious, criminal suggestions that he
tends to become like his environment?
Contrast such a child with one that is brought up in an atmosphere of
purity, refinement, and culture, and whose mind is always filled with
noble, uplifting suggestions of the true, the beautiful, and the
lovely. What a difference in the chances of these two children, and
without any special effort or choice of their own! One mind is trained
upward, towards the light, the other downward, towards darkness.
What chance has a child to lead a noble life when all his first
impressionable years are saturated with the suggestion of evil, when
jealousy and hatred, revenge, quarreling and bickering, all that is low
and degrading, fill his ears and eyes?
How important it is that the child should only hear and see and be
taught that which will make for beauty and for truth, for loveliness
and grandeur of character!
We ought to have a great deal of charity for those whose early lives
have been soaked in evil, criminal, impurity thoughts.
The minds of children are like the sensitive plates of a photographer,
recording every thought or suggestion to which they are exposed. These
early impressions make up the character and determine the future
possibility.
If you would encourage your child and help him to make the most of
himself, inject bright, hopeful, optimistic, unselfish pictures into
his atmosphere. To stimulate and inspire his confidence and
unselfishness means growth, success, and happiness for him in his
future years, while the opposite practice may mean failure and misery.
It is of infinitely more importance to hold the right thought towards a
child, the confident, successful, happy, optimistic thought, than to
leave him a fortune without this. With his mind properly trained he
could not fail, could not be unhappy, without reversing the whole
formative process of his early life.
Keep the child's mind full of harmony, of truth, and there will be no
room for discord, for error.
It is cruel constantly to remind children of their deficiencies or
peculiarities. Sensitive children are often seriously injured by the
suggestion of inferiority and the exaggeration of defects which might
have been entirely overcome. This everlasting harping against the bad
does not help the child half as much as keeping his little mind full of
the good, the beautiful, and the true. The constant love suggestion,
purity suggestion, nobility suggestion will so permeate the life after
a while that there will be nothing to attract the opposite. It will be
so full of sunshine, so full of beauty and love, that there will be
little or no place for their opposites.
The child's self-confidence should be buttressed, braced, and
encouraged in every possible way; not that he should be taught to
overestimate his ability and his possibilities, but the idea that he is
God's child, that he is heir to an Infinite inheritance, magnificent
possibilities, should be instilled into the very marrow of his being.
A great many boys, especially those who are naturally sensitive, shy,
and timid, are apt to suspect that they lack the ability which others
have. It is characteristic of such youths that they distrust their own
ability and are very easily discouraged or encouraged. It is a sin to
shake or destroy a child's self-confidence, to reflect upon his ability
or to suggest that he will never amount to much. These discouraging
words, like initials cut in the sapling, grow wider and wider with the
years, until they become great ugly scars in the man.
Most parents do not half realize how impressionable children are, and
how easily they may be injured or ruined by discouragement or ridicule.
Children require a great deal of appreciation, praise, and
encouragement. They live upon it. It is a great tonic to them. On
the other hand, they wither very quickly under criticism, blame, or
depreciation. Their sensitive natures can not stand it. It is the
worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and
positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them
that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and
dull, and that they will probably never amount to anything in the world.
How easy it is for a parent or teacher to ruin a child's constructive
ability, to change a naturally, positive creative mind to a negative,
non-producing one, by chilling the child's enthusiasm, by projecting
into his plastic mind the idea that he is stupid, dull, lazy, a
"blockhead" and good-for-nothing; that he will never amount to
anything; that it is foolish for him to try to be much, because he has
not the ability or physical stamina to enable him to accomplish what
many others do. Such teaching would undermine the brightest intellect.
I have known of an extremely sensitive, timid boy who had a great deal
of natural ability, but who developed very slowly, whose whole future
was nearly ruined by his teacher and parents constantly telling him
that he was stupid and dull, and that he probably never would amount to
anything. A little praise, a little encouragement, would have made a
superb man of this youth, because he had the material for the making of
one. But he actually believed that he was not up to the ordinary
mental standard; he was thoroughly convinced that he was mentally
deficient, and this conviction never entirely left him.
We are beginning to discover that it is much easier to attract than to
coerce. Praise and encouragement will do infinitely more for children
than threats and punishment. The warm sunshine is more than a match
for the cold, has infinitely more influence in developing the bud, the
blossom, and the fruit than the wind and the tempest, which suppress
what responds voluntarily to the genial influence of the sun's rays.
We all know how boys will work like troopers under the stimulus of
encouragement and praise. Many parents and teachers know this, and how
fatal the opposite policy is. But unfortunately a great majority do
not appreciate the magic of praise and appreciation.
Pupils will do anything for a teacher who is always kind, considerate,
and interested in them; but a cross, fractious, nagging one so arouses
their antagonism that it often proves a fatal bar to their progress.
There must be no obstruction, no ill-feeling between the teacher and
the pupil, if the best results are to be obtained.
Many parents are very much distressed by the waywardness of their
children; but this waywardness is often more imaginary than real. A
large part of children's pranks and mischief is merely the outcome of
exuberant youthful spirits, which must have an outlet, and if they are
suppressed, their growth is fatally stunted. They are so full of life,
energy, and so buoyant that they can not keep still. They _must_ do
_something_. Give them an outlet for their animal spirits. Love is
the only power that can regulate and control them.
Do not try to make men of your boys or women of your girls. It is not
natural. Love them. Make home just as happy a place as possible, and
give them rein, freedom. Encourage them in their play, for they are
now in their fun age. Many parents ruin the larger, completer, fuller
development of their children by repressing them, destroying their
childhood, their play days, by trying to make them adults. There is
nothing sadder in American life than the child who has been robbed of
its childhood.
Children are little animals, sometimes selfish, often cruel, due to the
fact that some parts of their brain develop faster than others, so that
their minds are temporarily thrown out of balance, sometimes even to
cruel or criminal tendencies, but later the mind becomes more
symmetrical and the vicious tendencies usually disappear. Their moral
faculties and sense of responsibility unfold more slowly than other
traits, and of course, they will do mischievous things; but it is a
fatal mistake to be always suppressing them. They must give out their
surplus energy in some way. Encourage them to romp. Play with them.
It will keep you young, and will link them to you with hooks of steel.
Do not be afraid of losing your dignity. If you make home the
happiest, most cheerful place on earth for your children, if you love
them enough, there is little danger of their becoming bad.
Thousands of parents by being so severe with their children, scolding
and criticizing them and crushing their childhood, make them secretive
and deceitful instead of open and transparent, and estrange them and
drive them away from home.
A man ought to look back upon the home of his childhood as the Eden of
his life, where love reigned, instead of as a place where a long-faced
severity and harshness ruled, where he was suppressed and his
fun-loving spirits snuffed out.
Every mother, whether she realizes it or not, is constantly using the
power of suggestion in rearing her children, healing all their little
hurts. She kisses the bumps and bruises and tells the child all is
well again, and he is not only comforted, but really believes that the
kiss and caress have magic to cure the injury. The mother is
constantly antidoting and neutralizing the child's little troubles and
discords by giving the opposite thought and applying the love-elixir.
It is possible, through the power of suggestion, to develop in children
faculties upon which health, success, and happiness depend. Most of us
know how dependent our efficiency is upon our moods, our courage, hope.
If the cheerful, optimistic faculties were brought out and largely
developed in childhood, it would change our whole outlook upon life,
and we would not drag through years of half-heartedness,
discouragement, and mental anguish, our steps dogged by fear,
apprehension, anxiety, and disappointment.
One reason why we have such poor health is because we have been steeped
in poor-health thought from infancy. We have been saturated with the
idea that pain, physical suffering, and disease, are a part of life;
necessary evils which can not be avoided. We have had it so instilled
into us that robust health is the exception and could not be expected
to be the rule that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition
of things as a sort of fate from which we can not hope to get away.
The child hears so much sick talk, is cautioned so much about the
dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that he grows up with the
conviction that physical discords, aches, pains, all discomfort and
suffering, are a necessary part of his existence, that at any time
disease is liable to overtake him and ruin his happiness and thwart his
career.
Think of what the opposite training would do for the child; if he were
taught that health is the ever-lasting fact and that disease is but the
manifestation of the absence of harmony! Think what it would mean to
him if he were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full,
complete, instead of sickness, that certainty instead of uncertainty
were his birthright! Think what it would mean for him to _expect_ this
during all his growing years, instead of building into his
consciousness the opposite, instead of being saturated with the sick
thought and constantly being cautioned against disease and the danger
of contracting it!
The child should be taught that God never created disease, and never
intended that we should suffer; that we were made for abounding health
and happiness, made for enjoyment not for pain--made to be happy, not
miserable, to express harmony, not discord.
Children are extremely credulous. They are inclined to believe
everything that an adult tells them, especially the nurse, the father
and mother, and their older brothers and sisters. Even the things that
are told them in jest they take very seriously; and their imaginations
are so vivid and their little minds so impressionable that they magnify
everything. They are often punished for telling falsehoods, when the
fault is really due to their excessively active imagination.
Many ignorant or thoughtless parents and nurses constantly use fear as
a means of governing children. They fill their little minds full of
all sorts of fear stories and terror pictures which may mar their whole
lives. They often buy soothing syrups and all sorts of sleeping
potions to prevent the little ones from disturbing their rest at night,
or to keep them quiet and from annoying them in the day time, and thus
are liable to stunt their brain development.
Even if children were not seriously injured by fear, it would be wicked
to frighten them, for it is wrong to deceive them. If there is
anything in the world that is sacred to the parent or teacher, it is
the unquestioned confidence of children.
I believe that the beginnings of deterioration in a great many people
who go wrong could be traced to the forfeiting of the children's
respect and confidence by the parents and teachers. We all know from
experience that confidence once shaken is almost never entirely
restored. Even when we forgive, we seldom forget; the suspicion often
remains. There should never be any shadows between the child and his
parents and teachers. He should always be treated with the utmost
frankness, transparency, sincerity. The child's respect is worth
everything to his parents. Nothing should induce them to violate it or
to shake it. It should be regarded as a very sacred thing, a most
precious possession.
Think of the shock which must come to a child when he grows up and
discovers that those he has trusted implicitly and who seemed almost
like gods to him have been deceiving him for years in all sorts of ways!
I have heard mothers say that they dreaded to have their children grow
up and discover how they had deceived them all through their childhood;
to have them discover that they had resorted to fear, superstition, and
all sorts of deceits in order to govern or influence them.
Whenever you are tempted to deceive a child again, remember that the
time will come when _he will understand_, and that he will receive a
terrible shock when he discovers that you, up to whom he has looked
with such implicit trust, such simple confidence, have deceived him.
Parents should remember that every distressing, blood-curdling story
told to a child, every superstitious fear instilled into his young
life, the mental attitude they bear towards him, the whole treatment
they accord him, are making phonographic records in his nature which
will be reproduced with scientific exactness in his future life.
Whatever you do, never punish a child when he is suffering with fear.
It is a cruel thing to punish children the way most mothers and
teachers do, anyway; but to punish a child when he is already quivering
with terror is extremely distressing, and to whip a child when you are
angry is brutal. Many children never quite forget or forgive a parent
or teacher for this cruelty.
Parents, teachers, friends often put a serious stumbling-block in the
way of a youth by suggesting that he ought to study for the ministry,
or the law; to be a physician, an engineer, or enter some other
profession or business for which he may be totally unfitted. I know a
man whose career was nearly ruined by the suggestion of his grandmother
when he was a child that she would educate him for the church, and that
it was her wish for him to become a clergyman.
It was not that she saw in the little child any fitness for this holy
office, but because _she wanted a clergyman in the family_, and she
often reminded him that he must not disappoint her. The boy, who
idolized his grandmother, pondered this thought until he became a young
man. The idea possessed him so strongly that every time he tried to
make a choice of a career the picture of a clergyman rushed first to
his mind, and, although he could see no real reason why he should
become a clergyman, the suggestion that he ought to worked like leaven
in his nature and kept him from making any other choice until too late
to enable him to succeed to any great extent.
I know a most brilliant and marvelously fascinating woman who is
extremely ambitious to make a name for herself, but she is almost
totally lacking in her ability to apply herself, even in the line where
her talent is greatly marked. She seems to be abundantly endowed in
every faculty and quality except this. Now, if her parents had known
the secret of correcting mental deficiencies, building up weak
faculties, this girl could have been so trained that she would probably
have had a great career and made a world-wide name for herself.
I have in mind another woman, a most brilliant linguist, who speaks
fluently seven languages. She is a most fascinating conversationalist
and impresses one as having read everything, but, although in good
health, she is an object of charity to-day, simply because she has
never developed her practical faculties at all, and this because she
was never trained to work, to depend upon herself even in little things
when she was a child. She was fond of her books, was a most brilliant
scholar, but never learned to be practical or to do anything herself.
Her self-reliance and independence were never developed. All of her
early friends predicted a brilliant future for her, but because of the
very consciousness of possessing so many brilliant qualities and of the
fact that she was flattered during all her student life and not obliged
to depend upon herself for anything, she continued to exercise her
strong scholarship faculties only, little dreaming that the neglect to
develop her weaker ones would wreck her usefulness and her happiness.
It is not enough to possess ability. We must be able to use it
effectively, and whatever interferes with its activity to that extent
kills efficiency. There are many people who are very able in most
qualities and yet their real work is seriously injured and often
practically ruined, or they are thrown into the mediocre class, owing
to some weakness or deficiency which might have been entirely remedied
by cultivation and proper training in earlier life.
I know a man of superb ability in nearly every respect who is so timid
and shy that he does not dare push himself forward or put himself in
the position of greatest advantage, does not dare _begin_ things.
Consequently his whole life has been seriously handicapped.
If children could only be taught to develop a positive, creative mind,
it would be of infinitely more value and importance to them than
inheriting a fortune with a non-productive one. Youths should be
taught that the most valuable thing to learn in life next to integrity
is how to build their minds up to the highest possible producing point,
the highest possible state of _creative efficiency_.
The most important part of the education of the future will be to
increase the chances of success in life and lessen the danger of
failure and the wrecking of one's career by building up weak and
deficient faculties, correcting one-sided tendencies, so that the
individual will become more level-headed, better balanced, and have a
more symmetrical mind.
Many students leave school and college knowing a great deal, but
without a bit of improvement in their self-confidence, their initiative
ability. They are just as timid, shy, and self-depreciatory as before
entering.
Now, what advantage is it to send a youth out into the world with a
head full of knowledge but without the confidence or assurance to use
it effectively, or the ability to grapple with life's problems with
that vigor and efficiency which alone can bring success?
It is an unpardonable reflection upon a college which turns out youths
who dare not say their souls are their own, who have not developed a
vigorous self-confidence, assurance, and initiative. Hundreds of
students are turned out of our colleges every year who would almost
faint away if they were suddenly called upon to speak in public, to
read a resolution, or even to put a motion.
The time will come when an education will enable a youth while upon his
feet in public to express himself forcefully, to use the ability he has
and summon his knowledge quickly. He will be so trained in
self-control, in self-confidence, in level-headedness, that he will not
be thrown off his guard in an emergency. The future education will
mean that what the student knows will be _available_, that he can
utilize it at will, that he will be trained to use it _efficiently_.
Many of our graduates leave college every year as weak and inefficient
in many respects as when they began their education. What is education
for if it is not to train the youth to be the master of his faculties,
master of every situation, able to summon all of his reserves of
knowledge and power at will?
A college graduate, timid, stammering, blushing, and confused, when
suddenly called upon to use his knowledge whether in public or
elsewhere, ought to be an unknown thing. Of what use is education
which can not be summoned at will? Of what good are the reserves of
learning which can not be marshaled quickly when we need them, which do
not help one to be master of himself and the situation, whatever it may
be?
The time will come when no child will be allowed to grow up without
being taught to believe in himself, to have great confidence in his
ability. This will be a most important part of his education, for if
he believes in himself _enough_, he will not be likely to allow a
single deficient faculty or weakness to wreck his career.
He should be reared in the conviction that he was sent into this world
with a mission and that he is going to deliver it.
Every youth should be taught that it was intended he should fill a
place in the world which no one else can fill; that he should expect to
fill it, and train himself for it; taught that he was made in the
Creator's image, that in the truth of his being he is divine, perfect,
immortal, and that the image of God can not fail. He should be taught
to think grandly of himself, to form a sublime estimate of his
possibilities and of his future. This will increase his self-respect
and self-development in well-proportioned living.