DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Continued_)
§ 1. QUARRELS
A child who never quarrels probably needs to be examined by a physician;
a child who is always quarreling equally needs the physician. In the
first there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet and
realize some of life's oppositions; in the other there is probably some
underlying cause for nervous irritability.
It is perfectly natural for healthy people to differ; in childhood's
realm, where the values and proportions of life are not clearly seen,
where social adjustments have not been acquired, the differences in
opinions, as in possessions, lead to the expression of feeling in sharp
and emphatic terms. Rivalry and conflict are natural to the young
animal. Children do not wilfully enter into conflicts any more than
adults; they are only less diplomatic in their language, more direct,
and more likely to follow the word with attempts at force.
In few things do parents need more patience than in dealing with
children's quarrels. First, seek to determine quietly the merits of the
cause; but do not attempt to pronounce a verdict. It is seldom wise to
act as judge unless you allow the children to act as a jury. But
ascertain whether the quarrel is an expression somewhere of anger
against injustice, wrong, or evil in some form. Sometimes their quarrels
have as much virtue as our crusades. It is a sad mistake to quench the
feeling of indignation against wrong or of hatred against evil. A boy
will need that emotional backing in his fights against the base and the
foes of his kind. While rejoicing in his feeling, show him how to direct
it, train him to discriminate between hatred of wrong and bitterness
toward the wrongdoer. Help him to see the good that comes from loving
people, no matter what they do.
Our methods of dealing with a quarrel will do more to develop their
sense of justice than all our decisions can. Be sure to get each one to
state all the facts; insist on some measure of calmness in the recital.
Keep on sifting down the facts until by their own statements the quarrel
is seen stripped of passion and standing clear in its own light. Usually
that course, when kindly pursued and followed with sympathy for the
group, with a saving sense of humor, will result in the voluntary
acknowledgment of wrong. The boys--or girls--have for the first time
seen their acts, their words, their course, in a light without
prejudice. They are more ready to confess to being mistaken than are we
when convinced against our wishes.
When no acknowledgment of wrong is proffered voluntarily, we must still
not offer a verdict. Put the case to the contestants and let them settle
it. Listen, as a bystander, coming in only when absolutely necessary to
insist on exact statements of fact. That course should be excellent
training in clear thinking, in the duty of seeing the other man's side,
in the deliberation that saves from unwise accusations and the serious
quarrels of later life. Teach children to think through their
differences.
The perpetually petulant child, bickering with all others, should be
taken to a physician. Get him right nervously, physically, first. He is
out of harmony with himself and so cannot find harmony with others. When
the condition of habitual bickering seems to afflict all the children in
the family, it cannot be settled by attributing it to a mysterious
dispensation of natural depravity. The probability is that the home life
is without harmony and full of discord, that the parents are themselves
petulant and more anxious to assert their separate opinions than to find
unity of action. Nothing is more effective to teach children peaceful
living than to see it constantly before them in their parents. A
harmonious home seldom has quarrelsome children. Such harmony is a
matter of organization and management of affairs as much as of our own
attitude.
Some children are educated to a life of quarrels by being trained in the
family that spoils them. The single child is at a great disadvantage; he
occupies the throne alone. His home life becomes a mere series of spokes
radiating from himself. When he finds the world ordered otherwise, he
quarrels with it and tries to rearrange the spokes into a new,
self-centric social order. Whatever the number of children may be, each
one must learn to live with other lives, to adjust himself to them.
Neighboring social play and activities are the chance for this. Do not
try to keep Algernon in a glass case; he needs the world in which he
will have to live some day.
§ 2. FIGHTING
The best of men are likely to have a secret satisfaction in their boys'
fights, and the bravest of mothers will deplore them. The fathers know
how hard are the knocks that life is going to give; the mothers hope
that the boys can be saved from blows. A man's life is often pretty much
of a fight, every day struggling in competition and rivalry; we have not
yet learned the lesson of co-operation, and we still tend to think of
business as a battlefield. Something in us calls for fighting; we have
to use the utmost strength at our command to fight the evil tendencies
of our own hearts; often we rejoice in life as a conflict. It feels good
to find causes worth fighting for. If all this is true of the man, it
is not strange that the small boy, scarce more than a young savage, will
find opportunities for conflict. He is more dependent on the weapons of
force than is his father. He cannot cast out the enemy with a ballot,
nor with a sneer or biting sarcasm, nor by some device or strategy of
business or affairs. He can only hit back. Taken altogether, boys settle
their differences as honestly at least as do men.
Moreover, children's fights are not as cruel as they seem to be; even
the bloodshed means little either of pain or of injury. A boy may be
badly banged up today and in full trim tomorrow; it is quite different
with the wounds bloodlessly inflicted by men in their conflicts.
Does all this mean that boys should be encouraged to fight? No; but it
does mean that when Billy comes home with one eye apparently retired
from business, we must not scold him as though he were the first
wanderer from Eden. That fight may have been precisely the same thing as
a croquet game to his sister, or any test of skill to his big brother,
or a business transaction to his father; it was a mere contest of two
healthy bodies at a time when the body was the outstanding fact of life.
The fight may give us our chance, however, to aid him to a sense of the
greatness of life's conflict, to a sense of the qualities that make the
true fighter. It may leave him open to the appeal of true heroism. We
must make light of the victory of brute strength, just as we may make
light of his wounds and scars, and glorify the victory of the mind and
will.
The boy who fights because he lacks control of temper needs careful
training. He gets a good deal of discipline on the playground and
street, but it is not always effective; the beatings may only further
undermine control. But the lack of self-control will manifest itself in
many ways and must be remedied at all points. The discipline of daily
living in the family must come into play here.
§ 3. SELF-CONTROL
The matter of self-control is not separable into special features; one
cannot learn control under one set of moral circumstances without
learning it for all. The boy who strikes without thinking is simply one
who acts without thinking. He tends to throw away the brakes of the
will. The regain of control comes only through training at every point
in deliberation of action.
Probably there is no other point at which children so frequently and
readily learn control as in the matter of speech. The family where all
speak at once, where a babel of sounds leads to a rivalry of vocal
organs, is not only a nuisance to the neighbors, it is a school of
uncontrolled action to the children. Just to learn to wait, even after
the thought is formed into words, until it shall be my turn or my
opportunity to speak is a fine discipline of control. To do that every
day, year after year, tends to break up the hair-trigger process of
action.
Control is gained also by the acquisition of the habit of thought
regarding general courses of action. We can hardly expect meditation on
the part of little children. But those who are older, those entering
their teens, may and should be able to think things out, to plan out the
day's actions, to determine their own ways of conduct. Children who have
the custom of quiet, private prayer often develop ability to see their
conduct in the calm of those moments. They get a mental elevation over
the day and its deeds.
§ 4. GOOD FIGHTS
The evident danger of undue deliberation of action must be met by
another cure of the personal-conflict spirit; that is, the substitution
of games of rivalry and skill for the unorganized rivalry and "game" of
fighting. The transition from the bloody arena to the excitement of a
game is very easy and natural. But the game is the boy's great chance to
learn life as a game to be played according to the rules. All that the
fight calls for--courage, endurance, skill, quickness of action, and
grim persistence--comes out in a good game. Here is a suitable youthful
realization of the fight that is worth waging. Our participation in the
youths' games, our appreciation of their points, our joy in honestly won
success, is the best possible way to lead up to their taking life in
terms of a good fight, a grand game, a real chance to call out the
heroic qualities. Turn every fighting instinct into the good fight that
will clarify and elevate them all.
I. References for Study
W.L. Sheldon, _Ethics in the Home_, chaps. xi, xii, xiii. Welch &
Co., $1.25.
E.A. Abbott, _Training of Parents_, chap. v. Houghton Mifflin Co.,
$1.00.
II. Further Reading
Ella Lyman Cabot, _Every Day Ethics_. Holt, $1.25.
M. Wood-Allen, _Making the Best of Our Children_. 2 vols. McClurg,
$1.00 each.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. Do all children quarrel? Should one punish for small quarrels?
2. What are the facts which ought to be ascertained regarding any
quarrel?
3. What special opportunities do children's differences offer?
4. What are the causes of habitual petulance? What are the dangers
of this habit of mind?
5. Is fighting necessarily wrong? What part does it play in the
lives of men?
6. What are the dangerous elements in boys' fights?
7. What special quality of character needs development in this
connection?
8. What are the valuable possibilities in the fighting tendency?