Part 10

That all these different fears should call for precisely the same treatment is, of course, an absurdity. How to deal with each class of fears by itself, is an important element in the question before the parent who would treat wisely the fears of his children.

A child would be obviously lacking in sense, if he were never afraid of the consequences of any action to which he was inclined. If he had no fear of falling, no fear of fire or water, no fear of edged tools or machinery, no fear of a moving vehicle, it would be an indication of his defectiveness in reasoning faculties. Yet that there is a wide difference among children in the measure of their timidity in the presence of personal danger, no one will deny.

One child inclines to be unduly cautious, while another inclines to be unduly venturesome. Moreover, that the timidest child can be brought to overcome, in large measure, his fears of physical harm, is apparent in view of the success of primitive peoples in training their children to swim before they can walk, or to climb as soon as they can stand; and of circus managers in bringing the children of civilized parents to feats of daring agility. How to train a child to the mastery of his fears in this line, without the brutal disregard of his feelings that too often accompanies such training by savages or professional athletes, is a point worthy of the attention of every wise parent.

Because these fears are within the realm of the reasoning faculties, they ought to be removed by means of a process of reasoning. A child ought not to be beaten or threatened or ridiculed into the overcoming of his fears, but rather encouraged and directed to their overcoming, through showing him that they ought to, and that they can, be overcome. His fears are not unworthy of him; therefore he ought neither to be punished nor to be made sport of because he has them. The meeting and surmounting of his fears, within bounds, is also worthy of a child; therefore he ought to be helped to see this fact, and kindly cheered and sympathized with in his efforts accordingly.

Many a child has been trained to intelligent fearlessness, so far as he ought to be fearless, through the wise and tender endeavors of his parents to show him his power in this direction, and to stimulate him to the exercise of this power. And many a child has been turned aside from the overcoming of his fears, through the untimely ridicule of him for his possession of those fears. Because he must be a laughing-stock while struggling to master his fears, he decides to evade the struggle in order to evade the ridicule. Tenderness in pointing out to a child the wiser way of meeting his fears, is better than severity on the one hand, or ridicule on the other.

Unreasoning or instinctive fears are common to both the brightest and the dullest children. They are among the guards which are granted to humanity, in its very nature, for its own protection. It would never do for a child to make no distinction between persons whom he could trust implicitly, and persons whom he must suspect, or shrink from. It is right that he should be won or repelled by differences in form and expression. He needs to be capable of starting at a sudden sound, and of standing in awe of the great forces of nature. The proper meeting of these instinctive fears by a child must be through his understanding of their reasonable limits, and through the intelligent conforming of his action to that understanding. It is for the parent to train his child to know how far he must overcome these fears, and how far they must still have play in his mind. And this is a process requiring tenderness, patience, and wisdom.

When a child shows fear at the moaning of the wind about the house, and at its rattling of the shutters on a winter’s night, it is not fair to say to him, “Oh, nonsense! What are you afraid of? That’s nothing but the wind.” There is no help to the child in that saying; but there is harm to him in its suggestion of the parent’s lack of sympathy with him. If, however, the parent says, at such a time, “Does that sound trouble you? Let me tell you how it comes;” and then goes on to show how the wind is doing God’s work in driving away causes of sickness, and how it sometimes makes sweet music on wires that are stretched out for it to play upon,—the child may come to have a new thought about the wind, and to listen for its changing sounds on the shutters or through the trees.

One good mother sought to overcome her little boy’s fear of thunder by simply telling him that it was God’s voice speaking out of the heavens; but that was one step too many for his thoughts to take as yet. The thunder just as it was, was what gave him trouble, no matter where it came from; so when the next peal sounded through the air, the little fellow whimpered out despairingly, “Mamma, baby doesn’t like God’s voice.” And that mother was too wise and tender to rebuke her child for his unreadiness for that mode of revelation from above.

On the other hand, an equally wise and tender father, whose little daughter was afraid of the thunder, took his child into his arms, when a thunder-storm was raging, and carried her out on to the piazza, in order, as he said, to show her something very beautiful. Then he told her that the clouds were making loud music, and that the light always flashed from the clouds before the music sounded, and he wanted her to watch for both light and music. His evident enthusiasm on the subject, and his manifest tenderness toward his child, swept the little one away from her fears, out toward the wonders of nature above her; and soon she was ready to believe that the thunder was as the very voice of God, which she could listen to with reverent gratitude. If there were more of such loving wisdom exercised in parental dealing with children’s fears, there would be less trouble from the unmastered fears of children on every side.

The hardest fears to control are, however, the fears which are purely of the imagination; and no other fears call for such considerate tenderness of treatment as these, in the realm of child-training. It is the more sensitive children, children of the finest grain, and of the more active and potent imaginings, who are most liable to the sway of these fears, and who are sure to suffer most from them. Persons who are lacking in the imaginative faculty, or who are cold-blooded and matter-of-fact in their temperament and nature, are hardly able to comprehend the power of these fears over those who feel them at their fullest. Hence it is that these fears in a child’s mind are less likely than any others to receive due consideration from parents generally, even while they need it most.

Because these fears are not of the reason, they are not to be removed by reason. Because they are of the imagination, the imagination must be called into service for their mastery. It is not enough to pronounce these fears unreasonable and foolish. They are, in their realm, a reality, and they must be met accordingly. While children suffer from them most keenly, they are not always outgrown in manhood. A clergyman already past the middle of life was heard to say that, to this day, he could never come up the cellar stairs all by himself, late at night, after covering up the furnace fire for the night, without the irrational fear that some one would clutch him by his feet from out of the darkness below. The fear was a reality, even though the cause was in the imagination. And a soldier who had been under fire in a score of battles, said that he would to-day rather go into another battle than to be all alone in a deserted house in broad daylight.

In neither of these cases was the person under the influence of superstitious fears, but only of those fears which an active imagination will suggest in connection with possibilities of danger beyond all that can yet be seen. And these are but illustrations of the sway of such fears in the minds of men who are stronger by reason of their very susceptibility to such fears. These men have added power because of their vivid imaginations; and because of their vivid imaginations they are liable to fears of this sort. What folly, then, to blame a child of high imagination for feeling the sway of similar fears!

The heroic treatment of these fears of the imagination is not what is called for in every instance; nor is it always sufficient to meet the case. A child may be trained to go by himself into the darkness, or to sleep in a room shut away from other occupants of the house, without overcoming his fears of imagination. And if these fears be constantly spoken of as those which are utterly unworthy of him, the child may indeed refrain from giving expression to them, and suffer all by himself with an uncalled-for sense of humiliation, even while he is just as timid as before. It would be better, in many a case, to refrain from an undue strain on a sensitive child, through sending him out of the house in the evening to walk a lonely path, or through forcing him to sleep beyond the easy call of other members of the household; but in every instance it is right and wise for a parent to give his child the evidence of sympathy with him in his fears, and of tender considerateness of him in his struggles for their overcoming.

The help of helps to a child in meeting his fears of the imagination, is found in the bringing to his mind, through the imagination, a sense of the constant presence of a Divine Protector to cheer him when his fears are at their highest. A little child who wakened in the middle of the night, called to her parents, in another room, and when her father was by her bedside, she told him that she was afraid to be alone. Instead of rebuking her for this, he said, “There’s a little verse in the Bible, my darling, that’s meant for you at a time like this; and I want you to have that in your mind whenever you waken in this way. It is a verse out of one of David’s psalms; and it is what he said to the Lord his Shepherd: ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’ That is the verse. Now, whenever you are afraid, you can think of that verse, and say it over as a loving prayer, and the Good Shepherd will hear you, and will keep you from all harm.”

The child repeated the verse after her father, and she saw its peculiar fitness to her case. As her father then prayed to the God of David in loving confidence, she realized more fully than before how near God was to her in the time of her greatest fears. And from that time on, that little child was comforted through faith when her imagination pressed her with its terrors. She never forgot that verse; and it still is a help to her in her fears by day and by night.

A child’s imagination ought, indeed, to be guarded sacredly. It should be shielded as far as possible from unnecessary fears, through foolish stories of ghosts and witches, told by nurses or companions, or read from improper books. But whether a child’s fears in this realm be few or many, they should be dealt with tenderly by a loving parent; not ignored, nor rudely overborne. Many a child has been harmed for life through a thoughtless disregard by his parents of the fears of his imagination. But every child might be helped for life by a sympathetic and tender treatment of these fears, on the part of his parents, while he is still under their training.

In no realm of a child’s nature has a child greater need of sympathy and tenderness from his parents, than in the realm of his fears. It is because he is sensitive, and in proportion as he is sensitive, that a child’s fears have any hold upon him. And a child’s sensitiveness is too sacred to be treated rudely or with lightness by those to whom he is dearest, and who would fain train him wisely and well.

XXIV.

_THE SORROWS OF CHILDREN._

The trials and sorrows of children and young people have not always had the recognition they deserve from parents and teachers. It is even customary to speak of childhood as an age of utter freedom from anxiety and grief, and to look upon boys and girls generally as happier and lighter-hearted than they can hope to be in later life. No mistake could be greater than this. The darker side of life is seen first. The brighter side comes afterward.

“Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” The first sound of a child’s voice is a cry, and that cry is many times repeated before the child gives his first smile. How easily the best-behaved baby cries, every mother can testify. It is the soothing of a crying child, not the sharing in the joy of a laughing one, which taxes the skill and the patience of a faithful nurse. Only as the child is trained, disciplined, to overcome his inclination to cry, and to find happiness in his sphere, does he come to be a joyous and glad-hearted little one.

Every burden of life—and life’s burdens seem many—rests at its heaviest on a child’s nature. A child is refused more requests than are granted to him. He is subjected to disappointments daily, almost hourly. The baby cannot reach the moon, nor handle papa’s razor, nor pound the looking-glass, nor pull over the tea-pot, nor creep into the fire. The older child cannot eat everything he wants to, nor go out at all times, nor have papa and mamma ever at his side. Then there come school-tasks to shrink from, and the jealousies and unkindnesses of playmates and companions to grieve over. And as more is known of life and the world, and the inevitable struggles with temptation, and of the injustice and wrongs which must in so many instances be suffered, it becomes harder and harder for a young person to see only the brighter side of human existence, and to bear up bravely and cheerily under all that tends to sadden and oppress us. There are more clouds in the sky of life’s April than of life’s August.

As the young grow older they come to be less sensitive to little trials, and they control themselves better. They are not tempted to shed tears whenever they find their plans thwarted, or themselves unable to do or to have all they would like to, or their companions unlike what they had hoped for. They learn to philosophize over their troubles, to look at the compensations of life, and to recognize the fact that many things which they have longed after would not have been good for them if they had obtained them, and that, at all events, time will soften many of their trials. And so life’s troubles seem lighter, and life’s joys greater—if not more intense—to maturer minds than to the young. Even when men are far greater sufferers than ever children can be, they come to be calloused in a measure through the very continuance of their grief, and they bear as a little thing that which would have crushed them a few years before.

But how their former experiences and their earlier tumults of feeling are forgotten by men and women as they get farther and farther away from childhood! They fail to remember how deeply they grieved as little ones. They forget, in large measure, how heavy the burdens of life seemed in their earlier years. They are sure that many things which now trouble them had no power over them when they were younger. It seems to them, indeed, that the little trials of children cannot seem very large even to children. And so, as they watch the little ones in their brighter moments, they think that childhood is the age of freedom from sorrow and care; and they are even inclined to wish that they were young once more, that they might have no such hours of trial and grief as now they are called to so frequently.

Values are relative; so are losses; so are sorrows. One person puts a high estimate on what another deems quite worthless. One grieves over a loss for which another would feel no concern. That which a child values highly may be of no moment to the child’s father; but its loss might be as great a grief to the child as would the loss to the father of that which, in the father’s sight, is incalculably more important. The breaking of a valued toy may be as serious a disaster, from the child’s point of view, as the bankrupting of the father’s business would seem from the father’s standpoint. And the child’s temporary censure by his playmates for some slight misdoing of his, may cause to him as bitter a sorrow as would the condemnation by the public, cause to his father when the father’s course had brought him into permanent disgrace.

A little girl was startled by what she heard said at the family table concerning a neighbor’s loss of household silver through a visit of robbers. “Mamma,” she whispered, “do robbers take _dolls_?” Her dolls were that child’s treasure. If _they_ were in danger, life had new terrors for her. “No, my dear,” said her mamma; “robbers don’t want dolls. Why should they take them?” “I didn’t know but they would want them for their little girls,” was the answer; as showing that, in the child’s estimation, dolls had a value for children in the homes of robbers as well as elsewhere. With the assurance that her dolls were safe, that little girl had less fear of midnight robberies. What, to her mind, was the loss of the family silver, or of clothing and jewels, if the dolls were to be left unharmed! A child’s estimate of values may be a false one; but the child’s sorrows over losses measured by those estimates are as real as any one’s sorrows.

It must, indeed, be a sore pressure of sorrow and trial on a child’s mind and heart, to bring him to commit suicide; yet the suicide of a child is by no means so rare an act as many would suppose. The annual official statistics of suicides in France show a considerable percentage of children among the unhappy victims. Hundreds of suicides are reported in England, year by year. In America the case is much the same. Month by month the public prints give the details of child suicides as a result of some sore trial or sorrow to the little ones.

“Forgive me for committing suicide,” wrote a bright and affectionate lad, in a note to his father just before committing the fatal act. “I am tired of life,” he added. And everything in connection with his suicide showed that that lad had planned the act with a cool head and an aching heart. In fact, most persons of adult years can recall out of the memories of their earlier life some experiences of disappointment, or of grief, or of a sense of injustice, which made life seem to them for the time being no longer worth living, and the thought of an end to their trial in death not wholly terrible. Very _childish_ all this was, of course; but that is the point of its lesson to parents; childish griefs are very real and very trying—to children.

One plain teaching of these facts concerning the sorrows of children is, that the young need the comfort and joys of a Christian faith for the life that now is, quite as surely as the aged need a Christian hope for the life that is to come. The surest way of bringing even a child to see the brighter side of this life is by inducing him to put his trust in an omnipotent Saviour, who loves him, and who makes all things work together for good to him if only he trust himself to His care and walks faithfully in His service. The invitations and the promises of the Bible are just what children need, to give them happiness and hope for now and for hereafter.

XXV.

_THE PLACE OF SYMPATHY IN CHILD-TRAINING._

A child needs sympathy hardly less than he needs love; yet ten children are loved by their parents where one child has his parents’ sympathy. Every parent will admit that love for his children is a duty; but only now and then is there a parent who realizes that he ought to have sympathy with his children. In fact, it may safely be said that, among those children who are not called to suffer from actual unkindness on the part of their parents, there is no greater cause of unhappiness than the lack of parental sympathy. And, on the other hand, it is unquestionably true that in no way can any parent gain such power over his child for the shaping of the child’s character and habits of life as by having and showing sympathy with that child.

Love may be all on one side. It may be given without being returned or appreciated. It may fail of influencing or affecting the one toward whom it goes out. But sympathy is in its very nature a twofold force. It cannot be all on one side. From its start it is a response to another’s feelings or needs. It is based on the affections, or inclinations, or sufferings, or sense of lack, already experienced by another. Hence sympathy is sure of a grateful recognition by the one who has called it out. Love may be proffered before it is asked for or desired. Sympathy is in itself the answer to a call for that which it represents. Love may, indeed, be unwelcome. Sympathy is, in advance, assured of a welcome.

In his joys as in his sorrows a true child wants some one to share his feelings rather than to guide them. If he has fallen and hurt himself, a child is more helped by being spoken to in evident sympathy than by being told that he must not cry, or that his hurt is a very trifling matter. The love that shows itself in tenderly binding up his wound, in a case like this, has less hold upon the child than the sympathy that expresses a full sense of his pain, and that recognizes and commends his struggle to control his feelings under his injury. It is easier, indeed, to comfort a child at such a time, and to give him power over himself, by showing him that you feel with him, and how you want him to feel, than by telling him, never so lovingly, what he ought to do, and how to do it. And it is the same with a child in any time of joy, as in every time of grief. He wants your sympathy with him in his delights, rather than your loving approval of his enjoying himself just then and in that way.

Herbert Spencer, who makes as little of the finer sentiments of human nature as any intelligent observer of children can safely do, emphasizes this desire of a child for sympathy, in the realm of mental development. “What can be more manifest,” he asks, “than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See, when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—‘Hear this new sound.’ Watch how the older children come into the room exclaiming, ‘Mamma, see what a curious thing,’ ‘Mamma, look at this,’ ‘Mamma, look at that;’ and would continue the habit, did not the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Observe how, when out with the nurse-maid, each little one runs up to her with the new flower it has gathered, to show her how pretty it is, and to get her also to say it is pretty. Listen to the eager volubility with which every urchin describes any novelty he has been to see, if only he can find some one who will attend with any interest.”

How many parents there are, however, who are readier to provide playthings for their children than to share the delights of their children with those playthings; readier to set their children at knowledge-seeking, than to have a part in their children’s surprises and enjoyments of knowledge-attaining; readier to make good, as far as they can, all losses to their children, than to grieve with their children over those losses. And what a loss of power to those parents as parents, is this lack of sympathy with their children as children. There are, however, parents who sympathize with their children in all things; and as a result, they practically train and sway their children as they will: for when there is entire sympathy between two persons, the stronger one is necessarily the controlling force with both.