Part 9
It is a parent’s duty to know who are his child’s companions, and to know the character, and course of conduct, and influence upon his child, of every one of those companions separately. Here is where a parent’s chief work is called for in the matter of guiding and controlling his child’s companionships. A parent must have his child’s sympathy, in order to gain this knowledge; and a parent must give his sympathy to his child, in order to be able to use this knowledge wisely. It may be necessary to keep an open house for these companions, and an open heart and hand to them personally, as it surely is necessary to keep an open ear to the child’s confidences concerning their sayings and doings, if the parent would know all about them that he needs to know. There are parents who do all this for and with their children, as an effective means of guiding those children in their companionships. It is a pity that there are net more who are willing to do it, in view of all that it may be a means of accomplishing for children.
Knowing his child’s companionships, a parent ought to encourage such of them as are worthiest, and discourage such as he cannot approve. He ought to help his child to see the advantages of the one class and the disadvantages of the other, and to regulate his social intimacies according to the standards thus set before him. It will not do for a parent to allow matters in this line to take their own course, and to accept all companionships for his child just as they may come to him. He must feel responsible for his child’s wise selection, from among the number of proffered companions, of those who are to be retained while others are dropped or avoided. And it devolves upon a parent to see to it that his child’s companionships are of growing value to his companions as well as to himself; that his child’s influence over his very playfellows is for their good, while his good is promoted by their association with him. A child’s companionships, like those of older persons, ought to be of advantage to both parties alike, through the very purpose of making them so.
Recognizing the desirableness and importance of companionships for his child, securing the best that are available, learning fully their characteristics and tendencies, aiding in their sifting, and seeking in their steady uplifting, a parent can do effective service in the way of guiding his child in and through that child’s companionships. To neglect this agency of a child’s training, would be to endanger his entire career in life, whatever else were done in his behalf.
XXI.
_NEVER PUNISH A CHILD IN ANGER._
Anger is not always wrong. A parent may be angry without sin. And, as a matter of fact, most parents do get angry, whether they ought to or not. Children are sometimes very provoking, and parents are sometimes very much provoked. It is not always wrong to punish a child. A child may need punishing, and it may be a parent’s duty to punish a child accordingly. But it is always wrong for a parent to punish a child in anger; and however great may be the need of a child’s punishing, a parent ought never to administer punishment to a child while angry.
Here is a rule which, strictly speaking, knows no exception; yet, as a matter of fact, probably nine-tenths of all the punishing of children that is done by parents in this world is done in anger. And this is one of the wrongs suffered by children through the wrong-doing of their parents.
Anger is hot blood. Anger is passion. Anger is for the time being a controlling emotion, fixing the mind’s eye on the one point against which it is specifically directed, to the forgetfulness of all else. But punishment is a judicial act, calling for a clear mind, and a cool head, and a fair considering of every side of the case in hand. Anger is inconsistent with the exercise of the judicial faculty; therefore no person is competent to judge fairly while angry.
If, indeed, in any given case, the anger itself be just, the impulse of the angry man may be in the right direction, and the punishment he would inflict a fitting one; but, again, his impulse may be toward a punishment that is not merited. At all events, the man is not in a frame of mind to decide whether or not his impulse is a wise one; and it is his duty to wait until he can dispassionately view the case in another light than that in which it presents itself to his heated brain. No judge is worthy of the office he administers, if he acts on the impulse of his first estimate of a case before him, without taking time to see what can be shown on the other side of that case. And no parent acts worthily who jumps to the punishment of a child while under the impulse of an angry mood.
There are strong provocatives to anger in many a child’s conduct, especially to a parent who is of an intense nature, with an inclination to quickness of temper. A child is disobedient at a point where he has been repeatedly told of his duty; he is quarrelsome with his playmates, or insolent toward his nurse; he is persistently irritable, or he gives way to a fit of ungovernable rage; he destroys property recklessly, or he endangers life and limb; he snatches away a plaything from a little brother, or he clutches his hands into his mother’s hair; he indulges in foul language, or he utters threats of revenge; he meets a proffered kiss with a slap or a scratch; his conduct may be even that which would excite anger in a saint, but it certainly is such as to excite anger in the average parent—who is not a saint. Then, while the parent is angry, and while punishment seems merited by the child, the temptation of the parent is to administer punishment; but that temptation is one that ought never to be yielded to, or, if yielded to, it is not without sin.
Punishment may be needed in such a case, but the punishment, to be surely just and to be recognized as just, must be well considered, and must be administered in a manner to show that it is not the outcome of passionate impulse. No punishment ought to be administered by a parent at any time that would not be administered by that parent when he was cool and calm and deliberate, and after he had had a full and free talk on the subject with the child, in the child’s best state of mind. Whether the punishment that seems to the parent to be the desert of the child, while the parent is still angry, is the punishment that the parent would deem the fitting one in his cooler, calmer moments, can be better decided after the parent has looked at it in both frames of mind, than before he has had the advantage of a view from the standpoint of fuller deliberation.
“What?” inquired a surprised parent, in conversing with the present writer on this very subject, “do you say that I must never punish my boy while I’m angry with him? Why then I should hardly ever punish him at all. It is while I am sitting up for him hour after hour, when I’ve told him over and over again that he must come in early, evenings, that I feel like taking hold of him smartly when he does come in. If I should say nothing to him then, but should leave the matter until the next morning, I should sleep off all my feeling on the subject, and he wouldn’t be punished at all.” And that father, in that statement of the case, spoke for many a parent, in the whole matter of the punishing of a child while angry. The punishment which the child gets is the result of the passion of the parent, not of the parent’s sense of justice; and the child knows this to be the case, whether the parent does or not.
How many boxes of the ear, and shakings of the shoulders, and slappings and strikings, and sentences of doom, which the children now get from their parents, would never be given if only the parents refrained from giving these while angry, but waited until they themselves were calm and unruffled, before deciding whether to give them or not! It is not by any means easy for a parent always to control himself in his anger, so as to refrain from acting on the impulse which his anger imparts; but he who has not control of himself is the last person in the world to attempt the control of others. And not until a parent has himself in perfect control ought he to take his child in hand for the judicial investigation and treatment of his case as an evil-doer.
Of course, there are cases where instant action on the part of parents in checking or controlling their children’s conduct is a necessity, whether the parent be excited or calm; but in such cases the action, however vigorous or severe, is not in the line of punishment, but of conservation. A child may be thoughtlessly tugging away at the end of a table-cloth, with the liability of pulling over upon his head all the table crockery, including the scalding tea-pot; or he may be endangering himself by reaching out toward a lighted lamp, or an open razor. No time is to be lost. If the child does not respond to a word, he must be dealt with promptly and decisively. A sharp rap on the fingers may be the surest available means of saving him from a disaster.
So, again, a wayward child may be aiming a missile at a costly mirror, or at a playmate’s head, in a fit of temper. Not a moment can then be wasted. Angry or not angry, the parent may have to clutch at the child’s lifted arm to save property or life. In such a case, wise action is called for, regardless of the frame of mind of him who acts. But this is the action of the peacekeeper rather than of the minister of justice. The parent fills for the moment the place of the policeman on his beat, rather than of the judge on his bench. The question of punishment for the child’s action is yet to be considered; and that, again, must be delayed until there is no anger in the parent’s mind.
Anger, in the sense of hot indignation, may, indeed, as has already been said, be, upon an occasion, a fitting exhibit of parental feeling; but this is only in those utterly exceptional cases in which a child transcends all ordinary limits of misdoing, and is guilty of that which he himself knows to be intolerable. As Dr. Bushnell says at this point, “There are cases, now and then, in the outrageous and shocking misconduct of some boy, where an explosion is wanted; where the father represents God best by some terrible outburst of indignant violated feeling, and becomes an instant avenger, without any counsel or preparation whatever.” But this is apart from all questions of punishment as punishment.
A child knows when punishment is administered to him in anger, and when it is administered to him in a purely judicial frame of mind; and a child puts his estimate accordingly on him who administers the punishment. In a city mission-school, many years ago, there was a wild set of boys who seemed to do all in their power to anger and annoy their teachers. Cases of discipline were a necessity there; for again and again a boy attempted violence to a teacher, and force was required to save the teachers from serious harm. But love swayed those teachers even when force on their part was a necessity; and the boys seemed to understand this fully.
There came a time, however, when the young superintendent of that school, who had often held a scholar in check by force, was made public sport of in such way, with the rude linking of a lady teacher’s name with his in ridicule, that his self-control failed him for the moment, and he evidently showed this as he took hold of the offender with unwonted warmth. Instantly the boy started back in surprise, with the reproachful exclamation: “Trumbull, you’re mad; and that’s wicked.” Those words taught a lesson to that young superintendent which he has never forgotten. They showed him that his power over those rough boys was a moral power, and that it pivoted on his retaining power over himself. It was theirs to get him angry if they could; but if they succeeded he was a failure, and they knew it. And that lesson is one that parents as well as superintendents could learn to advantage.
When a parent punishes a child only in love, and without being ruffled by anger, the child is readier to perceive the justice of the punishment, and is under no temptation to resent passion with passion. A child who had been told by her father, that if she did a certain thing he must punish her for it, came to him, on his return home, and informed him that she had transgressed in the thing forbidden. He expressed sincere regret for this. “But you said, papa, that you would punish me for it,” she added. “Yes, my dear child, and I must keep my word,” was his answer. Then, as he drew her lovingly to him, he told her just why he must punish her. Looking up into his face with tearful trust, she said: “You don’t like to punish me,—do you, papa?” “Indeed I don’t, my darling,” he said, in earnestness. “It hurts you more than it hurts me,—doesn’t it, papa?” was her sympathetic question, as if she were more troubled for her father than for herself. “Yes, indeed it does, my darling child,” was his loving rejoinder. And the punishment which that father gave and that daughter received under circumstances like these, was a cause of no chafing between the two even for the moment, while it brought its gain to both, as no act of punishment in anger, however just in itself, could ever bring, in such a case.
As a rule, a child ought not to be punished except for an offense that, at the time of its committal, was known by the child to be an offense deserving of punishment. It is no more fair for a parent to impose a penalty to an offense after the offense is committed, than it is for a civil government to pass an _ex post facto_ law, by which punishment is to be awarded for offenses committed before that law was passed. And if a child understands, when he does a wrong, that he must expect a fixed punishment as its penalty, there is little danger of his feeling that his parent is unjust in administering that punishment; and, certainly, there is no need of the parent hastening to administer that punishment while still angry.
Punishment received by a child from an angry parent is an injury to both parent and child. The parent is the worse for yielding to the temptation to give way to anger against a child. The child is harmed by knowing that his parent has done wrong. A child can be taught to know that he deserves punishment. A child needs no teaching to know that his parent is wrong in punishing him while angry. No parent ought to punish a child except with a view to the child’s good. And in order to do good to a child through his punishing, a parent must religiously refrain from punishing him while angry.
XXII.
_SCOLDING IS NEVER IN ORDER._
Many a father who will not strike his child feels free to scold him. And a scolding mother is not always deemed the severest and most unjust of mothers. Yet, while it is sometimes right to strike a child, it is at no time right to scold one. Scolding is, in fact, never in order, in dealing with a child, or in any other duty in life.
To “scold” is to assail or revile with boisterous speech. The word itself seems to have a primary meaning akin to that of barking or howling. From its earliest use the term “scolding” has borne a bad reputation. In common law, “a common scold” is a public nuisance, against which the civil authority may be invoked by the disturbed neighborhood. This is a fact at the present time, as it was a fact in the days of old. And it is true to-day as it was when spoken by John Skelton, four centuries ago, that
“A sclaunderous tunge, a tunge of a skolde, Worketh more mischiefe than can be tolde.”
Scolding is always an expression of a bad spirit and of a loss of temper. This is as truly the case when a lovely mother scolds her child for breaking his playthings wilfully, or for soiling his third dress in one forenoon by playing in the gutter which he was forbidden to approach, as when one apple-woman yells out her abuse of another apple-woman in a street-corner quarrel. In either case the essence of the scolding is in the multiplication of hot words in expression of strong feelings that, while eminently natural, ought to be held in better control. The words themselves may be very different in the two cases, but the spirit and method are much alike in both. It is scolding in the one case as in the other; and scolding is never in order.
If a child has done wrong, a child needs talking to; but no parent ought to talk to a child while that parent is unable to talk in a natural tone of voice, and with carefully measured words. If the parent is tempted to speak rapidly, or to multiply words without stopping to weigh them, or to show an excited state of feeling, the parent’s first duty is to gain entire self-control. Until that control is secured, there is no use of the parent’s trying to attempt any measure of child-training. The loss of self-control is for the time being an utter loss of power for the control of others. This is as true in one sphere as in another.
Mr. Hammond’s admirable work on “Dog-Training,” already referred to in these pages, says on this very point, to the dog-trainer: “You must keep perfectly cool, and must suffer no sign to escape of any anger or impatience; for if you cannot control your temper, you are not the one to train a dog.” “Do not allow yourself,” says this instructor, “under any circumstances to speak to your pupil in anything but your ordinary tone of voice.” And, recognizing the difficulties of the case, he adds: “Exercise an unwearied patience; and if at any time you find the strain upon your nerves growing a little tense, leave him at once, and wait until you are perfectly calm before resuming the lesson.” That is good counsel for him who would train a dog—or a child; for in either dog-training or child-training, scolding—loud and excited talking—is never in order.
In giving commands, or in giving censure, to a child, the fewer and the more calmly spoken words the better. A child soon learns that scolding means less than quiet talking; and he even comes to find a certain satisfaction in waiting silently until the scolder has blown off the surplus feeling which vents itself in this way. There are times, indeed, when words may be multiplied to advantage in explaining to a child the nature and consequences of his offense, and the reasons why he should do differently in the future; but such words should always be spoken in gentleness, and in self-controlled earnestness. Scolding—rapidly spoken censure and protest, in the exhibit of strong feeling—is never in order as a means of training and directing a child.
Most parents, even the gentler and kindlier parents, scold their children more or less. Rarely can a child say, “My parents never scold me.” Many a child is well trained in spite of his being scolded. Many a parent is a good parent notwithstanding the fact that he scolds his children. But no child is ever helped or benefited by any scolding that he receives; and no parent ever helps or benefits his child by means of a scolding. Scolding is not always ruinous, but it is always out of place.
If, indeed, scolding has any good effect at all, that effect is on the scolder, and not on the scolded. Scolding is the outburst of strong feeling that struggles for the mastery under the pressure of some outside provocation. It never benefits the one against whom it is directed, nor yet those who are its outside observers, however it may give physical relief to the one who indulges in it. If, therefore, scolding is an unavoidable necessity on the part of any parent, let that parent at once shut himself, or herself, up, all alone, in a room where the scolding can be indulged in without harming any one. But let it be remembered that, as an element in child-training, scolding is never, never, in order.
XXIII.
_DEALING TENDERLY WITH A CHILD’S FEARS._
The best child in the world is liable to be full of fears; and the child who is full of fears deserves careful handling, in order that his fears may not gain permanent control of him. Fears are of a child’s very nature, and every child’s training must be in view of the fact that he has fears. How to deal wisely, firmly, and tenderly with a child’s fears is, therefore, one of the important practical questions in the training of a child.
To begin with, it should be understood that a child’s fears are no sign of a child’s weakness, but that, as a rule, the stronger a child is in the elements of a well-balanced and an admirable character, the more fears he will have to contend with in the exercise of his character. Hence a child’s fears are worthy of respect, and call for tenderness of treatment, instead of being looked at as a cause of ridicule or of severity on the part of those who observe them.
“Fear” is not “cowardice.” Fear is a keen perception of dangers, real or imaginary. Cowardice is a refusal to brave the dangers which the fears recognize. Fear is the evidence of manly sensitiveness. Cowardice is the exhibit of unmanly weakness. Fear is a moral attribute of humanity. Cowardice is a moral lack. A child, or a man, who is wholly free from cowardice, may have more fears than the veriest coward living. The one struggles successfully against his many fears; the other yields in craven submission to the first fear that besets him.
It is by no means to a child’s credit that it can be said of him, “He doesn’t know what fear is.” A child ought to know what fear is. He is pitiably ignorant if he does not. The same is true of the bravest man. It is not the soldier who does not know fear but it is the soldier who will not yield to the fears he feels, who is the truly courageous man. Without a fine perception and a quick apprehension of dangers on every side, no soldier could be fully alive to the necessities of his position and to the demands of his duty; and it is, in a sense, peculiarly true, that the best soldier is likely to be the most fearful. It is the Braddocks who are “not afraid” that needlessly suffer disaster; while the Washingtons who have timely fears are prepared to act efficiently in the time of disaster. There is a suggestion of this truth in the words of the Apostle, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;” or, as it might be said, Let him who has no fears have a care lest he fail from his lack of fears.
A child’s fears are on various planes, and because of this they must be differently dealt with. A child has fears which are reasonable, fears which are unreasoning, and fears which are wholly imaginary; fears which are the result of a process of reasoning, fears which are apart from any reasoning process, and fears which are in the realm of fancy and imagination. In one child one phase of these fears is the more prominent, and in another child another phase. But in every child there is a measure of fear on all three of these planes.
A child who has once fallen in trying to stand or walk, or from coming too near the top of a flight of stairs, is liable to be afraid that he will fall again if he makes another effort in the same direction. “A burnt child dreads the fire.” That is a reasonable fear. Again, a child comes very early to an instinctive shrinking from trusting himself to a stranger; he recoils from an ill-appearing person or thing; he trembles at a loud noise; he is fearful because of the slamming of shutters, even when he knows that the wind does it; he is afraid of thunder as well as of lightning, apart from any question of harm to him from the electric bolt. This is without any process of reasoning on his part, even while there is a basis of reality in the causes of his fear. Yet again, a child is afraid of being alone in the darkness; or he is afraid of “ghosts” and “goblins,” about which he has been told by others. It is his imagination that is at work in this case.