Children's Ways Part 10

Children are early confronted with our laws, and it is worth while asking how they behave in relation to these. Many persons seem to think that children generally are disobedient, lawless creatures; others, that some are obedient, others disobedient. Perhaps neither of these views is quite exact enough.

(_a_) _The Struggle with Law: First Tussle with Authority._

Let us begin our study by looking a little more closely at what we call the disobedient att.i.tude of children. That it exists n.o.body, surely, can well doubt. The very liveliness of young limbs and young wits brings their possessors into conflict with our sedate customs. The person who tries to wield authority over these small people is constantly introducing unpleasant checkings of vigorous impulse. A child has large requirements in the matter of movements and experiments with things, which are apt to clash with what the mother considers orderliness; when he is out of doors he exhibits a duck-like fondness for dirty water, whereas civilisation, represented by his tidy nurse, wills it that man should, at least when not in the arctic regions, be clean; he shows a perverse pa.s.sion for fun and tricks when the mother thinks it the right time for serious talk, and so forth. In these ways there comes the tussle with human law.

Yet surely, if we consider the matter impartially, we shall see that these collisions in the early years are perfectly normal and right. In the interests of the race, at any rate, we ought perhaps to regard him as the better child, as the child of finer promise, who will not subject himself to human law without a considerable show of resistance.

The first and most impressive form of resistance to the laws of grown-ups is the use of physical force, which has already been touched on. There is something pathetically comic in the spectacle of these mites resorting to the arbitrement of force, trying their small hand at pushing, striking, and the like; and as we have seen the effort is wont soon to exhaust itself in childish despair.

As soon as our authority begins to a.s.sert itself in the issuing of commands the child's disposition to disobey, that is to have his way rather than ours, is apt to show itself now and again in decided refusals. When, let us say, the nurse gives up pulling him from the dirty pool, and bids him come away, he may very likely a.s.sert himself in an eloquent, "I won't," or less bluntly, "I can't come yet".

Here, of course, there may be no wilful rejection of recognised law, but merely resistance to this particular disagreeable order coming from this particular person. Nevertheless we must, I fear, admit that such refusals to obey orders have in them something of true lawlessness. The whole att.i.tude of the child when he thus "tries on" defiance of commands is certainly suggestive of the rebel's temper. n.o.body is so completely reckless as the child-rebel. When the fit is on him he pays not the least attention to the most awful of warnings. One little offender of four when he was reminded by his sister--two years older--that he would be shut out from heaven retorted impiously, "I don't care"; adding, for reasons best known to himself, "uncle won't go--I'll stay with him".

_Evading the Law._

In addition to this first impressive form of opposition there are later ones which plainly show the spirit of antagonism. The conflict with law now takes on the aspect of evasion or "trying it on".

One of the simplest of these childish tricks is the invention of an excuse for not instantly obeying a command, as "Come here!" "Don't tease p.u.s.s.y!" A child soon finds out that to say "I won't" when he is bidden to do something is indiscreet as well as vulgar. He wants to have his own way without resorting to a gross breach of good manners, so he replies insinuatingly, "I's very sorry, but I's too busy," or in some such conciliatory words. This field of invention offers a fine opportunity for the imaginative child. A small boy of three years and nine months on receiving from his nurse the familiar order, "Come here!"

at once replied, "I can't, nurse, I's looking for a flea," and pretended to be much engrossed in the momentous business of hunting for this quarry in the blanket of his cot. The little trickster is such a lover of fun that he is pretty certain to betray his ruse in a case like this, and our small flea-catcher, we are told, laughed mischievously as he proffered his excuse. Such sly fabrications may be just as naughty as the uninspired excuses of a stupidly sulky child, but it is hard to be quite as much put out by them.

It is a further refinement when the staunch little lover of liberty sets about "easing" the pressure of commands. If, for example, he is told to keep perfectly quiet because mother or father wants to sleep, he will prettily plead for the reservation of whispering ever so softly. If he is forbidden to ask for things at the table he will resort to sly indirect reminders of what he wants, as when a boy of five and a half years whispered audibly: "I hope somebody will offer me some more soup,"

or when a girl of three and a half years, with more subtle insinuation, observed on seeing the elder folk eating cake: "I not asking".

A like astuteness will show itself in meeting the dismal accusations and scoldings. Sometimes the fault-finding is daringly ignored, and the small culprit, after keeping up an excellent appearance of listening, proceeds in the most artless way to talk about something more agreeable, or, what is worse, to criticise the manner of his correction; as when a small boy interrupted his mother's well-prepared homily by remarking: "Mamma, when you talk you don't move your upper jaw".

In cases in which no attempt is made to ignore the accusation, the small wits are wont to be busy discovering exculpations. Here we have the ruses, often crude enough, by which the little culprit tries to shake off moral responsibility, to deny the authorship of the "naughty"

action. The blame is put on anybody or anything--if there is no other scape-goat in view, then on the hands or other "bodily agents". This last device is sometimes. .h.i.t upon very early, as when a mite of two who was told to stop crying gasped out: "Elsie cry--_not_ Elsie cry--tears cry--naughty tears!" We find too at an early age a suggestion of fatalism, as when a boy of three who was blamed for not eating his crusts, and his procedure contrasted with that of his virtuous sire, remarked: "Yes, but, papa, you see G.o.d had made you and me different".

Next to these denials of the "naughty" action come attempts at justification. Sometimes these look like pitiful examples of quibbling.

A boy had been rough with his baby brother. His mother chid him, telling him he might hurt baby. He then asked his mother, "Isn't he my own brother?" and on his mother admitting so incontestable a proposition, exclaimed triumphantly, "Well, you said I could do what I liked with _my own_ things". At other times they have a dreadful look of being fibs invented for the purpose of covering a fault. Under a severe mode of discipline a child is apt, as already hinted, to slip over the boundary line of truth in his self-protective efforts to escape blame and punishment.

One other ill.u.s.tration of this keen childish dialectic when face to face with the accuser deserves to be touched on. The sharpened faculties have something of a lawyer's quickness in detecting a flaw in the indictment.

Any exaggeration into which a feeling of indignation happens to betray the accuser is instantly pounced upon. If, for example, a child is scolded for pulling kitty's ears and making her cry it is enough for the little stickler for accuracy to be able to say: "I wasn't pulling kitty's _ears_, I was only pulling _one_ of her ears". The ability to deny the charge in its initial form gives him a great advantage, and robs the accusation in its amended form of much of its sting. Whence, by the way, one may infer that wisdom in managing children shows itself in nothing more than in a scrupulous exactness in the use of words.

_The Plea for Liberty._

While there are these isolated attacks on various points of the daily discipline, we see now and again a bolder line of action in the shape of a general protest against its severity. Sometimes the parental authority is contrasted unfavourably with that of some other mother. The small boy who invented a family, _viz._, a mother called Mrs. c.o.c.k and her little boys, frequently referred to this lady for the purpose of giving point to protests against the severity of the real mother. "For instance (writes the latter) when mother refuses her paint-box as a plaything, or declines to supply unlimited note-paper for 'scwibbleation,'

a reproachful little voice is heard, 'Mrs. c.o.c.k always gives her paint-box and all her paper to my little boys'. A pause. Then follows suggestively: 'I fink she loves them vewy much'."[10] On the other hand, if the child accepts the mother's plea, that she has to impose restraints because she is a good mother, he is apt to wish that she were a shade less good. A boy of four had one morning to remain in bed till ten o'clock as a punishment for misbehaviour. He proceeded to address his mother in this wise: "If I had any little children I'd be a worse mother than you--I'd be quite a bad mother; I'd let the children get up directly I had done my breakfast at any rate".

[10] From a published article by Mrs. Robert Jardine (compare above, pp. 16, 17).

Enough has been said to ill.u.s.trate the ways in which the natural child kicks against the imposition of restraints on his free activity. He begins by showing himself an open foe to authority. For a long time after, while making a certain show of submission, he harbours in his breast something of the rebel's spirit. He does his best to evade the most galling parts of the daily discipline, and displays an admirable ingenuity in devising excuses for apparent acts of insubordination. And, lastly, where candour is permitted, he is apt to prove himself an exceedingly acute critic of the system which is imposed on him.

All this, moreover, seems to show that a child objects not only to the particular administration under which he happens to live, but to all law as implying restraints on free activity. Thus, from the child's point of view, so far as we have yet examined it, punishment as such is a thing which ought not to be.

So strong and deep-reaching is this antagonism to law and its restraints apt to be that the common longing to be "big" is, I believe, largely grounded on the expectation of liberty. To be big seems to the child more than anything else to be able to do what one likes without interference from others. "Do you know," asked a little fellow of four years, "what I shall do when I'm a big man? I'll go to a shop and buy a bun and pick out all the currants." One must have left in him much of the child in order to understand the fascination of that forbidden pleasure of daintily selecting the currants.

(_b_) _On the Side of Law._

If, however, we look closer we shall find that this hostility is not the whole, perhaps not the most fundamental part, of a child's att.i.tude towards law. It is evident that the early criticism of parental government referred to above, so far from implying rejection of all rule, plainly implies its acceptance. Some of the earliest and bitterest protests against interference are directed against what looks to the child irregular or opposed to law, as when, for example, he is allowed for some time to use a pair of scissors as a plaything, and is then suddenly deprived of it. And does not all the exercise of childish ingenuity in excuses imply in an indirect way that _if he had done_ what is described in the indictment it would be naughty and deserving of punishment?

Other facts in early life bear out the conjecture that a child has law-abiding as well as law-resisting impulses. I think we may often discern evidence of this in his suffering when in disgrace. When he is too young perhaps to feel the shame, he will feel, and acutely too, the estrangement, the loneliness, the sudden shrinkage of his beloved world.

The greater the love and the dependence, the greater will be this feeling of devastation. The same little boy who said to his mother: "I'd be a worse mother," remarked to her a few months later that if he could say what he liked to G.o.d it would be: "Love me when I'm naughty".

There is, perhaps, in this childish suffering often something more than the sense of being homeless and outcast. A child of four or five may, I conceive, when suffering disgrace have a dim consciousness of having broken with his normal orderly self, of having set at defiance that which he customarily honours and obeys.

Now this setting up of an orderly law-abiding self seems to me to imply that there are impulses which make for order. A child, as I understand the little sphinx, is at once the subject of ever-changing caprices--whence the delight in playful defiance of all rule and order--and the reverer of custom, precedent, rule. And, as I conceive, this reverence for precedent and rule is the deeper and the stronger impulse.

_The Young Stickler for the Proprieties._

I believe that those who know young children will agree with me that they show an instinctive respect for what is customary and according to rule, such as a particular way of taking food, dressing, and definite times for doing this and that. Nor can we regard this as merely a reflection of our respect for law, for as we shall presently see it reaches far beyond the limits of the rules laid down by adults. It seems to be a true instinct which comes before education and makes education possible. It is related to habit, the great principle which runs through the whole of life.

The first crude manifestation of this disposition to make rule is seen in the insistence on the customary, as to the places of things, the order of procedure at meals and such like. The little boy of two, often quoted here, showed a punctilious feeling for order in the placing of things. He protested one morning in his mother's bedroom against a hair-brush being placed on the washing-stand near the tooth-brushes, saying quaintly: "That toof-brush is a brush one". Older children are apt to be sticklers for order at the meal-table: thus, the cup and the spoon have to be put in precisely the right place. Similarly, the sequences of the day, _e.g._, the lesson before the walk, the walk before bed, have to be rigorously observed. This feeling for order may develop itself even where the system of parental government is by no means characterised by rigorous insistence on such minutiae of procedure.

This impulse to extend rule appears more plainly in many of the little ceremonial observances of the child. Very charmingly is this respect for rule exhibited in all dealings with animals, also dolls and other pets.

Not only are they required to do things in a proper orderly manner, but people have to treat them with due deference. One little fellow when saying good-night to his mother insisted on her going through with his doll precisely the same round of kissing and hand-shaking that he required in his own case.

This jealous regard for ceremony and the proprieties of behaviour is seen in the enforcement of rules of politeness by children who will extend them far beyond the scope intended by the parent. A delightful instance of this fell under my own observation, as I was walking on Hampstead Heath. It was a spring day, and the fat buds of the chestnuts were bursting into magnificent green plumes. Two well-dressed "misses,"

aged, I should say, about nine and eleven, were taking their correct morning walk. The elder called the attention of the younger to one of the trees, pointing to it. The younger exclaimed in a highly shocked tone: "Oh, Maud (or was it 'Mabel'?), you know you _shouldn't_ point!"

The domain of prayer well ill.u.s.trates the same tendency. The child is wont, as we have seen, to think of G.o.d as a very, very grand person, and naturally, therefore, extends to him all the courtesies he knows of.

Thus he must be addressed politely with the due forms, "Please," "If you please," and the like. The German child shrinks from using the familiar form "Du" in his prayers. As one maiden of seven well put it in reply to a question why she used "Sie" (the polite form of "you") in her prayers: "Ich werde doch den lieben Gott nicht Du nennen: ich kenne ihn ja gar nicht" (But I mustn't call G.o.d "thou": I don't know him, you see). On the other hand, G.o.d must not be kept waiting. "Oh, mamma," said a little boy of three years and eight months (the same that was so insistent about the kissing and hand-shaking), "how long you have kept me awake for you; G.o.d has been wondering so whenever I was going to say my prayers." All the words must be nicely said to him. A little boy, aged four and three-quarter years, once stopped in the middle of a prayer and asked his mother: "Oh! how do you spell that word?" The question is curious as suggesting that the child may have regarded his silent communication to the far-off King as a kind of letter.

_The Enforcer of Rules._

Not only do children thus of themselves extend the scope of our commands, they show a disposition to make rules for themselves. If, after being told to do a thing on a single occasion only, a child is found repeating the action on other occasions, this seems to show the germ of a law-making impulse. A little boy of two years and one month was once asked to give a lot of old toys to the children of the gardener. Some time after, on receiving some new toys, he put away, of his own accord, his old ones as before for the less fortunate children.

That the instinct for order a.s.sists moral discipline may be seen in the fact that children are apt to pay enormous deference to our rules.

Nothing is more suggestive here than their talk among themselves, the emphasis they are wont to lay on the "must" and "must not". The truth is that children have a tremendous belief in the sacredness of rules.

This recognition of the absolute imperativeness of a rule properly laid down by the recognised authority is seen in the frequent insistence on its observance in new circ.u.mstances. It has been pointed out by Professor Preyer that a child of two years and eight months will follow out the prohibitions of the mother when he falls into other hands, sternly protesting, for example, against the nurse giving him the forbidden knife at table. Very proper children rather like to instruct their aunts and other ignorant persons as to the right way of dealing with them, and will rejoice in the opportunity of setting them straight even when it means a deprivation for themselves. The self-denying ordinance, "Mamma doesn't let me have many sweets," is by no means beyond the powers of a very correct little person.

A still clearer evidence of this respect for law as such, apart from its particular enforcement by the parent, is supplied by children's way of extending the rules imposed on themselves to others. No trait is better marked in the normal child than the impulse to subject others to his own disciplinary system. With what amusing severity are they wont to lay down the law to their dolls, and to their animal playmates, subjecting them to precisely the same prohibitions and punishments as those to which they themselves are subject! Nor do they stop here. They enforce the duties just as courageously on their human elders. A mite of eighteen months went up to her elder sister, who was crying, and with perfect mimicry of the nurse's corrective manner, said: "Hush! hush!

papa!" pointing at the same time to the door.

This judicial bent of the child is a curious one and often develops a priggish fondness for setting others morally straight. Small boys have to endure much in this way from the hands of slightly older sisters proficient in matters of law and delighting to enforce the moralities.

But sometimes the sisters lapse into naughtiness, and then the small boys have their chance. They too can on such occasions be priggish if not downright hypocritical. A little boy had been quarrelling with his sister named Muriel just before going to bed. On kneeling down to say his prayers and noticing that Muriel was sitting near and listening, he prayed aloud in this wise, "Please, G.o.d, make Muriel a good girl," then looked up and said in an angry voice, "Do you hear that, Muriel?" and after this digression resumed his pet.i.tion.

This mania for correction shows itself too in relation to the authorities themselves. A collection of rebukes and expositions of moral precept supplied by children to their erring parents would be amusing and suggestive. Here is an example: A boy of two--the moral instruction of parents by the child begins betimes--would not go to sleep when bidden to do so by his father and mother. At length the father, losing patience, addressed him with a man's fierce emphasis. This mode of admonition so far from cowering the child simply offended his sense of propriety, for he rejoined: "You s'ouldn't, s'ouldn't, a.s.sum (_i.e._, 'Arthur,' the father's name), you s'ould speak nicely".

We may now turn to what some will regard as still clearer evidence of a law-fearing instinct in children, _viz._, their spontaneous self-submission to its commands. We are apt to think of these little ones as doing right only when under compulsion: but this is far from the truth. A very young child will show the germ of a disposition freely to adopt a law. A little girl, when only twenty months old, would, when left by her mother alone in a room, say to herself: "Tay dar" (Stay there). About the same time, after being naughty and squealing "like a railway-whistle," she would after each squeal say in a deep voice, "Be dood, Babba" (her name). In like manner the little boy often quoted at the age of twenty months said to himself when walking down the garden, "Sonny darling, mind nettles". Here, no doubt, we see quaint mimicries of the mother's fashion of control, but they seem, too, to indicate a movement in the direction of self-control.