Your Child: Today and Tomorrow Part 2

No discussion of this subject would be complete without a word on corporal punishment. It is impossible here to present all the arguments for or against it. I am sure, however, that the most enthusiastic advocates of it will admit that it is not always practised with discretion and that it is in most cases not only unnecessary but positively harmful. Children that are treated like animals will behave like animals; violence and brutality do not bring out the best in a child's nature. It would seem that intelligent parents do not need to resort to such methods in the training of normal children.

As suggested by our veteran novelist, William Dean Howells, we have clung to the wisdom of Solomon, in this respect, through centuries of changing conditions. Solomon said: "Spare the rod and spoil the child"; Mr. Howells suggests that we might with profit spoil the rod and spare the child. In the small families of to-day there is no need to cling to the methods that may have worked well enough with the Oriental, polygamous despot, who never could know all his children individually, and it is therefore hardly necessary to use Solomon as our authority.

It is plain, then, that it is impossible to recommend any punishment as _the correct one_, or even to recommend any one infallible rule. This must depend upon the parent, upon the child, and upon the circ.u.mstances. But there are certain definite principles which we must keep in mind and which will do much toward making our task of discipline more rational:

We must never punish in anger.

We must consider the _motive_ and the _temptations_ before the _consequence_ of the deed.

We must condemn the _deed_ and not the child.

We must be sure that the child understands exactly the offence with which he is charged.

We must be sure that he sees the _relation_ of the _offence_ to the _punishment_.

We must never administer any _excessive_ or unusual punishment.

We must not _exaggerate_ the magnitude of the offence.

If we keep these principles in mind we may not always be right, but we shall certainly be right more often than if we had no policy or definite ideas. But, above all, we must recognize that punishment is only a corrective, and that it is our duty to build up the positive virtues. Let us expend our energy in the effort to establish good habits and ideals, and the child will shed many of the faults which now occupy the centre of our interest and attention.

In a family where the proper spirit of intimacy and mutual understanding and forbearance reigns punishment will be relegated to its proper place--namely, the medicine closet--and not be used as daily bread. For punishment is a medicine--a corrective--and when we administer it we must do in the spirit of the physician. We do not wish to be quacks and have one patent remedy to cure all evils; but, like physicians worthy of their trust, we must study the ailment and its causes, and above all must we study the patient. The same remedy will not do for all const.i.tutions. Therefore the punishment must not only fit the crime, but it must also be made to fit the "criminal."

Love and patience are the secret of child management. Love which can fare from the chilliest soul; patience which knows how to wait for the harvest.

III.

WHEN YOUR CHILD IMAGINES THINGS

Johnny was playing in the room while his mother was sewing at the window. Johnny looked out of the window and exclaimed, "Oh, mother, see that great big lion!"

His mother looked, but saw only a medium-sized dog.

"Why, Johnny," replied the mother, "how can you say such a thing?

You know very well that was only a dog. Now go right in the corner and pray to G.o.d to forgive you for telling such a lie!"

Johnny went. When he came back, he said triumphantly, "See, mother, G.o.d said He thought it was a lion Himself."

This poor mother is a typical example of a large cla.s.s of mothers who fail to understand their children because they have no idea of what goes on in the child's mind. To Johnny the lion was just as _real_ as the dog was to the mother. And even if the dog had not been there for the mother to see, Johnny could have seen just as real a lion.

Every mother ought to know that practically every healthy child has imagination. You will have to take a long day's journey to find a child that has no imagination to begin with--and then you will find that this child is wonderfully uninteresting, or actually stupid.

You can easily observe for yourself that as soon as a child knows a large number of objects and persons and names he will begin to rearrange his bits of knowledge into new combinations, and in this way make a little world of his own. In this world, beasts and furniture and flowers talk and have adventures. When the dew is on the gra.s.s, "the gra.s.s is crying." b.u.t.terflies are "flying pansies."

Lightning is the "sky winking," and so on. This activity of the child's mind begins at about two years, and reaches its height between the ages of four and six. But it continues through life with greater or less intensity, according to circ.u.mstances and original disposition.

It is not only the poet and artist who need imagination, but all of us in our everyday concerns. Do you realize that the person to whom you like so much to talk about your affairs, because she is so sympathetic, _is sympathetic_ because she has imagination? For without imagination we cannot "put ourselves in the place of another," and much of the misery in the relation between human beings exists because so many of us are unable to do this. The happy cannot realize the needs of the miserable, and the miserable cannot understand why anyone should be happy--if they lack imagination.

The need for imagination, far from being confined to dreamers and persons who dwell in the clouds, is of great _practical_ importance in the development of mind and character. Imagination is a direct help in learning, and in developing sympathy. As one of our great moral leaders, Felix Adler, has said, much of the selfishness of the world is due, not to actual hard-heartedness, but to lack of imaginative power.

We all know the cla.s.sic example of Queen Marie Antoinette, who, when told that the people were rioting for want of bread, exclaimed, "Why, let them eat cake instead!" Brought up in luxury, she could not realize what absolute want means. She had no imagination.

The world has progressed, but we still have among us the same type of unfortunate persons who are unable to put themselves in the place of others. I recently heard of a woman who, on being told of a family so poor that they had had nothing but cold potatoes for supper the night before, replied:

"They may be poor, but the mother must be a very bad housekeeper, anyway. For, even if they had nothing but potatoes to eat, she might at least have fried them."

Like her royal prototype, this modern woman had not the imagination to realize that a family could be so poor as to be in want of fuel.

But being able to put yourself in the place of another is of importance not only from the strictly moral point of view. You can easily see how it will affect one's everyday relations, how it will be of great help in avoiding misunderstandings of all kinds--as between mother and child, between mistress and maid, etc.

If parents would only realize this importance of imagination, and not look upon it as a "vain thing," they would not merely _allow_ the child's imagination to take its own course; they would actually make efforts to cultivate and encourage it. In this way they would not only aid the child in becoming a better and more sympathetic man or woman, but would also add much to the happiness of the child.

Unless we have given special thought to this matter, most of us grown-ups do not appreciate how very real the child's world of make-believe is to him, and how essential to his happiness that we do not break into it rudely. When one of my boys was two and a half years old he was one day playing with an imaginary baby sister. A member of the household came into the room, whereupon he immediately broke out in wild screaming and became very much agitated. It took some time to quiet him and to find out that the cause of all his trouble was the fact that this person had inadvertently stepped upon his imaginary sister, whom he had placed upon the floor. Before him he saw his little sister crushed, and great were his horror and grief.

I know from this experience and many others that if we do not enter into the child's world and try to understand the working of his mind we will often find him naughty, when he is not naughty at all. In the example given it would have been very easy to follow the first impulse to reprove the child for what seemed very unreasonable conduct on his part. And such cases arise constantly.

How completely the child throws himself into an imaginary character is shown by an incident which occurred recently. A little boy of four, who had been accustomed to speak only German at home, was playing "doctor," and was so absorbed in the play that when dinner-time came he was loath to abandon the role. His mother, to avoid delay, simply said, "I think we will invite the doctor to have dinner with us," and he promptly accepted the invitation. When the maid came in, he said in English, "What is her name?"

"Marie," the mother replied. "Isn't that Mary in English?" the child politely inquired. "You see, I cannot speak German, for my mother never taught me." And although this little boy never spoke English to his parents nor his parents to him, as "doctor" he spoke English throughout the meal.

Many parents enter spontaneously into the spirit of their children's games, and make believe with the best of them. They pity poor Johnny when he screams with terror at the attack of the make-believe bear, and take great joy in admiring the make-believe kitten. If we but realized how all this make believe helps in the development of character and in the gaining of knowledge, _all_ parents would try to develop the child's imagination, and not only those who have the gift intuitively. It is the child's natural way of learning things, of getting acquainted with all living and inanimate objects in his environment. It sharpens his observation. A child who tries to "act a horse," for example, will be much more apt to notice all the different activities and habits of the horse in his various relations than a child who merely observes pa.s.sively.

A child with imagination, when receiving directions or instructions, can picture to himself what he is expected to do, and easily translates his instructions into action. To the unimaginative child the directions given will be so many words, and he cannot carry out these instructions as effectively.

Again and again teachers find that pupils fail to carry out orders, though able, when asked, to repeat word for word the instructions given them.

The plaintive inquiry, "What shall I do now?" is much more frequently heard from the child who is unimaginative or who has had the play of his imagination curbed. For the child can _be_ whatever he wishes, and _have_ whatever he likes, his heart's desire is at his finger's end, once his imagination is free. The rocking-chair can be a great big ship, the carpet a rolling sea, and at most a suggestion is needed from the busy mother. A few chairs can be a train of cars and keep him occupied for hours. A wooden box is transformed into a mighty locomotive--in fact, give an imaginative child almost anything, a string of beads, or a piece of colored gla.s.s, and out of it his imagination will construct great happiness.

A normal child does not need elaborate toys. The only function of a toy, as someone has well said, is "to serve as lay figures upon which the child's imagination can weave and drape its fancy."

Although parents have not always understood what goes on in the child's mind when he is so busy with his play, our poets and lovers of children have had a deeper insight. Stevenson, in his poem "My Kingdom," shows us how, with the touch of imagination, the child transforms the commonplace objects of his surroundings into material for rich romance:

Down by a shining water well I found a very little dell, No higher than my head.

The heather and the gorse about In summer bloom were coming out, Some yellow and some red.

I called the little pool a sea: The little hills were big to me; For I am very small.

I made boat, I made a town, I searched the caverns up and down, And named them one and all.

And all about was mine, I said, The little sparrows overhead, The little minnows, too.

This was the world and I was king: For me the bees came by to sing, For me the swallows flew.

I played there were no deeper seas, Nor any wilder plains than these, Nor other kings than me.

At last I hear my mother call Out from the house at evenfall, To call me home to tea.

And I must rise and leave my dell, And leave my dimpled water well, And leave my heather blooms.