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CHAPTER VII. THE ART OF TRAINING
It is very clear that the most simple and the most obvious of the modes by which a parent may establish among his children the habit of submission to his authority, are those which have been already described, namely, punishments and rewards—punishments, gentle in their character, but invariably enforced, as the sure results of acts of insubordination; and rewards for obedience, occasionally and cautiously bestowed, in such a manner that they may be regarded as recognitions simply, on the part of the parent, of the good conduct of his children, and expressions of his gratification, and not in the light of payment or hire. These are obviously the most simple modes, and the ones most ready at hand. They require no exalted or unusual qualities on the part of father or mother, unless, indeed, we consider gentleness, combined with firmness and good sense, as an assemblage of rare and exalted qualities. To assign, and firmly and uniformly to enforce, just but gentle penalties for disobedience, and to recognize, and sometimes reward, special acts of obedience and submission, are measures fully within the reach of every parent, however humble may be the condition of his intelligence or his attainments of knowledge.
Another Class of Influences
There is, however, another class of influences to be adopted, not as a substitute for these simple measures, but in connection and co-operation with them, which will be far more deep, powerful, and permanent in their results, though they require much higher qualities in the parent for carrying them successfully into effect. This higher method consists in a systematic effort to develop in the mind of the child a love of the principle of obedience, by express and appropriate training.
Parents not aware of the Extent of their Responsibility
Many parents, perhaps indeed nearly all, seem, as we have already shown, to act as if they considered the duty of obedience on the part of their children as a matter of course. They do not expect their children to read or to write without being taught; they do not expect a dog to fetch and carry, or a horse to draw and to understand commands and signals, without being trained. In all these cases they perceive the necessity of training and instruction, and understand that the initiative is with them. If a horse, endowed by nature with average good qualities, does not work well, the fault is attributed at once to the man who undertook to train him. But what mother, when her child, grown large and strong, becomes the trial and sorrow of her life by his ungovernable disobedience and insubordination, takes the blame to herself in reflecting that he was placed in her hands when all the powers and faculties of his soul were in embryo, tender, pliant, and unresisting, to be formed and fashioned at her will?
The Spirit of filial Obedience not Instinctive
Children, as has already been remarked, do not require to be taught and trained to eat and drink, to resent injuries, to cling to their possessions, or to run to their mother in danger or pain. They have natural instincts which provide for all these things. But to speak, to read, to write, and to calculate; to tell the truth, and to obey their parents; to forgive injuries, to face bravely fancied dangers and bear patiently unavoidable pain, are attainments for which no natural instincts can adequately provide. There are instincts that will aid in the work, but none that can of themselves be relied upon without instruction and training. In actual fact, children usually receive their instruction and training in respect to some of these things incidentally—as it happens—by the rough knocks and frictions, and various painful experiences which they encounter in the early years of life. In respect to others, the guidance and aid afforded them is more direct and systematic. Unfortunately the establishment in their minds of the principle of obedience comes ordinarily under the former category. No systematic and appropriate efforts are made by the parent to implant it. It is left to the uncertain and fitful influences of accident—to remonstrances, reproaches, and injunctions called forth under sudden excitement in the various emergencies of domestic discipline, and to other means, vague, capricious, and uncertain, and having no wise adaptedness to the attainment of the end in view.
Requires appropriate Training
How much better and more successfully the object would be accomplished if the mother were to understand distinctly at the outset that the work of training her children to the habit of submission to her authority is a duty, the responsibility of which devolves not upon her children, but upon her; that it is a duty, moreover, of the highest importance, and one that demands careful consideration, much forethought, and the wise adaptation of means to the end.
Methods
The first thought of some parents may possibly be, that they do not know of any other measures to take in order to teach their children submission to their authority, than to reward them when they obey and punish them when they disobey. To show that there are other methods, we will consider a particular case.
Mary, a young lady of seventeen, came to make a visit to her sister. She soon perceived that her sister's children, Adolphus and Lucia, were entirely ungoverned. Their mother coaxed, remonstrated, advised, gave reasons, said "I wouldn't do this," or "I wouldn't do that,"—did every thing, in fact, except simply to command; and the children, consequently, did pretty much what they pleased. Their mother wondered at their disobedience and insubordination, and in cases where these faults resulted in special inconvenience for herself she bitterly reproached the children for their undutiful behavior. But the reproaches produced no effect.
"The first thing that I have to do," said Mary to herself, in observing this state of things, "is to teach the children to obey—at least to obey me. I will give them their first lesson at once."
Mary makes a Beginning
So she proposed to them to go out with her into the garden and show her the flowers, adding that if they would do so she would make each of them a bouquet. She could make them some very pretty bouquets, she said, provided they would help her, and would follow her directions and obey her implicitly while gathering and arranging the flowers.
This the children promised to do, and Mary went with them into the garden. There, as she passed about from border to border, she gave them a great many different directions in respect to things which they were to do, or which they were not to do. She gathered flowers, and gave some to one child, and some to the other, to be held and carried—with special instructions in respect to many details, such as directing some flowers to be put together, and others to be kept separate, and specifying in what manner they were to be held or carried. Then she led them to a bower where there was a long seat, and explained to them how they were to lay the flowers in order upon the seat, and directed them to be very careful not to touch them after they were once laid down. They were, moreover, to leave a place in the middle of the seat entirely clear. They asked what that was for. Mary said that they would see by-and-by. "You must always do just as I say," she added, "and perhaps I shall explain the reason afterwards, or perhaps you will see what the reason is yourselves."
After going on in this way until a sufficient number and variety of flowers were collected, Mary took her seat in the vacant place which had been left, and assigned the two portions of the seat upon which the flowers had been placed to the children, giving each the charge of the flowers upon one portion, with instructions to select and give to her such as she should call for. From the flowers thus brought she formed two bouquets, one for each of the children. Then she set them both at work to make bouquets for themselves, giving them minute and special directions in regard to every step. If her object had been to cultivate their taste and judgment, then it would have been better to allow them to choose the flowers and determine the arrangement for themselves; but she was teaching them obedience, or, rather, beginning to form in them the habit of obedience; and so, the more numerous and minute the commands the better, provided that they were not in them selves unreasonable, nor so numerous and minute as to be vexatious, so as to incur any serious danger of their not being readily and good-humoredly obeyed.
THE ART OF TRAINING. 101
When the bouquets were finished Mary gave the children, severally, the two which had been made for them; and the two which they had made for themselves she took into the house and placed them in glasses upon the parlor mantel-piece, and then stood back with the children in the middle of the room to admire them.
"See how pretty they look! And how nicely the work went on while we were making them! That was because you obeyed me so well while we were doing it. You did exactly as I said in every thing."
A Beginning only
Now this was an excellent first lesson in training the children to the habit of obedience. It is true that it was only a first lesson. It was a beginning, but it was a very good beginning. If, on the following day, Mary had given the children a command which it would be irksome to them to obey, or one which would have called for any special sacrifice or self-denial on their part, they would have disregarded it. Still they would have been a little less inclined to disregard it than if they had not received their first lesson; and there can be no doubt that if Mary were to continue her training in the same spirit in which she commenced it she would, before many weeks, acquire a complete ascendency over them, and make them entirely submissive to her will.
And yet this is a species of training the efficacy of which depends on influences in which the hope of reward or the fear of punishment does not enter. The bouquets were not promised to the children at the outset, nor were they given to them at last as rewards. It is true that they saw the advantages resulting from due subordination of the inferiors to the superior in concerted action, and at the end they felt a satisfaction in having acted right; but these advantages did not come in the form of rewards. The efficacy of the lesson depended on a different principle altogether.
The Philosophy of it
The philosophy of it was this: Mary, knowing that the principle of obedience in the children was extremely weak, and that it could not stand any serious test, contrived to bring it into exercise a great many times under the lightest possible pressure. She called upon them to do a great many different things, each of which was very easy to do, and gave them many little prohibitions which it required a very slight effort of self-denial on their part to regard; and she connected agreeable associations in their minds with the idea of submission to authority, through the interest which she knew they would feel in seeing the work of gathering the flowers and making the bouquets go systematically and prosperously on, and through the commendation of their conduct which she expressed at the end.
Such persons as Mary do not analyze distinctly, in their thoughts, nor could they express in words, the principles which underlie their management; but they have an instinctive mental perception of the adaptation of such means to the end in view. Other people, who observe how easily and quietly they seem to obtain an ascendency over all children coming within their influence, and how absolute this ascendency often becomes, are frequently surprised at it. They think there is some mystery about it; they say it is "a knack that some people have;" but there is no mystery about it at all, and nothing unusual or strange, except so far as practical good sense, considerate judgment, and intelligent observation and appreciation of the characteristics of childhood are unusual and strange.
Mary was aware that, although the principle of obedience is seldom or never entirely obliterated from the hearts of children—that is, that the impression upon their minds, which, though it may not be absolutely instinctive, is very early acquired, that it is incumbent on them to obey those set in authority over them, is seldom wholly effaced, the sentiment had become extremely feeble in the minds of Adolphus and Lucia; and that it was like a frail and dying plant, which required very delicate and careful nurture to quicken it to life and give it its normal health and vigor. Her management was precisely of this character. It called the weak and feeble principle into gentle exercise, without putting it to any severe test, and thus commenced the formation of a habit of action. Any one will see that a course of training on these principles, patiently and perseveringly continued for the proper time, could not fail of securing the desired end, except in cases of children characterized by unusual and entirely abnormal perversity.
We can not here follow in detail the various modes in which such a manager as Mary would adapt her principle to the changing incidents of each day, and to the different stages of progress made by her pupils in learning to obey, but can only enumerate certain points worthy of the attention of parents who may feel desirous to undertake such a work of training.
Three practical Directions
1. Relinquish entirely the idea of expecting children to be spontaneously docile and obedient, and the practice of scolding or punishing them vindictively when they are not so. Instead of so doing, understand that docility and obedience on their part is to be the result of wise, careful, and persevering, though gentle training on the part of the parent.
2. If the children have already formed habits of disobedience and insubordination, do not expect that the desirable change can be effected by sudden, spasmodic, and violent efforts, accompanied by denunciations and threats, and declarations that you are going to "turn over a new leaf." The attempt to change perverted tendencies in children by such means is like trying to straighten a bend in the stem of a growing tree by blows with a hammer.
3. Instead of this, begin without saying at all what you are going to do, or finding any fault with the past, and, with a distinct recognition of the fact that whatever is bad in the native tendencies of your children's minds is probably inherited from their parents, and, perhaps, specially from yourself, and that whatever is wrong in their habits of action is certainly the result of bad training, proceed cautiously and gently, but perseveringly and firmly, in bringing the bent stem gradually up to the right position. In doing this, there is no amount of ingenuity and skill, however great, that may not be usefully employed; nor is there, on the other hand, except in very rare and exceptional cases, any parent who has an allotment so small as not to be sufficient to accomplish the end, if conscientiously and faithfully employed.
CHAPTER VIII. METHODS EXEMPLIFIED
In order to give a more clear idea of what I mean by forming habits of obedience in children by methods other than those connected with a system of rewards and punishments, I will specify some such methods, introducing them, however, only as illustrations of what is intended. For, while in respect to rewards and punishments something like special and definite rules and directions may be given, these other methods, as they depend on the tact, ingenuity, and inventive powers of the parents for their success, depend also in great measure upon these same qualities for the discovery of them. The only help that can be received from without must consist of suggestions and illustrations, which can only serve to communicate to the mind some general ideas in respect to them.
Recognizing the Right
1. A very excellent effect is produced in forming habits of obedience in children, by simply noticing their good conduct when they do right, and letting them see that you notice it. When children are at play upon the carpet, and their mother from time to time calls one of them—Mary, we will say—to come to her to render some little service, it is very often the case that she is accustomed, when Mary obeys the call at once, leaving her play immediately and coming directly, to say nothing about the prompt obedience, but to treat it as a matter of course. It is only in the cases of failure that she seems to notice the action. When Mary, greatly interested in what for the moment she is doing, delays her coming, she says, "You ought to come at once, Mary, when I call you, and not make me wait in this way." In the cases when Mary did come at once, she had said nothing.
Mary goes back to her play after the reproof, a little disturbed in mind, at any rate, and perhaps considerably out of humor.
Now Mary may, perhaps, be in time induced to obey more promptly under this management, but she will have no heart in making the improvement, and she will advance reluctantly and slowly, if at all. But if, at the first time that she comes promptly, and then, after doing the errand, is ready to go back to her play, her mother says, "You left your play and came at once when I called you. That was right. It pleases me very much to find that I can depend upon your being so prompt, even when you are at play," Mary will go back to her play pleased and happy; and the tendency of the incident will be to cause her to feel a spontaneous and cordial interest in the principle of prompt obedience in time to come.
Johnny is taking a walk through the fields with his mother. He sees a butterfly and sets off in chase of it. When he has gone away from the path among the rocks and bushes as far as his mother thinks is safe, she calls him to come back. In many cases, if the boy does not come at once in obedience to such a call, he would perhaps receive a scolding. If he does come back at once, nothing is said. In either case no decided effect would be produced upon him.
But if his mother says, "Johnny, you obeyed me at once when I called you. It must be hard, when you are after a butterfly and think you have almost caught him, to stop immediately and come back to your mother when she calls you; but you did it," Johnny will be led by this treatment to feel a desire to come back more promptly still the next time.
A Caution
Of course there is an endless variety of ways by which you can show your children that you notice and appreciate the efforts they make to do right. Doubtless there is a danger to be guarded against. To adopt the practice of noticing and commending what is right, and paying no attention whatever to what is wrong, would be a great perversion of this counsel. There is a danger more insidious than this, but still very serious and real, of fostering a feeling of vanity and self-conceit by constant and inconsiderate praise. These things must be guarded against; and to secure the good aimed at, and at the same time to avoid the evil, requires the exercise of the tact and ingenuity which has before been referred to. But with proper skill and proper care the habit of noticing and commending, or even noticing alone, when children do right, and of even being more quick to notice and to be pleased with the right than to detect and be dissatisfied with the wrong, will be found to be a very powerful means of training children in the right way.
Children will act with a great deal more readiness and alacrity to preserve a good character which people already attribute to them, than to relieve themselves of the opprobrium of a bad one with which they are charged. In other words, it is much easier to allure them to what is right than to drive them from what is wrong.
Giving Advice
2. There is, perhaps, nothing more irksome to children than to listen to advice given to them in a direct and simple form, and perhaps there is nothing that has less influence upon them in the formation of their characters than advice so given. And there is good reason for this; for either the advice must be general, and of course more or less abstract, when it is necessarily in a great measure lost upon them, since their powers of generalization and abstraction are not yet developed; or else, if it is practical and particular at all, it must be so with reference to their own daily experience in life—in which case it becomes more irksome still, as they necessarily regard it as an indirect mode of fault-finding. Indeed, this kind of advice is almost certain to assume the form of half-concealed fault-finding, for the subject of the counsel given would be, in almost all cases, suggested by the errors, or shortcomings, or failures which had been recently observed in the conduct of the children. The art, then, of giving to children general advice and instruction in respect to their conduct and behavior, consists in making it definite and practical, and at the same time contriving some way of divesting it entirely of all direct application to themselves in respect to their past conduct. Of course, the more we make it practically applicable to them in respect to the future the better.
There are various ways of giving advice of this character. It requires some ingenuity to invent them, and some degree of tact and skill to apply them successfully. But the necessary tact and skill would be easily acquired by any mother whose heart is really set upon finding gentle modes of leading her child into the path of duty.
James and his Cousins
James, going to spend one of his college vacations at his uncle's, was taken by his two cousins, Walter and Ann—eight and six years old—into their room. The room was all in confusion. There was a set of book-shelves upon one side, the books upon them lying tumbled about in all directions. There was a case containing playthings in another place, the playthings broken and in disorder; and two tables, one against the wall, and the other in the middle of the room, both covered with litter. Now if James had commenced his conversation by giving the children a lecture on the disorder of their room, and on the duty, on their part, of taking better care of their things, the chief effect would very probably have been simply to prevent their wishing to have him come to their room again.
But James managed the case differently. After going about the room for a few minutes with the children, and looking with them at their various treasures, and admiring what they seemed to admire, but without finding any fault, he sat down before the fire and took the children upon his lap—one upon each knee—and began to talk to them. Ann had one of her picture-books in her hand, some of the leaves torn, and the rest defaced with dog's-ears.
"Now, Walter," said James, "I'm going to give you some advice. I am going to advise you what to do and how to act when you go to college. By-and-by you will grow to be a young man, and will then, perhaps, go to college."
The idea of growing to be a young man and going to college was very pleasing to Walter's imagination, and brought his mind into what may be called a receptive condition—that is, into a state to receive readily, and entertain with favor, the thoughts which James was prepared to present.
James then went on to draw a very agreeable picture of Walter's leaving home and going to college, with many details calculated to be pleasing to his cousin's fancy, and came at length to his room, and to the circumstances under which he would take possession of it. Then he told him of the condition in which different scholars kept their respective rooms—how some were always in disorder, and every thing in them topsy-turvy, so that they had no pleasant or home-like aspect at all; while in others every thing was well arranged, and kept continually in that condition, so as to give the whole room, to every one who entered it, a very charming appearance.
"The books on their shelves were all properly arranged," he said, "all standing up in order—those of a like size together. Jump down, Ann, and go to your shelves, and arrange the books on the middle shelf in that way, to show him what I mean."
Ann jumped down, and ran with great alacrity to arrange the books according to the directions. When she had arranged one shelf, she was proceeding to do the same with the next, but James said she need not do any more then. She could arrange the others, if she pleased, at another time, he said. "But come back now," he added, "and hear the rest of the advice."
"I advise you to keep your book-shelves in nice order at college," he continued; "and so with your apparatus and your cabinet. For at college, you see, you will perhaps have articles of philosophical apparatus, and a cabinet of specimens, instead of playthings. I advise you, if you should have such things, to keep them all nicely arranged upon their shelves."
Here James turned his chair a little, so that he and the children could look towards the cabinet of playthings. Walter climbed down from his cousin's lap and ran off to that side of the room, and there began hastily to arrange the playthings.
"Yes," said James, "that is the way. But never mind that now. I think you will know how to arrange your philosophical instruments and your cabinet very nicely when you are in college; and you can keep your playthings in order in your room here, while you are a boy, if you please. But come back now and hear the rest of the advice."
So Walter came back and took his place again upon James's knee.
"And I advise you," continued James, "to take good care of your books when you are in college. It is pleasanter, at the time, to use books that are clean and nice, and then, besides, you will like to take your college books with you, after you leave college, and keep them as long as you live, as memorials of your early days, and you will value them a great deal more if they are in good order."
Here Ann opened the book which was in her hand, and began to fold back the dog's-ears and to smooth down the leaves.
The Principle Involved
In a word, by the simple expedient of shifting the time, in the imagination of the children, when the advice which he was giving them would come to its practical application, he divested it of all appearance of fault-finding in respect to their present conduct, and so secured not merely its ready admission, but a cordial welcome for it, in their minds.
Any mother who sees and clearly apprehends the principle here illustrated, and has ingenuity enough to avail herself of it, will find an endless variety of modes by which she can make use of it, to gain easy access to the hearts of her children, for instructions and counsels which, when they come in the form of fault-finding advice, make no impression whatever.
Expectations of Results must be Reasonable
Some persons, however, who read without much reflection, and who do not clearly see the principle involved in the case above described, and do not understand it as it is intended—that is, as a single specimen or example of a mode of action capable of an endless variety of applications, will perhaps say, "Oh, that was all very well. James's talk was very good for the purpose of amusing the children for a few minutes while he was visiting them, but it is idle to suppose that such a conversation could produce any permanent or even lasting impression upon them; still less, that it could work any effectual change in respect to their habits of order."
That is very true. In the work of forming the hearts and minds of children it is "line upon line, and precept upon precept" that is required; and it can not be claimed that one such conversation as that of James is any thing more than one line. But it certainly is that. It would be as unreasonable to expect that one single lesson like that could effectually and completely accomplish the end in view, as that one single watering of a plant will suffice to enable it to attain completely its growth, and enable it to produce in perfection its fruits or its flowers.
But if a mother often clothes thus the advice or instruction which she has to give to her children in some imaginative guise like this, advising them what to do when they are on a journey, for example, or when they are making a visit at the house of a friend in the country; or, in the case of a boy, what she would counsel him to do in case he were a young man employed by a farmer to help him on his farm, or a clerk in a store, or a sea-captain in charge of a ship, or a general commanding a force in the field; or, if a girl, what dangers or what undesirable habits or actions she should avoid when travelling in Europe, or when, as a young lady, she joins in picnics or goes on excursions, or attends concerts or evening parties, or in any of the countless other situations which it is pleasant for young persons to picture to their minds, introducing into all, so far as her ingenuity and skill enable her to do it, interesting incidents and details, she will find that she is opening to herself an avenue to her children's hearts for the sound moral principles that she wishes to inculcate upon them, which she can often employ easily, pleasantly, and very advantageously, both to herself and to them.
When a child is sick, it may be of little consequence whether the medicine which is required is agreeable or disagreeable to the taste. But with moral remedies the case is different. Sometimes the whole efficiency of the treatment administered as a corrective for a moral disorder depends upon the readiness and willingness with which it is taken. To make it disagreeable, consequently, in such cases, is to neutralize the intended action of it—a result which the methods described in this chapter greatly tend to avoid.
