Kitabı oku: «Concerning Children», sayfa 8
IX
THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH
Since we have so carefully and thoroughly beaten back the new brain-growth which should distinguish each successive generation, and fostered in every way the primitive mental habits of our forefathers, the natural consequence is a prolonged survival of very early tendencies. Outside, in the necessary contact and freedom of the world's life, crude ideas must change, and either become suited to the times or lost entirely. But in the privacy of the home, under the conditions of family life and the dominant influence of feminine conservatism, we find a group of carefully cherished rudiments which never could have survived without such isolation.
Among primitive races the stranger is an object of legitimate derision. The differences in his speech and manner are held as visible inferiorities, and his attempts to assimilate are greeted with unchecked merriment. This attitude of mind is still common in children, who are passing through the same stage of culture individually. Among intelligent and well-bred grown people such an attitude of mind is rightly despised. To them the stranger is entitled to respectful consideration because he is a stranger; and nothing could be ruder, in the estimation of such persons, than to laugh at the stranger's efforts to learn our language and manners.
How great is the difference between this common good breeding in the world at large and the barbaric crudity of our behaviour at home to that most sacred stranger, the child! He comes to us absolutely ignorant of our methods of living, be they wise or unwise; and he must needs learn every step of his way in the paths we have prepared for him. Unfortunately, we have prepared very little. A few physical conveniences, perhaps, in the way of high chairs and cradles, or nursing-bottles to supplement maternal deficiency; but in psychic conveniences – in any better recognition of the childish attitude of mind and its natural difficulties – we make small progress.
Calm, wondering, unafraid, the stranger enters the family circle. He has no perspective, no gradations of feeling in regard to the performances he finds going on about him. He has neither shame for the truths of real life nor respect for the falsehoods of artificial life. In soberness and eager interest he begins the mysterious game of living.
Now what is the attitude of the family toward this new-comer? How does the intelligent adult treat the stranger within his gates? He treats him with frequent ridicule and general gross disrespect. Not "unkindly," perhaps, – that is, not with anger and blows or undue deprivations, – but as if being a child was a sort of joke. A healthy child is merry with the free good spirits of a spring-tide lamb; but that pure mirth has nothing in common with ridicule. Who of us has not seen a clear-eyed child struck dumb and crimson by the rude laughter of his elders over some act which had no element of humour except that it was new to him? We put grandpa's hat on the downy head of the baby, and roar with laughter at his appearance. Do we put baby's cap on grandma, and then make fun of the old lady's looks? Why should we jeer at a baby more than at an old person? Why are we so lacking in the respect due to youth?
Every child has to learn the language he is born to. It is certain that he will make mistakes in the process, especially as he is not taught it by any wise system, but blunders into what usage he can grasp from day to day.
Now, if an adult foreigner were learning our language, and we greeted his efforts with yells of laughter, we should think ourselves grossly rude. And what should we think of ourselves if we further misled him by setting absurd words and phrases before him, encouraging him to further blunders, that we might laugh the more; and then, if we had visitors, inciting him to make these blunders over again to entertain the company? Yet this is common household sport, so long as there is a little child to act as zany for the amusement of his elders. The errors of a child are not legitimate grounds of humour, even to those coarse enough to laugh at them, any more than a toddling baby's falls have the same elements of the incongruous as the overthrow of a stout old gentleman who sits down astonished in the snow.
A baby has to fall. It is natural, and not funny. So does the young child have to make mistakes as he learns any or all of the crowding tasks before him; but these are not fair grounds for ridicule.
I was walking in a friend's garden, and met for the first time the daughter of the house, a tall, beautiful girl of nineteen or twenty. Her aunt, who was with me, cried out to her in an affected tone, "Come and meet the lady, Janey!"
The young girl, who was evidently unpleasantly impressed, looked annoyed, and turned aside in some confusion, speaking softly to her teacher who was with her. Then the aunt, who was a very muscular woman, seized the young lady by her shoulders, lifted her off the ground, and thrust her blushing, struggling, and protesting into my arms – by way of introduction! Naturally enough, the girl was overcome with mortification, and conceived a violent dislike for me. (This story is exactly true, except that the daughter of the house was aged two and a half.)
Now why, – in the name of reason, courtesy, education, justice, any lofty and noble consideration, – why should Two-and-a-half be thus insulted? What is the point of view of the insulter? How does she justify her brutal behaviour? Is it on the obvious ground of physical superiority in age and strength? It cannot be that, for we do not gratuitously outrage the feelings of all persons younger and smaller than ourselves. A stalwart six-foot septuagenarian does not thus comport himself toward a small gentleman of thirty or forty. It cannot be relationship; for such conduct does not obtain among adults, be they never so closely allied. It has no basis except that the victim is a child, and the child has no personal rights which we feel bound to respect.
A baby, when "good," is considered as a first-rate plaything, – a toy to play with or to play on or to set going like a machine-top, that we may laugh at it. There is a legitimate frolicking with small children, as the cat plays with her kittens; but that is not in the least inconsistent with respect. Grown people can play together and laugh together without jeering at each other. So we might laugh with our children, even more than we do, and yet never laugh at them. The pathetic side of it is that children are even more sensitive to ridicule than grown people. They have no philosophy to fall back upon; and, – here is the hideously unjust side, – if they lose their tempers, being yet unlearned in self-restraint, – if they try to turn the tables on their tormentors, then the wise "grown-up" promptly punishes them for "disrespect." They must respect their elders even in this pitiful attitude; but who is to demand the respect due to youth?
There is a deal of complaint among parents over the "impertinence" of children. "How dare you speak to me like that!" cries outraged authority. Yet "that" was only the expression used just before by the parent to the child.
"Hold your tongue!" says the mother. "Hold yours!" answers the child, and is promptly whipped for impertinence. "I'll teach you to answer me like that!" says angry mamma. And she does.
In the baby's first attempt to speak we amused ourselves mightily over his innocent handling of rude phrases, – overheard by chance or even taught him, that we might make merry over the guileless little mouth, uttering at our behest the words it did not understand. Then, a year or so older, when he says the same things, he is laboriously and painfully taught that what is proper for a parent to say to a child is not proper for a child to say to a parent. "Why?" puzzles the child. We can give no answer, except our large assumption that there is no respect due to youth.
Ask any conscientious mother or father why the new human being, fresh from God as they profess to believe, not yet tainted by sin or weakened by folly and mistake, serene in its mighty innocence and serious beyond measure, as its deep eyes look solemnly into life, – why this wonderful kind of humanity is to be treated like a court fool. What can the parent say?
From the deeper biological standpoint, seeing the foremost wave of advancing humanity in each new generation, there is still less excuse for such contemptuous treatment. In the child is lodged the piled up progress of the centuries, and, as he shall live, is that progress hastened or retarded. Quite outside of the natural affection of the parent for the offspring stands this deep, human reverence for the latest and best specimen of its kind. Every child should represent a higher step in racial growth than its parents, and every parent should reverently recognise this. For a time the parent has the advantage. He has knowledge, skill, and power; and we feel that in the order of nature he is set to minister to the younger generation till it shall supplant him. To develope such a noble feeling has taken a long time, and many steps upward through those cruder sentiments which led toward it. Yet it is the rational, conscious feeling into which the human being translates the whole marvellous law of parental love.
To the animal this great force expresses itself merely in instinct; but, as such, it is accepted and fulfilled, and the good of the young subserved unquestioningly. In low grades of human life we have still this animal parental instinct largely predominating, coloured more or less with some prevision of the real glory of the work in hand. Yet so selfish is human parentage that in earlier times children have been sold as slaves in the interests of parents, have been and still are set to work prematurely; and in certain races the father looks forward to having a son for various religious benefits accruing to him, the father.
Sentiments like these are not conducive to respect for youth. The mother is not generally selfish, in this sense. Her error is in viewing the child too personally, depending too much on "instinct," and giving very little thought to the matter. She loves much and serves endlessly, but reasons little. The child is pre-eminently "her" child, and is treated as such. Intense affection she gives, and such forms of discipline and cultivation as are within her range, unflagging care and labour also; but "respect" for the bewitching bundle of cambric she has so elaborately decorated does not occur to her.
Note the behaviour of a group of admiring women around a baby on exhibition. Its clothes are prominent, of course, in their admiration; and its toes, fingers, and dimples generally. They kiss it and cuddle it and play with it, and the proud mamma is pleased. When the exhibitee is older and more conscious, it dislikes these scenes intensely. Being "dressed up" and passed around for the observation and remark of the grown-up visitors is an ordeal we can all remember.
Why cannot a grown person advance to make the acquaintance of a child with the same good manners used in meeting an adult? Frankness, naturalness, and respect, these are all the child wants. And precisely these he is denied. We put on an assumed interest – a sort of stage manner – in accosting the young, and for all our pretence pay no regard to their opinions or confidence, when given. Really well-intentioned persons, parents or otherwise, will repeat before strangers some personal opinion, just softly whispered in their ears, with a pair of little arms holding fast to keep the secret close; dragging it out remorselessly before the persons implicated, while the betrayed child squirms in wretchedness and anger.
To do this to a grown-up friend would warrant an angry dropping of acquaintance. Such traitorous rudeness would not be tolerated by man or woman. But the child, – the child must pocket every insult, as belonging to a class beneath respect.
Is it not time that we summoned our wits from their wool-gathering, – however financially profitable the wool may be, – and gave a little honest thought to the status of childhood? Childhood is not a pathological condition, nor a term of penal servitude, nor a practical joke. A child is a human creature, and entitled to be treated as such. A human body three feet long is deserving of as much respect as a human body six feet long. Yet the bodies of children are handled with the grossest familiarity. We pluck and pull and push them, tweak their hair and ears, pat them on the head, chuck them under the chin, kiss them, and hold them on our laps, entirely regardless of their personal preferences. Why should we take liberties with the person of a child other than those suitable to an intimate friendship at any age?
"Because children don't care," some one will answer. But children do care. They care enormously. They dislike certain persons always because of disagreeable physical contact in childhood. They wriggle down clumsily, all their clothes rubbed the wrong way, with tumbled hair and flushed, sulky faces from the warm "lap" of some large woman or bony, woolly-clothed man, who was holding them with one hand and variously assaulting them with the other, and rush off in helpless rage. No doubt they "get used to it," as do eels to skinning; but in this process of accustoming childhood to brutal discourtesy we lose much of the finest, most delicate development of human nature. There is no charge of cruelty, unkindness, or neglect involved in this.
Discourtesy to children is practised by the most loving and devoted parents, the most amiable of relatives and visitors. Neither is it a question of knowledge on the part of the elder. These rudenesses are practised by persons of exquisite manners, among their equals. It is simply a case of survival of an undeveloped field of human nature, – a dark, uncultivated, neglected spot where we have failed to grow. The same forces which have so far civilised us will work farther when we give them room. We have but to open our minds and widen our sphere of action to become civilised in these domestic relations. It is the citizenship – the humanness – of the child we need to recognise, not merely its relative accomplishments compared to ourselves. Also the tendencies and restraint born of power and freedom should teach us to respect the child precisely because of its helplessness. The principle that urges even the bullying school-boy to "take a fellow of his own size," and which forbids torturing a captive, killing an unarmed man, or insulting an inferior, ought to put more nobility into our conduct in relation to the child. As so much weaker, strength should respect him; and, as one bound to supersede us, wisdom should recognise his power.
X
TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION
The child comes to the table. He looks a little weary, knowing the task before him.
"Now what will you have?" asks his fond mamma. "What would you like, dear?"
The child gazes at the dishes there present, and is somewhat attracted toward one or more of them; but his brain thrusts upon him images of other viands, and memories of triumph in securing some vaguely remembered delicacy. He wavers in his mind, and wiggles his knife uncertainly. "I guess – I'll have" – Mamma is all attention. "Have some of this nice potato!" she urges. He had inclined toward the potato previously, but rebels at its being urged upon him. Also the cooing adjective affronts him. He has heard things called nice before, usually when he did not want them.
"No, I don't want any potato," he says. "I want – I'll have some sweet potato!"
Unhappily there is no sweet potato, and the good mamma smilingly excuses the lack. "We will have some to-morrow," she promises; and, to distract him from thought of the impossible, "Won't you have a chop?"
"No – yes – I'll have one chop. On this plate, not on that plate. I won't have it on that plate!"
"But this plate is warm, dear."
"I want it on my own plate!"
"Very well. Will you have some gravy?"
"Yes, I guess so. Not on the potato! Don't put it on the potato! I won't eat it if you put it on the potato!"
In time he eats, though not with eagerness. In his young mind is a vague sense of annoyance and discomfort, as if he were in some way defrauded of his dinner. The present dinner, rather gloomily going down, is contrasted with other possible dinners, not now to be attained. What he has suffers by comparison with all the things he has not, and a dim memory of previous disappointments oppresses him.
"He never did eat well," says his mother. "We have hard work to find what he will eat." There may be some digestive disturbance, but there is a quite needless psychological disturbance added. Choice is a wearing thing, even to the trained scanner of menus.
To select a meal exactly to one's taste, and not be haunted by the unchosen dishes, means the prompt and skilful exercise of a widely cultivated taste. Most of us gladly prefer to have some experienced cook and caterer set a good meal before us. A pleased anticipation at a well-known dinner table is a more agreeable frame of mind than that of one who must needs select, spurred by a tall darkey with a pencil.
A child has not a cultivated taste nor the calmness of experience. A choice, even from objects before him, is uncertain enough. He is apt to speedily regret and wish to change. To be called upon to order a meal is a real tax upon him. While he exerts himself in this direction, any proposition is likely to be resented; and, to one who is on tiptoe in effort to decide, an insinuating suggestion from without is extremely irritating.
This method of consulting a child's preferences before he has them, introducing alternatives not present and then harassing the wavering young mind with persuasive propositions, rapidly developes a halting, fretful, back-stitch sort of temper, always wishing it had done the other thing.
The old-fashioned method was to compel a child to eat "what was set before him," all of it, quite regardless of his personal taste or constitutional limitations. Nothing but palpable nausea convinced these obdurate parents of earlier generations that there were some things the little victim could not eat. This was a foolish and cruel method. Children differ widely in digestive power and preference, and their tastes are marked and sensitive. Eating what he does not like is far more painful to a child than to an adult. But his tastes and limitations can be discovered without concentrating his own attention on them. It is bad to treat a child's tastes with less consideration than those of older human beings; but there is no reason why they should be treated with more. The simple lesson can be taught of eating what he likes and leaving what he dislikes without vociferous proclamation of these preferences; and, if he really thinks of something else he would like to have for dinner, teach him to ask for it for another time. He can readily understand that cooking takes time, and extra dishes cannot be served at a moment's notice.
A family is usually composed of several persons, all of whom should be treated with justice. If it is reduced to two only, – if there is only mother and child to decide between, – the decision should be fairly balanced. The practical issues of daily life are almost always open to a child's understanding.
Mamma, we will say, is reading. Mabel is busy with doll's dressmaking.
"O mamma! will you please get me the scissors?"
"Can you not get them as easily, dear?"
"I don't know just where they are, and I've been fussing ever so long with this yoke; and now I've got it just right, and I'm afraid, if I put it down, I'll forget again!"
Mamma looks at the flushed, earnest little face, lays her book down, and gets the scissors.
Again. Mamma is stuffing the turkey. "Mabel, will you please bring me down the largest needle on my cushion?"
"Oh, but, mamma, I'm so busy with my paints!"
"Yes; but you are upstairs already, and my hands are in the stuffing. Please hurry, dear."
Mabel brings the needle promptly. She knows that mamma is considerate of her, and she is considerate of mamma.
It is by no means necessary to argue over every little service, but a few test cases keep in mind the idea of justice. If what a child wants will give more pleasure to the child than trouble to the adult, do it. If it is more trouble to the adult than pleasure to the child, do not do it; and let the child understand, first, last, and always, the balance of human rights.
I knew a girl of thirteen who had not yet learned to keep herself covered at night. She slept with her mother; and, if she wakened chilly, she would murmur, without opening her eyes, "Mother, cover me up!" And her mother would do it. This was unfair to the child. It allowed her to commit a gross injustice; and her mother was "compounding a felony," as it were, in indulging her. The child was already awake, and quite capable of pulling up the blankets. There was no reason why her tired mother should lose sleep for the purpose. The practical way to exhibit this would be for the mother to waken the child with the same demand. A few applications would be sufficient. If verbal remonstrance was preferred (usually an inferior method), the mother might quietly reply: "By no means. You are perfectly able to do it. It is not fair to waken me for that. I do not get to sleep again as quickly as you do, and am tired next day." A child already reasonably trained would easily see the force of that argument.
A big boy is persistently late to breakfast. This annoys his mother at the time, and delays her work afterward. She saves and keeps hot various viands for him, taking many extra steps; and her day's work is rendered a little more difficult. If the breakfast hour is that most convenient to the family needs, simply explain to the boy that breakfast is at such a time only; that he will be called in due season; and that, if he is not down within the given time, he will find no breakfast whatsoever. This course, firmly followed, works like a charm. Most people dislike going without breakfast. A child should have sufficient sleep, of course; but, if his hours are reasonable, there is no justice in incommoding the working mother for the sake of a little natural laziness. With very little children we ingeniously manage to ignore some of their really important questions and actions, and at the same time to let them trample on our ears and brains with senseless iteration of unnecessary words.
A small boy is eating his supper, while his mother puts little sister to bed.
"Mother!" he bawls. "Mother! Mo-o-ther!"
At last she leaves her task to come to him, he still shouting; and this is his communication: "Mother! This is baker's bread!"
"Yes, dear," says the too tender mamma, and goes back again.
That child should have been met, not with anger or punishment, but with very simple sarcasm and protest.
"Yes, that is baker's bread, – and that is a plate, – and that is a spoon. I knew all these things when I arranged your supper. Do you think it is fair to call me downstairs just to say that?"
The bubbling fluency of a child's mind, the tendency to repetition and sometimes foolishness, is natural enough, and not to be blamed; but we should help the child to outgrow it instead of submitting to his wearisome reiterance.
"But, my dear, you said that before. I understand. Now do not say it again."
To say, "Yes, dear," a dozen times to the same question or statement is not strengthening to the child's mental habits. Similarly, when a child asks palpably foolish questions, – foolish by his own standard, – he needs not consideration, but mild ridicule. And, if he can answer his own question, let him: it is no kindness to do all his work. Children are not benefited by a too soft and yielding environment, nor do they always love best those who treat them with too much consideration. Fairness, not severity nor constant concession, is what a child appreciates. If we behave fairly to the child (as we would to a grown person), giving to him the healthy reaction of common justice, we help him to live easily and rightly in the world before him.
Even love is open to measurement by results. The love we have for our children is not developed in us as a pleasurable exercise, but is distinctly for the child's benefit. "The maternal sacrifice" is what our scientific friends call it. In studying early forms of life, we find the mother sacrificing everything for the good of the young, from which we draw the general inference that it is for the good of the young to have the mother sacrifice everything. More discriminating study will show us a great difference in maternal methods. Where the mother's loss is the gain of the young, she cheerfully submits to it; but, where the young is not benefited by her loss, we do not find it.
The eggs of the hen are carefully brooded by the mother; the eggs of the frog are left floating on the water in suitable places. There is no special virtue in the hen's brooding or vice in the frog's neglect; the mother does what is necessary for the young. The mother-cat licks her little ones elaborately, and teaches them to make their toilettes similarly. The cow licks the calf for a while, but gives it no instructions in washing its ears with its paws.
The mother-love is essential to the best care of the young, and therefore it is given us. It is the main current of race preservation, and the basis of all other love-development on the higher grades. But it is not, therefore, an object of superstitious veneration, and in itself invariably right. The surrender of the mother to the child is often flatly injurious, if carried to excess. To put it in the last extreme, suppose the mother so utterly sacrifices herself to the child as to break down and die. She then robs the child of its mother, which is an injury. Suppose she so sacrifices herself to the child as to cut off her own proper rest, recreation, and development. She thus gives the child an exhausted and inferior mother, which is an injury to him. There are cases, perhaps, where it might be a mother's duty to die for her child; but, in general, it is more advantageous to live for him. The "unselfish devotion" of the mother we laud to the skies, without stopping to consider its effect on the child. This error is connected with our primitive religious belief in the doctrine of sacrifice, – one of those early misconceptions of a great truth.
It is necessary for the good of humanity that the interests of the one be subordinate to the interests of the many, but it does not follow that an indiscriminate surrender of one's own interests always benefits society. On the contrary, a steady insistence on the rights of the individual is essential to the integrity of the social structure and its right workings. So it is necessary for the good of the child that the interests of the mother be subordinated to his interests, but it does not follow that her indiscriminate surrender of personal interests always benefits him. On the contrary, a too self-sacrificing mother tends to develope a selfish, short-sighted, low-grade personality in the growing life she seeks to benefit, where her honest maintenance of her own individual rights would have had a very healthy effect. Not what the child wishes, nor what the mother wishes, is the standard of measurement, but what is really beneficial to the child. If the mother is frankly and clearly unselfish in their daily intercourse, and then as frankly and clearly demands her own share of freedom and consideration, the child gets a fairer view of human rights than if he simply absorbs his mother as a natural victim.
Little Mary has a visitor. Her mother is most polite and entertaining, is with them when they desire it, and lets them alone when they prefer. Then her mother has a visitor. "Mary," she says, "I am to have company this week. I shall of course have to give a good deal of time and attention to my friend, as you did to Hattie when she was here. So you must not feel badly if you do not see as much of mamma as usual."
There must be the previous polite conduct of mamma to point to. The childish mind needs frequent and conspicuous proof that mamma is forgetting herself for his pleasure; and then he should be rationally called upon to forget himself for her pleasure, when it is plainly fair and necessary.
The beautiful principles of kindergarten teaching are frequently misapplied in the too conciliatory and self-denying methods of the well-meaning mamma. Kindness, politeness, constant love, and all due consideration the child should have; but justice is as important to him as affection. It must always be remembered that the mother's love is not an end in itself, nor the expression of it a virtue in itself. It is to be measured, like every other natural function, by its use.
When a child is reared in an atmosphere of unreasoning devotion and constant surrender, he grows up to expect it, and to carry a sense of grievance if he does not get it. The natural tendency of the mother to love her own young is strong in us, – the maternal passion; but, like all passions, it needs conscientious and rational restraint. The human soul has grown to such a stage of development that we are capable of loving and serving great numbers of people. The woman, who is still confined to the same range of interests which occupied her in the earliest grades of human life, inherits her share of this socially developed power of loving, and concentrates it all upon her own immediate family.
Like an ever-enlarging burning glass, still focussed upon one spot, the healthy, natural affection of the animal mother for its young has grown to what is really an immense social affection, too large for one family to profitably sustain. The child will get a far more just and healthful idea of human relation when he finds himself lifted and led on by a mother whose life has a purpose of its own, than when he finds himself encompassed and overwhelmed by a mother who has no other object or interest than himself.
