Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young by Jacob Abbott (e book reader online .txt) 📖

Suppose, for example, in the case above described, the mother, on leaving the children, simply gives them the command that they are not to leave the yard, but makes no promises, and then, on returning from the village with the bonbons in her bag, simply asks Susan, when she comes in, whether the children have obeyed her injunction not to leave the yard. If Susan says yes, she nods to them, with a look of satisfaction and pleasure, and adds: "I thought they would obey me. I am very glad. Now I can trust them again."

Then, by-and-by, towards the close of the day, perhaps, and when the children suppose that the affair is forgotten, she takes an opportunity to call them to her, saying that she has something to tell them.

"You remember when I went to the village to-day, I left you in the yard and said that you must not go out of the gate, and you obeyed. Perhaps you would have liked to go out into the road and play there, but you would not go because I had forbidden it. I am very glad that you obeyed. I thought of you when I was in the village, and I thought you would obey me. I felt quite safe about you. If you had been disobedient children, I should have felt uneasy and anxious. But I felt safe. When I had finished my shopping, I thought I would buy you some bonbons, and here they are. You can go and sit down together on the carpet and divide them. Mary can choose one, and then Jane; then Mary, and then Jane again; and so on until they are all chosen."

Difference in the Character of the Effects.

It may, perhaps, be said by the reader that this is substantially the same as giving a direct reward for the obedience. I admit that it is in some sense substantially the same thing, but it is not the same in form. And this is one of those cases where the effect is modified very greatly by the form. Where children are directly promised a reward if they do so and so, they naturally regard the transaction as of the nature of a contract or a bargain, such that when they have fulfilled the conditions on their part the reward is their due, as, indeed, it really is; and they come and demand it as such. The tendency, then, is, to divest their minds of all sense of obligation in respect to doing right, and to make them feel that it is in some sense optional with them whether to do right and earn the reward, or not to do right and lose it.

In the case, however, last described, which seems at first view to differ only in form from the preceding one, the commendation and the bonbons would be so connected with the act of obedience as to associate very agreeable ideas with it in the children's minds, and thus to make doing right appear attractive to them on future occasions, while, at the same time, they would not in any degree deprive the act itself of its spontaneous character, as resulting from a sense of duty on their part, or produce the impression on their minds that their remaining within the gate was of the nature of a service rendered to their mother for hire, and afterwards duly paid for.

The lesson which we deduce from this illustration and the considerations connected with it may be stated as follows:

The General Principle.

That the rewards conferred upon children with a view of connecting pleasurable ideas and associations with good conduct should not take the form of compensations stipulated for beforehand, and then conferred according to agreement, as if they were of the nature of payment for a service rendered, but should come as the natural expression of the satisfaction and happiness felt by the mother in the good conduct of her child—expressions as free and spontaneous on her part as the good conduct was on the part of the child.

The mother who understands the full import of this principle, and whose mind becomes fully possessed of it, will find it constantly coming into practical use in a thousand ways. She has undertaken, for example, to teach her little son to read. Of course learning to read is irksome to him. He dislikes extremely to leave his play and come to take his lesson. Sometimes a mother is inconsiderate enough to be pained at this. She is troubled to find that her boy takes so little interest in so useful a work, and even, perhaps, scolds him, and threatens him for not loving study. "If you don't learn to read," she says to him, in a tone of irritation and displeasure, "you will grow up a dunce, and every body will laugh at you, and you will be ashamed to be seen."

Children's Difficulties.

But let her imagine that she herself was to be called away two or three times a day, for half an hour, to study Chinese, with a very exacting teacher, always more or less impatient and dissatisfied with her progress; and yet the irksomeness and difficulty for the mother, in learning to decipher Chinese, would be as nothing compared with that of the child in learning to read. The only thing that could make the work even tolerable to the mother would be a pretty near, distinct, and certain prospect of going to China under circumstances that would make the knowledge of great advantage to her. But the child has no such near, distinct, and certain prospect of the advantages of knowing how to read. He has scarcely any idea of these advantages at all. You can describe them to him, but the description will have no perceptible effect upon his mind. Those faculties by which we bring the future vividly before us so as to influence our present action, are not yet developed. His cerebral organization has not yet advanced to that condition, any more than his bones have advanced to the hardness, rigidness, and strength of manhood. His mind is only capable of being influenced strongly by what is present, or, at least, very near. It is the design of Divine Providence that this should be so. The child is not made to look forward much yet, and the mother who is pained and distressed because he will not look forward, shows a great ignorance of the nature of the infantile mind, and of the manner of its development. If she finds fault with her boy for not feeling distinctly enough the future advantages of learning to lead him to love study now, she is simply finding fault with a boy for not being possessed of the most slowly developed faculties of a man.

The way, then, to induce children to attend to such duties as learning to read, is not to reason with them on the advantages of it, but to put it simply on the ground of authority. "It is very irksome, I know, but you must do it. When you are at play, and having a very pleasant time, I know very well that it is hard for you to be called away to puzzle over your letters and your reading. It was very hard for me when I was a child. It is very hard for all children; but then it must be done."

The way in this, as in all other similar cases, to reduce the irksomeness of disagreeable duties to a minimum is not to attempt to convince or persuade the child, but to put the performance of them simply on the ground of submission to authority. The child must leave his play and come to take his lesson, not because he sees that it is better for him to learn to read than to play all the time, nor because he is to receive a reward in the form of compensation, but because his mother requires him to do it.

Indirect Rewarding.

If, therefore, she concludes, in order to connect agreeable ideas with the hard work of learning to read, that she will often, at the close of the lessons, tell him a little story, or show him a picture, or have a frolic with him, or give him a piece of candy or a lump of sugar, or bestow upon him any other little gratification, it is better not to promise these things beforehand, so as to give to the coming of the child, when called, the character of a service rendered for hire. Let him come simply because he is called; and then let the gratifications be bestowed as the expressions of his mother's satisfaction and happiness, in view of her boy's ready obedience to her commands and faithful performance of his duty.

Obedience, though Implicit, need not be Blind.

It must not be supposed from what has been said that because a mother is not to rely upon the reason and forecast of the child in respect to future advantages to accrue from efforts or sacrifices as motives of present action, that she is not to employ the influence of these motives at all. It is true that those faculties of the mind by which we apprehend distant things and govern our conduct by them are not yet developed in the child; but they are to be developed, and the aid of the parent will be of the greatest service in promoting the development of them. At proper times, then, the pleasures and advantages of knowing how to read should be described to the child, and presented moreover in the most attractive form. The proper time for doing this would be when no lesson is in question— during a ride or a walk, or in the midst of a story, or while looking at a book of pictures. A most improper time would be when a command had been given and was disregarded, or was reluctantly obeyed; for then such representations would only tend to enfeeble the principle of authority by bringing in the influence of reasonings and persuasions to make up for its acknowledged inefficiency. It is one of those cases where a force is weakened by reinforcement—as a plant, by being long held up by a stake, comes in the end not to be able to stand alone.

So a mother can not in any way more effectually undermine her authority, as authority, than by attempting to eke out its force by arguments and coaxings.

Authority not to be made Oppressive.

While the parent must thus take care to establish the principle of authority as the ground of obedience on the part of his children, and must not make their doing what he requires any the less acts of obedience, through vainly attempting to diminish the hardship of obeying a command by mingling the influence of reasonings and persuasions with it, he may in other ways do all in his power—and that will be a great deal—to make the acts of obedience easy, or, at least, to diminish the difficulty of them and the severity of the trial which they often bring to the child.

One mode by which this may be done is by not springing disagreeable obligations upon a child suddenly, but by giving his mind a little time to form itself to the idea of what is to come. When Johnny and Mary are playing together happily with their blocks upon the floor, and are, perhaps, just completing a tower which they have been building, if their mother comes suddenly into the room, announces to them abruptly that it is time for them to go to bed, throws down the tower and brushes the blocks into the basket, and then hurries the children away to the undressing, she gives a sudden and painful shock to their whole nervous system, and greatly increases the disappointment and pain which they experience in being obliged to give up their play. The delay of a single minute would be sufficient to bring their minds round easily and gently into submission to the necessity of the case. If she comes to them with a smile, looks upon their work a moment with an expression of interest and pleasure upon her countenance, and then says,

"It is bed-time, children, but I would like to see you finish your tower."

One minute of delay like this, to soften the suddenness of the transition, will make the act of submission to the necessity of giving up play and going to bed, in obedience to the mother's command, comparatively easy, instead of being, as it very likely would otherwise have been, extremely vexatious and