Women, Children, Love, and Marriage

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

CRIMINALS MADE IN OUR NURSERIES

Every child suffers sometimes from a feeling of inferiority. He is so much smaller and weaker than the grown-ups who control his play and his work that he feels uncomfortably helpless against their authority, which to him seems often to be exercised in an arbitrary and unkind way.

There are times when this consciousness of being little and weak is so overwhelming that the child is bound to do something to convince himself of his own powerfulness.

It is then that he becomes naughty. For the very easiest way to command the attention of his mother, and the other adults who are with him, is by being naughty. Good, he is left alone. The grown-ups go on with their own occupations. He feels neglected. At most he is mildly praised. “Johnnie is a nice quiet boy to-day.” But this is very different from the attention he commands when he is naughty. He defies authority. For a short time he becomes a despot, ruling the grown-ups who usually rule him. His sensation of power is intensely enjoyable. And the more disturbance he makes in the nursery life the deeper is his satisfaction. Of course, he is sorry afterwards. But his sorrow is not really for the first period of successful rebellion, but for the following time after his power fails.

Now, it is very important for the mother to understand this. The real problem is to minimise as much as can be of the child’s enjoyment of naughtiness.

Any unwisdom on the mother’s part such as her being too emotionally concerned, indulging in nagging or violent anger, may have very serious results. Inevitably the child feels as he sees his mother’s tears and want of control, “I have caused this.” Instead of being weak he is master of his mother. That is why usually he is good after he has been naughty.

But this kind of nursery behaviour is disastrous to the child’s character.

Let me tell you a rather striking story to illustrate this. A young boy, very naughty, was sent to bed. His mother, greatly troubled, went some hours later to his room. He was kneeling, praying. She thought he was asking God to forgive him. But this was what she heard: “Please, dear God, forgive my bad mummy for being so unkind to poor little Freddy.” The boy grew up in the most unfortunate way. I cannot give the details and there were, of course, several causes. Yet certainly his character suffered the first wrong in the nursery from an unwise emphasising by his mother of his own importance.

The naughty child is always the child over-occupied with thoughts of himself. And his feelings are unhealthily important to him just because he finds himself for some cause at a disadvantage. Parents, unconsciously, but very foolishly, emphasise their children’s inferiority; they speak of their weakness, tell them they are too little to do this or that, never realising the danger of what they are doing.