Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

And why? Our little friend has told us; mother and father are quite fair, there is no fault to be found in them, but “I’m so horrid, nobody cares for me.” There you have the secret of “naughtiness.” There is nothing more pathetic than the sort of dual life of which the young are dimly conscious. On the one hand there are premonitions of full and perfect being, the budding wings of which their thoughts are full, and for which their strong sense of justice demands credit. Mother and father ought to know how great and good and beautiful they are in possibility, in prospective. They must have the comprehension, appreciation, which, if they cannot get in the drawing-room, they will seek in the kitchen or the stable-yard. Alnaschar visions? If so, it is not young Alnaschar, but his parents, who kick over the basket of eggs.

If the young folk are pugnacious about their “rights,” and are over-ready with their “It’s not fair!” “It’s a shame!” it is because they reckon their claims by the great possible self, while, alas! they measure what they get by the actual self, of which they think small things. There is no word for it but “horrid;” bring them to book, and the scornful, or vain, or bumptious young persons we may know are alike in this—every one of them is “horrid” in his or her own eyes.

Now, if you know yourself to be horrid, you know that, of course, people do not love you; how can they? They are kind to you and all that, but that is because it’s their business, or their nature, or their duty to be kind. It has really nothing to do with you personally. What you want is some one who will find you out, and be kind to you, and love you just for your own sake and nothing else. So do we reason when we are young. It is the old story. The good that I would I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do. Only we feel things more acutely when we are young, and take sides alternately with ourselves and against ourselves; small is the wonder that their elders find young people “difficult;” that is just what they find themselves.

“Fudge!” says the reader, who satisfies himself with the surface, and recalls the fun and frolic and gaiety of heart, the laughter and nonsense and bright looks of scores of young people he knows: of course they are gay, because they are young; but we should have many books about the sadness of youth if people in their “teens” might have the making of them. Glad and sad are not a whole octave apart.

How soon does this trouble of youth begin? That very delightful little person, the Baby, is quite exempted. So, too, are the three, four, and five-year-old darlings of the nursery. They gather on your knee, and take possession of you, and make no doubt at all of your love or their deserts. But a child cannot always get out of the nursery before this doubt with two faces is upon him. I know a boy of four, a healthy intelligent child, full of glee and frolic and sense, who yet has many sad moments because one and another do not love him, and other very joyful, grateful moments because some little gift or attention assures him of love. His mother, with the delicate tact mothers have, perceives that the child needs to be continually reinstated in his own esteem. She calls him her “only boy,” treats him half as her little lover, and so evens him with the two bright little sisters whom, somehow, and without any telling, poor Georgie feels to be sweeter in temper and more lovable than he. An exceedingly instructive little memorial of a child who died young came under our notice some time ago. His parents kept their children always in an atmosphere of love and gladness; and it was curious to notice that this boy, a merry, bright little fellow, was quite incapable of realising his parents’ love. That they should love his sister was natural, but how could they love him?

The little ones in the nursery revel in love, but how is it with even the nursery elders? Are they not soon taught to give place to the little ones and look for small show of love, because they are “big boys” and “big girls”? The rather sad aloofness and self-containedness of these little folk in some families is worth thinking about. Even the nursery is a microcosm, suffering from the world’s ailment, love-hunger, a sickness which drives little children and grown-up people into naughty thoughts and wicked ways.

I knew a girl whose parents devoted themselves entirely to training her; they surrounded her with care and sufficient tenderness; they did not make much of her openly, because they held old-fashioned notions about not fostering a child’s self-importance and vanity. They were so successful in suppressing the girl’s self-esteem that it never occurred to her that all their cares meant love until she was woman-grown, and could discern character, and, alas! had her parents no more to give them back love for love. The girl herself must have been unloving? In one sense, all young beings are unloving; in another, they are as vessels filled, brimming over with love seeking an outlet. This girl would watch her mother about a room, walk behind her in the streets—adoringly. Such intense worship of their parents is more common in children than we imagine. A boy of five years was asked what he thought the most beautiful thing in the world. “Velvet,” he replied, with dreamy eyes, evidently thinking of his mother in a velvet gown. His parents are the greatest and wisest, the most powerful, and the best people within the narrow range of the child’s world. They are royal personages—his kings and queens. Is it any wonder he worships, even when he rebels?

But is it not more common, now-a-days, for children to caress and patronise their parents, and make all too sure of their love? It may be; but only where parents have lost that indescribable attribute—dignity? authority?—which is their title to their children’s love and worship; and the affection which is lavished too creaturely-wise on children fails to meet the craving of their nature. What is it they want, those young things so gaily happy with doll or bat or racquet? They want to be reinstated; they labour, some poor children almost from infancy, under a sad sense of demerit. They find themselves so little loveworthy, that no sign short of absolute telling with lip and eye and touch will convince them they are beloved.

But if one whom they trust and honour, one who knows, will, seeing how faulty they are, yet love them, regarding the hateful faults as alien things to be got rid of, and holding them, in spite of the faults, in close measureless love and confidence, why, then, the young lives expand like flowers in sunny weather, and where parents know this secret of loving there are no morose boys nor sullen girls.

Actions do not speak louder than words to a young heart; he must feel it in your touch, see it in your eye, hear it in your tones, or you will never convince child or boy that you love him, though you labour day and night for his good and his pleasure. Perhaps this is the special lesson of Christmas-tide for parents. The Son came—for what else we need not inquire now—to reinstate men by compelling them to believe that they—the poorest shrinking and ashamèd souls of them—that they live enfolded in infinite personal love, desiring with desire the response of love for love. And who, like the parent, can help forward this “wonderful redemption”? The boy who knows that his father and his mother love him with measureless patience in his faults, and love him out of them, is not slow to perceive, and receive, and understand the dealings of the higher Love.