The generous purpose in the glowing breast!
—Thomson’s Seasons.
To understand the boy’s viewpoint we must be able to put ourselves in his place. We must renew our youth. The trouble with so many of us is that we never acquire juvenescence until second-childhood. We should be able to assign the boy to the psychological period to which he belongs by reason of his development, and thus knowing the mental and moral status of an inhabitant of that period, we are able to see things through his glasses. The mental myopia and moral astigmatism of youth will then be recognized as a defect of immaturity which training and years will cure. Juvenility may be reacquired in maturity if we string-halted adults would only seek rejuvenation at the fountain of youthful understanding where we may obtain a flood of knowledge concerning boy-life. The journey is apparently too long and too difficult for the lazy or indifferent grown-up. The heart of a boy is not worn on his sleeve. He reveals it only to those who command his perfect confidence and such confidence is given to those, and to those only, who understand him. The aloofness of children toward certain adults is because they have nothing in common. Each misunderstands the other. As it is obviously impossible for the child to understand and attune himself to adult mental processes, it becomes necessary for the adult to comprehend child-nature and to put himself in harmony with it.
Happy the man who can make himself a boy again! He retains a thousand joys which other adults have irretrievably lost. Such a one is a natural leader and teacher of boys. They delight to make him their hero. His influence with boys is commensurate with his understanding of life in Boyville. You must go to this juvenile city and live there, learn its laws, customs, and manners, and if possible place yourself in a sympathetic attitude of understanding without which you can never hope to be initiated into the mysteries of adolescence. The honor of being admitted to the confidence and fellowship of boys is not permitted to all men—only to those who have retained or who are able to acquire the boy’s viewpoint. “There is a wall around the town of Boyville,” says William Allen White, “which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut upon youth. An adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself banished among purblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville was old when Nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rules and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it have changed.”
The boy lives in the present, with little thought of the future; he is concerned with today, not the next decade. His mental processes do not prompt him to speculate as to the effect of present acts on future character. He has neither the mental nor moral equipment for such foresight or deduction; it is a task beyond his capabilities. This burden must be shouldered by the parent who should not only do the child’s thinking for him until the latter is able to do it for himself, but should also drill, train, and educate the boy until he is able to make nice distinctions between right and wrong, and should cultivate his will-power until he can school himself into an acceptance of the good as against the bad. Until the child’s mind, will, and moral sense have reached this stage of growth, the parent must substitute his own mind, will, and moral sense. In determining the degree of capability of a child’s offense, we should ask ourselves the question: “What is the developmental stage of his faculties which made the offense possible?” Harsh and stern estimates of childish frailties usually result from the application of the adult viewpoint and the adult standard. The failure to consider the viewpoint and standards of the adolescent causes much injustice to the boy and results in many mistakes in his training.
The brightness, joyousness, and optimism of youth suffuses life with an iridescent glow. All the world is bathed in roseate hues when seen through the rose-colored glasses of youth. When we get so old that we delight in sitting by the fire, toasting our slippered feet, and prefer to listen to our arteries harden rather than to hear the noise and laughter of boyhood, we are out of tune with the harmonies of boy-life.
CHAPTER VI
OBEDIENCE
THERE hangs in the bedroom of the children of a certain devout mother a large frame which contains, in illuminated letters, the twentieth verse of the third chapter of Paul’s “Epistle to the Colossians”: “Children, obey your parents in all things; for this is well pleasing to the Lord.” In commenting on this visual injunction she said: “Obedience is the chief cornerstone of child-training and I have thus endeavored to fix it in the memories of my children for all time.” The commandment—“Honor thy father and thy mother”—is just as real and vital today as it was in the time of Moses, although present-day home conditions are not always conducive to its observance.
Too many children of the present, especially during adolescence, regard their parents with an attitude of tolerant sufferance—as necessary evils to be endured by them but exhibiting little patience in their toleration. They consider them old-fogy, behind the times, uncomprehending and unsympathetic with their interests, plans, and aspirations. Father is esteemed largely in proportion to his success as a producer; while mother is valued in accordance with her contributions to their physical comfort; and this imperfect recognition of parental aid comprises the sum total of their gratitude; for no acknowledgment is ever made of their obligation for the years of watchfulness of health or solicitude for morals or cultivation of the spiritual life. This attitude is due partly to the psychological unbalance of the adolescent and partly to the slovenly, inconsistent, and wishy-washy methods of government used by the parent, which inspire in the youth not only disobedience but contempt for parental authority which is as vacillating as a weather cock. Without obedience the child drifts aimlessly and develops a character as unstable as the parental system of training is fluctuating. Confirmed cases of juvenile disobedience can be traced, almost without exception, to the jellyfish methods of spineless parents. An increase in rigidity of parental backbone will result in a corresponding increase in filial obedience.
Obedience is the fundamental law of child-training and upon it the development of future character is predicated. Obedience in children is too frequently regarded by parents as the chief end of training, and not as the means to the end, which is character. The young child has neither code of morals nor a standard of ethics, but is a rule unto himself, propelled only by impulses of selfish interest. The chief objective of child-training is the cultivation and fixation of a high moral code which produces character. The secondary objectives are the conservation of health and discipline of the intellectual faculties, the latter including the communication of knowledge.