On the Training of Parents

by Ernest Hamlin Abbott

Satisfied that he has settled an acute difficulty, this composite father, in whose voice has sounded some tones that I dare not disown, descends the peaceful stairs. What he has actually done has been to throw into hopeless unsettlement a situation that was after a fashion already half settled. If the children are quiet, it is because they are dazed by the feats of an acrobatic adult mind. They have watched their father make a circuit of the situation, cross at least a half-dozen paths that led safely out, and, ignoring all, return to the point of departure. The benefit they have received from the performance is not at all the benefit he believes he has imparted. It has not been, as he fancies, the benefit of discipline; it has been the benefit of diversion. As for himself, he has received that most welcome of benefits—a mental frame of complacency.

Not being as nimble as he, we may find it worth our while to stop for a moment at each path that he passed and explore it. What we are prone to forget is that from almost every difficulty of this kind there are several exits, and that there is no progress made in attempting to travel more than one at a time. In this case, all need for the display of gymnastics might have been avoided by the consideration of a few simple questions.

One question has precedence of all others: Shall I interfere or not? To decide that question in the negative is to eliminate all the others. That it is necessary to do this, the conjunction of a quarrel and a luncheon party may demonstrate. The critical time comes when there is no luncheon party. To allow children some chance to settle their own differences is as certainly an act of discipline as it is to settle every difference for them. It is none the less discipline for the children because it seems to be chiefly self-discipline. A younger sister once had a grievance; she made her protest with a strident whine. Annoyed by the outburst, her mother descended upon the whole crew, wormed out the merits of the case, and with an even hand apportioned among the offenders penalty or reproof. Having profited, as it happened, by this occurrence, the small girl, the next time she wished to gain an advantage over the others, resorted to the same whining outcry. Immediately the three older children fell to playing church. With a loud and discordant hymn, they designed to drown the sound of protest. Though at this time in the right, they preferred not to take the risk. Already well trained by her children, that mother was quick to remain where she was. It sometimes requires alertness to do nothing. Just though her interference had been, she saw that it not only had encouraged in one child an annoying mode of complaint, but also had suggested to the others a noisy mode of averting judgment. Thereafter it seemed easier for her to hesitate before participating in her children's controversies. How can children experiment with the principles with which their elders have tried to endow them, except upon those occasions when those didactic elders do not interfere? How, on the other hand, can those same elders see what effect their precepts have had, unless the children can begin a quarrel on the chance that they may end it themselves? Deliberately to determine not to interfere in a children's quarrel comes not of grace but of labor. Any one can lapse into indifference as to the merits of a dispute between two youngsters, but only one who has come through affliction to self-control can at the same time maintain an acute interest in the triumph of the just cause and keep his hands off. The virtue of non-interference is not a gift, it is an achievement.

Occasions which demand interference, however, occur frequently enough to supply with plenty of exercise any normally active parental mind. Whenever it is clearly best that the children should not be allowed to end their quarrel themselves, the parent who is not in search merely of self-complacency can ask himself a number of questions. Usually, the time for asking and answering those questions is very brief. The exercise is vigorous while it lasts. On the way from the living-room to the nursery, the hastening parent can, for example, perform this rapid mental scale passage: To what purpose am I interfering? Is it to suppress a noise? or to avert a danger? or to teach courtesy? or to instruct in morals? or to do justice? or to establish an amicable basis? Later, and perhaps more deliberately, he will run over this scale of questions: What means shall I use? Shall it be force? or argument? or ridicule? or explanation? or advice? or instruction? or command? or punishment? It requires practice to pounce upon the note principally out of tune in a wealth of discord, and then to choose the one tool that will set it right; but then, there is no vocation more exciting than parenthood.

The noise of a quarrel may be its most serious offense. We can admit that fact without accepting as an invariable rule the maxim of our nervous, overwrought ancestors, Children should be seen and not heard. At times it seems, indeed, as if the present age were too phlegmatic. There are people for whose nerves children should be made to have some regard; there are invalids who do not thrive on din; there is necessary work which cannot be done in the midst of a racket; there are neighbors who declare, with some show of right, that they regard monopoly in noise as against public policy. So, whether for the sake of cousin Bettina's nerves, or a tired mother's rest, or a busy father's conference with a creditor, or merely for the sake of reputation with the neighbors, it may be best to disregard all other factors and insist on quiet. That seems clear enough. The trouble with us pretentious grown-ups is that usually when we undertake to stop a quarrel because it is disturbing, we delude ourselves into thinking that we have some high moral purpose. We can expose our own fatuity by simply inquiring of ourselves, when we begin our preachment, Would we have interfered if this quarrel had not been so strepitous? It is one of the annoyances in the training of children that if we are to be honest with them, we must be honest with ourselves. I do not see how that can be helped. And with children honesty is prerequisite to authority. To pretend that we chiefly want them to be good at a time when really we chiefly want them to be quiet is to renounce all influence over them when really we arrive at the point of chiefly wanting them to be good. That is reason enough for being honest with them. So when we set out towards a quarrel with the determination of suppressing a noise, we shall, if we are honest, deal with the quarrel, not as turpitude, but as noise. We may not be able to persuade the contestants of the existence of nerves, or headaches, or creditors, or neighbors, or even of our own reasonableness; but we shall at least probably succeed in conveying to them the genuineness of this single idea that is uppermost in our own mind: if you can't quarrel quietly, you shall not quarrel at all. If later we wish to impress upon them the necessity of being considerate of others, we can use that specific quarrel as an illustration without risking with them our reputation for singleness.

A quarrel may involve something which, even more than noise, demands instant interference. Two small boys were in an altercation. The older had a ball. The younger wanted that ball with a consuming hunger. The nearest weapon at hand was the discarded shaft of a golf club. Seizing it, he began his attack with reckless fury. The sound of a blow upon a piece of furniture followed by an outcry of fear brought their father to the room. His thought was not for anybody's manners or morals, nor for the disturbance, nor for a just settlement of the contest; it was for the defenseless boy's head. There was but one possible measure: immediate and forcible confiscation of the club. This was frankly not punishment—which would have involved a moral judgment—but simply humane intervention. The announcement that the club was to remain confiscated for a week merely emphasized the extent of the intervention, not the severity of a punishment. The incident might have served as an occasion for a lecture upon the danger of the wanton use of weapons; as a matter of fact, I believe, it was, of a sort; but—

"Oh, daddy, it was my ball!"

"No, daddy, really it wasn't!"

All such discussion as to the merits of the dispute was quashed. Likewise was stifled all inclination on the part of the intervening parent to deliver a lesson on the evils of an ungovernable temper. That might not have been confusing, if it could have been made distinct from the act of intervention; but it was not necessary. The fault was not an excess of temper so much as a thoughtless or ignorant use of power. At least, that was the judgment on which this father acted. Whether he was right or wrong is not to the point; what is to the point is that he formed his judgment, acted upon it, and did not obscure the issue by confusing the consequences—or possible consequences—of a deed with its moral character.

Just as the physical consequence of a quarrel may be more important than its moral aspects, so may be its significance as an exhibition of manners. When their elders hopelessly intermingle precepts as to the amenities with deliverances upon ethics, children can hardly be blamed if they come to regard murder as in the same category with the wearing of tan boots to the accompaniment of a frock coat. An altercation marked by vulgarity, or even by nothing more than delinquencies in courtesy, may be more distasteful to grown-ups than one involving meanness or deceit. In such a case we may give interference the form of an expression of disgust, and keep the issue clear. If, however, we allow it to take the form of punishment, we might as well admit to ourselves that we are engaged not in disciplining children but in relieving our own feelings, and be grateful that we have at hand such an outlet for our emotions.