We should especially set the example of strict accuracy ourselves in all our statements, no matter how unimportant they may be. For instance, if we narrate certain occurrences in the presence of the child, we should be careful to observe the exact order in which the events occurred, and if we have made a mistake we should take pains to correct ourselves, though the order of occurrence is really immaterial. Precisely because it is immaterial we show by this means how much we value accuracy even in little things.
Then, again, falsehood is often due to the desire for gain. Or it may be due to fear. The child is afraid of the severity of the parent's discipline. In that case we are to blame; we must relax our discipline. We have no business to tempt the child into falsehood. Again, untruthfulness is often due to mistaken sympathy, as we see in the case of pupils in school, who will tell a falsehood to shield a fellow pupil. In the worst cases falsehood is inspired by malice.
It may be said that the proper positive treatment for this fault is to set the example of the strictest truthfulness ourselves, to avoid the little falsehoods which we sometimes allow ourselves without compunction, to show our disgust at a lie, to fill the child with a sense of the baseness of lying, and above all to find out the direct cause which has tempted the child in any given case. As a rule, falsehood is only a means to an end; children do not tell untruths because they like to tell them, but because they have some ulterior end in view. Find out what that ulterior end is, and instead of directing your attention only to the lie, penetrate to the motive that has led the child into falsehood, and try to divert it from the bad end. Thus you may extract the cause of its wrongdoing.
3. Laziness
Thirdly, let us consider the fault of laziness. Laziness is sometimes due to physical causes. Nothing may be necessary but a change of diet, exercise in the fresh air, etc., to cure the evil. Sometimes it is the sign of a certain slow growth of the mind. There are fruits in the garden of the gods that ripen slowly, and these fruits are often not the least precious or the least beautiful when they finally have matured. Sir Isaac Newton's mind was one of these slowly ripening fruits. In school he was regarded as a dullard and his teachers had small hopes of him.
Laziness, like other faults of character, sometimes disappears in the process of growth. Just as at a certain period in the life of a youth or maiden new faculties seem to develop, new passions arise, a new life begins to stir in the heart, so at a certain period qualities with which we had long been familiar, disappear of themselves.
We have very little light upon this subject, but the fact that a great transformation of character sometimes does take place in children without any perceptible cause is quite certain, and it may be offered as a comforting reflection to those parents who are over-anxious on account of the faults they detect in their children. But again, on the other hand, laziness or untruthfulness or obstinacy may be a black streak, coming to the surface out of the nethermost strata of moral depravity, and, taken in connection with other traits, may justify the most serious apprehension, and should then be a signal for immediate measures of the most stringent sort.
4. Discovering Causes
I am thus led to the second branch of my subject. I have tried to meet the objection of the parent who says, "I know the character of my child; I know my child is obstinate," by replying, "If you only know that your child is obstinate you know very little; you need to know what are the causes of his obstinacy, and vary your treatment accordingly." Or if any one says, "My child is untruthful," I reply, "You need to find out what the cause is of this untruthfulness and vary your treatment accordingly." Or again, in the case which we have just considered, I have pointed out that laziness in a child may have no serious meaning whatever or may give just cause for the most serious alarm, according to the group of characteristic traits of which it is one. On this point I wish to lay stress. If you desire to obtain a correct impression of a human face, you do not look at the eye by itself, then at the nose, then fix your attention on the cheeks and the chin and the brow, but you regard all these features together and view them in their relations to one another. Or let us recur to the simile of the physician. What would you think of the doctor who should judge the nature of a disease by some one symptom which happened to obtrude itself, or should treat each symptom as it appears separately, without endeavoring to reach the occult cause which has given rise to the symptoms, of which they are all but the outward manifestation?