Hints on Child-training

by H. Clay Trumbull

Many a child has been trained to intelligent fearlessness, so far as he ought to be fearless, through the wise and tender endeavors of his parents to show him his power in this direction, and to stimulate him to the exercise of this power. And many a child has been turned aside from the overcoming of his fears, through the untimely ridicule of him for his possession of those fears. Because he must be a laughing-stock while struggling to master his fears, he decides to evade the struggle in order to evade the ridicule. Tenderness in pointing out to a child the wiser way of meeting his fears, is better than severity on the one hand, or ridicule on the other.

Unreasoning or instinctive fears are common to both the brightest and the dullest children. They are among the guards which are granted to humanity, in its very nature, for its own protection. It would never do for a child to make no distinction between persons whom he could trust implicitly, and persons whom he must suspect, or shrink from. It is right that he should be won or repelled by differences in form and expression. He needs to be capable of starting at a sudden sound, and of standing in awe of the great forces of nature. The proper meeting of these instinctive fears by a child must be through his understanding of their reasonable limits, and through the intelligent conforming of his action to that understanding. It is for the parent to train his child to know how far he must overcome these fears, and how far they must still have play in his mind. And this is a process requiring tenderness, patience, and wisdom.

When a child shows fear at the moaning of the wind about the house, and at its rattling of the shutters on a winter’s night, it is not fair to say to him, “Oh, nonsense! What are you afraid of? That’s nothing but the wind.” There is no help to the child in that saying; but there is harm to him in its suggestion of the parent’s lack of sympathy with him. If, however, the parent says, at such a time, “Does that sound trouble you? Let me tell you how it comes;” and then goes on to show how the wind is doing God’s work in driving away causes of sickness, and how it sometimes makes sweet music on wires that are stretched out for it to play upon,—the child may come to have a new thought about the wind, and to listen for its changing sounds on the shutters or through the trees.

One good mother sought to overcome her little boy’s fear of thunder by simply telling him that it was God’s voice speaking out of the heavens; but that was one step too many for his thoughts to take as yet. The thunder just as it was, was what gave him trouble, no matter where it came from; so when the next peal sounded through the air, the little fellow whimpered out despairingly, “Mamma, baby doesn’t like God’s voice.” And that mother was too wise and tender to rebuke her child for his unreadiness for that mode of revelation from above.

On the other hand, an equally wise and tender father, whose little daughter was afraid of the thunder, took his child into his arms, when a thunder-storm was raging, and carried her out on to the piazza, in order, as he said, to show her something very beautiful. Then he told her that the clouds were making loud music, and that the light always flashed from the clouds before the music sounded, and he wanted her to watch for both light and music. His evident enthusiasm on the subject, and his manifest tenderness toward his child, swept the little one away from her fears, out toward the wonders of nature above her; and soon she was ready to believe that the thunder was as the very voice of God, which she could listen to with reverent gratitude. If there were more of such loving wisdom exercised in parental dealing with children’s fears, there would be less trouble from the unmastered fears of children on every side.

The hardest fears to control are, however, the fears which are purely of the imagination; and no other fears call for such considerate tenderness of treatment as these, in the realm of child-training. It is the more sensitive children, children of the finest grain, and of the more active and potent imaginings, who are most liable to the sway of these fears, and who are sure to suffer most from them. Persons who are lacking in the imaginative faculty, or who are cold-blooded and matter-of-fact in their temperament and nature, are hardly able to comprehend the power of these fears over those who feel them at their fullest. Hence it is that these fears in a child’s mind are less likely than any others to receive due consideration from parents generally, even while they need it most.

Because these fears are not of the reason, they are not to be removed by reason. Because they are of the imagination, the imagination must be called into service for their mastery. It is not enough to pronounce these fears unreasonable and foolish. They are, in their realm, a reality, and they must be met accordingly. While children suffer from them most keenly, they are not always outgrown in manhood. A clergyman already past the middle of life was heard to say that, to this day, he could never come up the cellar stairs all by himself, late at night, after covering up the furnace fire for the night, without the irrational fear that some one would clutch him by his feet from out of the darkness below. The fear was a reality, even though the cause was in the imagination. And a soldier who had been under fire in a score of battles, said that he would to-day rather go into another battle than to be all alone in a deserted house in broad daylight.

In neither of these cases was the person under the influence of superstitious fears, but only of those fears which an active imagination will suggest in connection with possibilities of danger beyond all that can yet be seen. And these are but illustrations of the sway of such fears in the minds of men who are stronger by reason of their very susceptibility to such fears. These men have added power because of their vivid imaginations; and because of their vivid imaginations they are liable to fears of this sort. What folly, then, to blame a child of high imagination for feeling the sway of similar fears!

The heroic treatment of these fears of the imagination is not what is called for in every instance; nor is it always sufficient to meet the case. A child may be trained to go by himself into the darkness, or to sleep in a room shut away from other occupants of the house, without overcoming his fears of imagination. And if these fears be constantly spoken of as those which are utterly unworthy of him, the child may indeed refrain from giving expression to them, and suffer all by himself with an uncalled-for sense of humiliation, even while he is just as timid as before. It would be better, in many a case, to refrain from an undue strain on a sensitive child, through sending him out of the house in the evening to walk a lonely path, or through forcing him to sleep beyond the easy call of other members of the household; but in every instance it is right and wise for a parent to give his child the evidence of sympathy with him in his fears, and of tender considerateness of him in his struggles for their overcoming.