The help of helps to a child in meeting his fears of the imagination, is found in the bringing to his mind, through the imagination, a sense of the constant presence of a Divine Protector to cheer him when his fears are at their highest. A little child who wakened in the middle of the night, called to her parents, in another room, and when her father was by her bedside, she told him that she was afraid to be alone. Instead of rebuking her for this, he said, “There’s a little verse in the Bible, my darling, that’s meant for you at a time like this; and I want you to have that in your mind whenever you waken in this way. It is a verse out of one of David’s psalms; and it is what he said to the Lord his Shepherd: ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’ That is the verse. Now, whenever you are afraid, you can think of that verse, and say it over as a loving prayer, and the Good Shepherd will hear you, and will keep you from all harm.”
The child repeated the verse after her father, and she saw its peculiar fitness to her case. As her father then prayed to the God of David in loving confidence, she realized more fully than before how near God was to her in the time of her greatest fears. And from that time on, that little child was comforted through faith when her imagination pressed her with its terrors. She never forgot that verse; and it still is a help to her in her fears by day and by night.
A child’s imagination ought, indeed, to be guarded sacredly. It should be shielded as far as possible from unnecessary fears, through foolish stories of ghosts and witches, told by nurses or companions, or read from improper books. But whether a child’s fears in this realm be few or many, they should be dealt with tenderly by a loving parent; not ignored, nor rudely overborne. Many a child has been harmed for life through a thoughtless disregard by his parents of the fears of his imagination. But every child might be helped for life by a sympathetic and tender treatment of these fears, on the part of his parents, while he is still under their training.
In no realm of a child’s nature has a child greater need of sympathy and tenderness from his parents, than in the realm of his fears. It is because he is sensitive, and in proportion as he is sensitive, that a child’s fears have any hold upon him. And a child’s sensitiveness is too sacred to be treated rudely or with lightness by those to whom he is dearest, and who would fain train him wisely and well.
XXIV.
THE SORROWS OF CHILDREN.
The trials and sorrows of children and young people have not always had the recognition they deserve from parents and teachers. It is even customary to speak of childhood as an age of utter freedom from anxiety and grief, and to look upon boys and girls generally as happier and lighter-hearted than they can hope to be in later life. No mistake could be greater than this. The darker side of life is seen first. The brighter side comes afterward.
“Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” The first sound of a child’s voice is a cry, and that cry is many times repeated before the child gives his first smile. How easily the best-behaved baby cries, every mother can testify. It is the soothing of a crying child, not the sharing in the joy of a laughing one, which taxes the skill and the patience of a faithful nurse. Only as the child is trained, disciplined, to overcome his inclination to cry, and to find happiness in his sphere, does he come to be a joyous and glad-hearted little one.
Every burden of life—and life’s burdens seem many—rests at its heaviest on a child’s nature. A child is refused more requests than are granted to him. He is subjected to disappointments daily, almost hourly. The baby cannot reach the moon, nor handle papa’s razor, nor pound the looking-glass, nor pull over the tea-pot, nor creep into the fire. The older child cannot eat everything he wants to, nor go out at all times, nor have papa and mamma ever at his side. Then there come school-tasks to shrink from, and the jealousies and unkindnesses of playmates and companions to grieve over. And as more is known of life and the world, and the inevitable struggles with temptation, and of the injustice and wrongs which must in so many instances be suffered, it becomes harder and harder for a young person to see only the brighter side of human existence, and to bear up bravely and cheerily under all that tends to sadden and oppress us. There are more clouds in the sky of life’s April than of life’s August.