Hints on Child-training

by H. Clay Trumbull

V.
WILL-TRAINING, RATHER THAN WILL-BREAKING.

The measure of will-power is the measure of personal power, with a child as with an adult. The possession or the lack of will-power is the possession or the lack of personal power, in every individual’s sphere of life and being. The right or the wrong use of will-power is the right or the wrong exercise of an individual’s truest personality. Hence the careful guarding and the wise guiding of a child’s will should be counted among the foremost duties of one who is responsible for a child’s training.

Will-training is an important element in child-training; but will-breaking has no part or place in the training of a child. A broken will is worth as much in its sphere as a broken bow; just that, and no more. A child with a broken will is not so well furnished for the struggle of life as a child with only one arm, or one leg, or one eye. Such a child has no power of strong personality, or of high achievement in the world. Every child ought to be trained to conform his will to the demands of duty; but that is bending his will, not breaking it. Breaking a child’s will is never in order.

The term “will” as here employed applies to the child’s faculty of choosing or deciding between two courses of action. Breaking a child’s will is bringing the pressure of external force directly upon that will, and causing the will to give way under the pressure of that force. Training a child’s will is bringing such influences to bear upon the child that he is ready to choose or decide in favor of the right course of action.

To break a child’s will is to crush out for the time being, and so far to destroy, the child’s privilege of free choice; it is to force him to an action against his choice, instead of inducing him to choose in the right direction. A child’s will is his truest personality; the expression of his will in a free choice is the highest expression of his personality. And a child’s personality is to be held sacred by God’s representative who is over the child, even as God himself holds sacred the personality of every human being created in the image of God.

God never says unqualifiedly to a human being, “You shall not exercise your faculty of choice between the way of life and the way of death; you shall walk in the way which I know to be best for you.” But, on the contrary, God says to every one (Deut. 30: 15): “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil,”—for thy choice. Here, as everywhere, God concedes to man the privilege of exercising his will-power in the direction of life and good, or of death and evil. The strictest Calvinist and the broadest Arminian are at one in their opinion so far. Whatever emphasis is laid, in their philosophy, on God’s influencing or enabling the human will to its final choice, neither of them disputes the fact that man is actually permitted to use that will in the direction of his choice. “It is God that worketh in man to will and to work for His good pleasure.” It is not that God worketh above man to crush out man’s faculty of willing whether to act for or against His good pleasure. In other words, God has fore-ordained that every man shall have the freedom of his will—and take the consequences.

It is true that God holds out before man, as an inducement to him in his choosing, the inevitable results of his choice. If he chooses good, life comes with it. If he chooses evil, death is its accompaniment. The rewards and the punishments are declared in advance; but after all, and in spite of all, the choice is man’s own. And every soul shall have eternally the destiny of its own choosing. The representative of God clothed with power, as he stood before the people of Israel, did not say, “You shall choose God’s service now; and if you deliberately refuse to do so, God will break your will so that you do do it;” but he said, “If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Josh. 24: 15).

As God, our wise and loving Father in heaven, deals with us his children, so we, as earthly fathers, should deal with our children. We should guard sacredly their privilege of personal choice; and while using every proper means to induce them to choose aright, we should never, never, never force their choice, even into the direction of our intelligent preference for them. The final responsibility of a choice and of its consequences rests with the child, and not with the parent.

A child’s will ought to be strong for right-doing. If it be not so at the start, it is the parent’s duty to guide, or train, it accordingly. But to break, or crush, a child’s will, is inconsistent with the educating and training of that will. A conflict between a parent and a child, where the only question is, Whose will shall yield to the other? is, after all, neither more nor less than a conflict of brute force.