The parents must keep a careful guard on their own pity for their defective child. A deaf child has scarcely any notion, as a blind one has, of what it loses; and nothing is more certain than that deaf children are apt to be proud and vain, and to take advantage of the pity which everybody feels for them. Knowing little of their own loss, they misunderstand this pity, and are apt to take to themselves the credit of all the notice it brings them, and to grasp at all they can get. A watchful parent knows from her heart that there is no blame in this; but she sees that there is great danger. The child cannot help the liability; but it may be rescued from it. She must not be lavish of indulgence which may be misunderstood. She should let it be as happy as it can in its own way—and the deaf and dumb are usually very brisk and cheerful. What she has to do for it is not to attempt to console it for a privation which it does not feel, but to open to it a higher and better happiness in a humble, occupied, and serene state of mind. She should set before it its own state of privation, notwithstanding any mortification that the disclosure may cause: and when that mortification is painful, she should soothe it by giving, gently and cheerfully, the sweet remedies of humility and patience.
In the case of the blind child, the training must be very different. Every day, and almost every hour, reminds the blind child of its privation; and its discipline is so severe, that almost any degree of indulgence in the parent would be excusable, if it were not clearly the first duty to consider the ultimate welfare of the child. It is natural to the sighing mother to watch over its safety with a nervous anxiety, to go before it to clear its way, to have it always at her knee, and to make everybody and everything give way to it. But she must remember that her child is not destitute, and for ever helpless, because it has one sense less than other people. It has the wide world of the other four senses to live in, and a vaster mental and moral world than it will ever learn fully to use: and she must let it try what it can make of its possessions. She will find that it learns like others that fire burns and that bruises are disagreeable, and that it can save itself from burns and bruises by using its senses of touch and hearing. She will encourage it in the cheerful work of shifting for itself, and doing, as far as possible, what other people do. The wise and benevolent Dr. Howe tells us of the children who come to the Blind School at Boston, that for the first two or three days they are timid and forlorn—having been accustomed to too much care from their mothers, who will not let them cross the floor without being sure that there is nothing in the way. But they presently enter into the free and cheerful spirit of the house, use their faculties, feel their way boldly, and run, climb, swing, and play as merrily as any other children. That school is a little world of people with four senses—not so happy a one as if they had five, but a very good one, nevertheless; sufficiently busy, safe, and cheerful for those who use heartily such powers as they have.
This is the way in which the lot of the blind should be viewed by their parents. And even then the deprivation is quite sad enough to require great efforts of patience on every hand. The parents have need of a deep and settled patience when they see that their child has powers which, if he had but eyes, would make him able and happy in some function from which he is now for ever cut off: and the whole family have need of patience for their infirm member when they are gaining knowledge, or drinking in enjoyment through the eye, while he sits dark, and unconscious or mortified. As for him, in his darkness and mortification, there can be no question of his need of patience. How to aid him and supply this need, I shall consider in my next chapter, when treating of the other infirmities which some children have to learn to bear.
CHAPTER XIII.
CARE OF THE POWERS: PATIENCE—INFIRMITY.
The smaller misfortunes which we now turn to, under the head of Infirmity—the loss of a limb, the partial loss of a sense, deformity and sickness—are scarcely less afflictive to the parent than those we have considered, because they are even more trying to the child. The sufferer is fully conscious of these: and the parents' heart is sore at the spectacle of its mortifications. What can be done to help it to a magnanimous patience?
First, there must be the fullest confidence between the parents and the child. It can open its swelling heart to no one else; for the depth of its feeling renders it quite unable to speak of its sufferings to any one, unless allured to do so; and no one can or ought to allure it to this confidence, except its parents, or in case of failure from them. It may be thought strange that this apparently natural act should be set before the parents as a duty: but I speak from knowledge; and from the knowledge of so many cases that I am compelled to believe that the very last subject on which parents and child speak together is that on which it is most necessary to the sufferer to have spoken sympathy. Some parents have not courage to face the case themselves, and evade the painful thought from day to day. Some feel for their child that sort of deference which it is natural to feel for the afflicted, and wait for the sufferer to speak. Some persuade themselves that it is better for the child not to recognise the trial expressly, and repel by forced cheerfulness the sufferer's advances towards confidence. All this is wrong. I have known a little crippled girl grow up to womanhood in daily pain of heart from the keen sense of her peculiarity, almost without uttering a syllable to any human being of that grief which cursed her existence; and suffering in mind and character irreparably from the restraint. She got over it at last, to a considerable degree, and became comparatively free and happy; but nothing could ever compensate to her for her long bondage to false shame, or repair the mischief done to the action of her mind by its being made to bear unrelieved weight which it had naturally power to throw off. I know another sufferer from the same misfortune whose heart was early opened by genial confidence, and who throve accordingly. She had to bear all the pain which a lively and sensitive child must feel in being unable to play and dance as others do, and being so marked an object as to be subject to staring in the street, and to the insulting remarks of rude children as she passed. But the sympathy of her protectors bore her through till her mind was strong enough to protect itself; and she has come out of the struggle free and gay, active and helpful to a marvellous degree—even graceful, making a sort of plaything of her crutch, and giving constant joy to her friends, and relief to strangers, by her total freedom from false shame. I have known deafness grow upon a sensitive child, so gradually as never to bring the moment when her parents felt impelled to seek her confidence; and the moment therefore never arrived. She became gradually borne down in health and spirits by the pressure of her trouble, her springs of pleasure all poisoned, her temper irritated and rendered morose, her intellectual pride puffed up to an insufferable haughtiness, and her conscience brought by perpetual pain of heart into a state of trembling soreness—all this, without one word ever being offered to her by any person whatever of sympathy or sorrow about her misfortune. Now and then, some one made light of it; now and then, some one told her that she mismanaged it, and gave advice which, being inapplicable, grated upon her morbid feelings; but no one inquired what she felt, or appeared to suppose that she did feel. Many were anxious to show kindness, and tried to supply some of her privations; but it was too late. She was shut up, and her manner appeared hard and ungracious while her heart was dissolving in emotions. No one knew when she stole out of the room, exasperated by the earnest talk and merry laugh that she could not share, that she went to bolt herself into her own room, and sob on the bed, or throw herself on her knees, to pray for help or death. No one knew of her passionate longing to be alone while she was, for her good, driven into society; nor how, when by chance alone for an hour or two, she wasted the luxury by watching the lapse of the precious minutes. And when she grew hard, strict, and even fanatical in her religion, no one suspected that this was because religion was her all—her soul's strength under agonies of false shame, her wealth under her privations, her refuge in her loneliness: while her mind was so narrow as to require that what religion was to her—her one pursuit and object—it should be everybody else. In course of years, she, in a great measure, retrieved herself, though still conscious of irreparable mischief done to her nature. All this while, many hearts were aching for her, and the minds of her family were painfully occupied in thinking what could be done for her temper and her happiness. The mistake of reserve was the only thing they are answerable for: a mistake which, however mischievous, was naturally caused by the very pain of their own sympathy first, and the reserve of the sufferer afterwards.
From the moment that a child becomes subject to any infirmity, a special relation between him and his mother begins to exist: and their confidence must become special. She must watch for, or make occasions for speaking to him about his particular trial; not often, nor much at a time, but so as to leave an opening for the pouring out of his little heart. If he is not yet conscious of his peculiarity, this is the gentlest and easiest way in which he can be made so. If he is conscious, he must have some pain at his heart which he will be the better for confiding. Hump-backed people are generally said to be vain, haughty, fond of dress, forward and talkative, irritable and passionate. If not so, they are usually shy and timid. I cannot see anything in their peculiarity to cause the first-mentioned tendencies: and I believe they arise from the mismanagement of their case. The fond mother and pitying friends may naturally forget that the child does not see himself as they see him, and fancy that they soothe his mortifications by saying whatever they can say in favour of his appearance—letting him know that he has pretty hair, or good eyes. They may even dress him fine, to make up to him in one way for his faults of appearance in another. Under the idea of encouraging him under his supposed mortifications, they may lead him on to be forward and talkative. And then again, his mortifications, when they come upon him unprepared, may well make him irascible. How much of this might be obviated, as well as the shyness and timidity of those who are left to themselves, by timely confidence between the mother and child! When they are alone together, calm and quiet, let her tell him that he does not look like other children, and that he will look less like other people as he grows older. Never let her tell him that this is of no great consequence—never let her utter the cant that is talked to young ladies at schools, that the charms of the mind are everything, and those of the form and face nothing. This is not true; and she ought to know that it is not: and nothing but truth will be strong enough to support him in what he must undergo. Let her not be afraid to tell him the worst. He had better hear it from her; and it will not be too much for him, if told in a spirit of cheerful patience. The child, like the man, never has a happier hour than that which succeeds the reception of bad news, if the nobler faculties are allowed their free play. If such a child hears from his mother that he will always be ugly-shaped and odd-looking,—that he will not be able to play as other boys do, or will be laughed at when he tries; that he will be mocked at and called "My lord" in the streets, and so on, and yet that all these things will not make him unhappy if he can bear them; and if they go on to consult how he may bear them, and she opens out to him something of the sweet pleasures of endurance, he will come out of the consultation exhilarated, and perhaps proudly longing to meet his mortifications, and try his strength. Such pride must have a fall,—like all the pride of childhood,—and many an hour of depression must he know for every one of exhilaration: but his case is put into his own hands, and there is every hope that he will conquer, through patience, at last. And what a refuge he has in his mother! How well she will now know his feelings and his needs! and how easy and natural it will be to him henceforth to confide in her! And her knowledge of his secret mind will enable her to oversee and regulate the conduct of the rest of the household towards him, so as to guard against his being treated with an indulgence which he can dispense with, or his receiving in silence wounds to his feelings which might rankle. The object is, with sufferers under every kind of conscious infirmity, to make them hardy in mind,—saving them from being hardened. They must know in good time that they have a difficult and humbling lot, and what its difficulties and humiliations are,—their noblest faculties being at the same time roused to meet them. It is the rousing of these noble faculties which makes the hour of confidence one of exhilaration: and when the actual occasion of trial arises, when the cripple is left out of the cricket-match, and the deaf child misses the joke or entertaining story, and the hump-back hears the jibe behind him,—there is hope that the nobler faculties will be obedient to the promised call, and spread the calm of patience over the tumult of the sufferer's soul.
But, while the infirm child is encouraged to take up the endurance of his infirmity as an object and an enterprise, he must not be allowed to dwell too much on it, nor on the peculiar features of his condition; or his heroism will pass over into pride, and his patience into self-complacency. Life and the world are before him, as before others; and one circumstance of lot and duty, however important, must not occupy the place of more than one,—either in his confidences with his mother, or in his own mind. The more he is separated from others by his infirmity, the more carefully must his interests and duties be mixed up with those of others, in the household and out of it. Companionship in every way must be promoted all the more, and not the less, because of the eternal echo within him, "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and the stranger intermeddleth not with its joy."
What has been said thus far about patience will serve for cases of sickness, as well as for other trials among children. I may add that I think it a pity to lavish indulgence—privileges—upon a sick child, for two reasons;—that such indulgence is no real comfort or compensation to the suffering child, who is too ill to enjoy it: and that it is witnessed by others, and remembered by the patient himself when he has forgotten his pain, so as to cause sickness to be regarded as a state of privilege; a persuasion likely to lead to fancies about health, and an exaggeration of ailments. All possible tenderness, of course, there should be, and watchfulness to amuse the mind into forgetfulness of the body: but the less fuss and unusual indulgence the better for the child's health of body and mind, and the purer the lesson of patience which he may bring out of his sickness. Illness is a great evil, little to be mitigated by any means of diversion that can be used: and a child usually trained to patience, may be trusted to bear the evil well, if not misled by false promises: and it is much kinder to him to let him rest on a quiet and steady tenderness, than to promise and offer him indulgences which will be longed for hereafter, but which wholly disappoint him now, and add another trial to the many which put his patience to the proof.