Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young / Or, the Principles on Which a Firm Parental Authority May Be Established and Maintained, Without Violence or Anger, and the Right Development of the Moral and Mental Capacities Be Promoted by Methods in Harmony with the Structure and the Characteristics of the Juvenile Mind

by Jacob Abbott

The Result in the Case of Children.

Now, in the case of young children, the faculties of perception and consciousness and the power of recognizing the distinguishing characteristics of the different perceptions and sensations of their minds are all immature, and distinctions which even to mature minds are not so clear but that they are often confounded, for them form a bewildering maze. Their minds are occupied with a mingled and blended though beautiful combination of sensations, conceptions, fancies, and remembrances, which they do not attempt to separate from each other, and their vocal organs are animated by a constant impulse to exercise themselves with any utterances which the incessant and playful gambollings of their faculties frame. In other words, the vital force liberated by the digestion of the food seeks an issue now in this way and now in that, through every variety of mental and bodily action. Of course, to arrange and systematize these actions, to establish the true relations between all these various faculties and powers, and to regulate the obligations and duties by which the exercise of them should be limited and controlled, is a work of time, and is to be effected, not by the operation of any instinct or early intuition, but by a course of development—effected mainly by the progress of growth and experience, though it is to be aided and guided by assiduous but gentle training and instruction.

If these views are correct, we can safely draw from them the following conclusions.

Practical Conclusions.

1. We must not expect from children that they will from the beginning understand and feel the obligation to speak the truth, any more than we look for a recognition, on their part, of the various other principles of duty which arise from the relations of man to man in the social state. We do not expect that two babies creeping upon the floor towards the same plaything should each feel instinctively impelled to grant the other the use of it half of the time. Children must be taught to tell the truth, just as they must be taught the principles of justice and equal rights. They generally get taught by experience—that is, by the rough treatment and hard knocks which they bring upon themselves by their violation of these principles. But the faithful parent can aid them in acquiring the necessary knowledge in a far easier and more agreeable manner by appropriate instruction.

2. The mother must not be distressed or too much troubled when she finds that her children, while very young are prone to fall into deviations from the truth, but only to be made to feel more impressed with the necessity of renewing her own efforts to teach them the duty, and to train them to the performance of it.

3. She must not be too stern or severe in punishing the deviations from truth in very young children, or in expressing the displeasure which they awaken in her mind. It is instruction, not expressions of anger or vindictive punishment, that is required in most cases. Explain to them the evils that would result if we could not believe what people say, and tell them stories of truth-loving children on the one hand, and of false and deceitful children on the other. And, above all, notice, with indications of approval and pleasure, when the child speaks the truth under circumstances which might have tempted him to deviate from it. One instance of this kind, in which you show that you observe and are pleased by his truthfulness, will do more to awaken in his heart a genuine love for the truth than ten reprovals, or even punishments, incurred by the violation of it. And in the same spirit we must make use of the religious considerations which are appropriate to this subject—that is, we must encourage the child with the approval of his heavenly Father, when he resists the temptation to deviate from the truth, instead of frightening him, when he falls, by terrible denunciations of the anger of God against liars; denunciations which, however well-deserved in the cases to which they are intended to apply, are not designed for children in whose minds the necessary discriminations, as pointed out in this chapter, are yet scarcely formed.

Danger of confounding Deceitfulness and Falsehood.

4. Do not confound the criminality of deceitfulness by acts with falsehood by words, by telling the child, when he resorts to any artifice or deception in order to gain his ends, that it is as bad to deceive as to lie. It is not as bad, by any means. There is a marked line of distinction to be drawn between falsifying one's word and all other forms of deception, for there is such a sacredness in the spoken word, that the violation of it is in general far more reprehensible than the attempt to accomplish the same end by mere action. If a man has lost a leg, it may be perfectly right for him to wear a wooden one which is so perfectly made as to deceive people—and even to wear it, too, with the intent to deceive people by leading them to suppose that both his legs are genuine—while it would be wrong; for him to assert in words that this limb was not an artificial one. It is right to put a chalk egg in a hen's nest to deceive the hen, when, if the hen could understand language, and if we were to suppose hens "to have any rights that we are bound to respect," it would be wrong to tell her that it was a real egg. It would be right for a person, when his house was entered by a robber at night, to point an empty gun at the robber to frighten him away by leading him to think that the gun was loaded; but it would be wrong, as I think—though I am aware that many persons would think differently—for him to say in words that the gun was loaded, and that he would fire unless the robber went away. These cases show that there is a great difference between deceiving by false appearances, which is sometimes right, and doing it by false statements, which, as I think, is always wrong. There is a special and inviolable sacredness, which every lover of the truth should attach to his spoken word.

5. We must not allow the leniency with which, according to the views here presented, we are to regard the violations of truth by young persons, while their mental faculties and their powers of discrimination are yet imperfectly developed, to lead us to lower the standard of right in their minds, so as to allow them to imbibe the idea that we think that falsehood is, after all, no great sin, and still less, to suppose that we consider it sometimes, in extreme cases, allowable. We may, indeed, say, "The truth is not to be spoken at all times," but to make the aphorism complete we must add, that falsehood is to be spoken never. There is no other possible ground for absolute confidence in the word of any man except the conviction that his principle is, that it is never, under any circumstances, or to accomplish any purpose whatever, right for him to falsify it.