“You mean, I suppose,” observed the instrument maker, “that you didn’t seem to like him much.”
“Well, uncle,” returned the boy, laughing, “perhaps so; I never thought of that.”
This short selection reveals the disrespect for childhood which leads adulthood to flatly contradict what a child says, whether he is making a statement of fact or of opinion. This is most inconsiderate, and naturally leads to a corresponding disrespect for adulthood on the part of the child. The selection clearly intimates that childhood would be more happy, and like adulthood better, if adulthood was not so “solemn and stiff.” Parents and teachers should learn from Solomon’s philosophy that a child’s feelings toward an adult partly determine his impressions regarding the attitude of adulthood toward him.
The first thing necessary in training a child to be his real, best self is to win his affectionate regard and confidence. One has to be very true, very unconventional, and very joyous, to do this fully.
Dickens pitied the child because, even when he is understood, his wishes, plans, and decisions are not treated with respect. This is a gross injustice to the child’s nature. As Pip so truly said: “It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.”
Adulthood needs to learn no lesson more than that childhood lives a life of its own, that that life should not be tested by the scales and tape lines of adulthood, and that within its range of action its choice should be respected, and its opinions treated with reverent consideration.
Mrs. Lirriper said that when she used to read the Bible to Mrs. Edson, when that lady was dying, “though she took to all I read to her, I used to fancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all to his gentle compassion for us poor women, and to his young life, and to how his mother was proud of him, and treasured his sayings in her heart.”
The divinity in any child will grow more rapidly if his mother “treasures his sayings in her heart.” We need more reverence for the child.
Dickens tried to make parents regard the child as a sacred thing, which should always be the richest joy of his parents.
Speaking of Mrs. Darnay, in The Tale of Two Cities, he says: