A month later this child "pulled down a picture in the nursery"—the nursery walls seem to have had a fell attraction for him—“by standing on a sofa and tugging till the wire broke. He was alone at the time and very much frightened though not hurt. He was soothed and told to leave the picture alone in future, but was not in any way rebuked. He seemed, however, to think that some punishment was necessary, for he presently asked whether he was going to have a certain favourite frock on that afternoon. He was told ‘No’ (the reason being that the day was wet or something similar) and he said immediately: ‘’Cause Neil pulled picture down?’” Here I think we have unmistakable evidence of an expectation of punishment as the fit and proper sequel in a case which, though it did not exactly resemble those already branded by it, was felt in a vague way to be disorderly and naughty.
Such stories of expectation of punishment are capped by instances of correction actually inflicted by the child on himself. I believe it is not uncommon for a child when possessed by a sense of having been naughty to object to having nice things at table on the ground that previously on a like occasion he was deprived of them. But the most curious instance of this moral rigour towards self which I have met with is the following: A girl of nine had been naughty, and was very sorry for her misbehaviour. Shortly after she came to her lesson limping, and remarked that she felt very uncomfortable. Being asked by her governess what was the matter with her she said: “It was very naughty of me to disobey you, so I put my right shoe on to my left foot and my left shoe on to my right foot”.
The facts here briefly illustrated seem to me to show that there is in the child from the first a rudiment of true law-abidingness. And this is a force of the greatest consequence to the disciplinarian. It is something which takes side in the child’s breast with the reasonable governor and the laws which he or she administers. It secures ready compliance with a large part of the discipline enforced. When the impulse urging towards licence has been too strong, and disobedience ensues, this same instinct comes to the aid of order and good conduct by inflicting pains which are the beginning of what we call remorse.
By-and-by other forces will assist. The affectionate child will reflect on the misery his disobedience causes his mother. A boy of four and three-quarter years must, one supposes, have woke up to this fact when he remarked to his mother: “Did you choose to be a mother? I think it must be rather tiresome.” The day when the child first becomes capable of thus putting himself into his mother’s place and realising, if only for an instant, the trouble he has brought on her, is an all-important one in his moral development.
The Wise Law-giver.
As our illustrations have suggested, and as every thoughtful parent knows well enough, the problem of moral training in the first years is full of difficulty. Yet our study surely suggests that it is not so hopeless a problem as we are sometimes weakly disposed to think. Perhaps a word or two on this may not inappropriately close this essay.
I will readily concede that the difficulty of inculcating in children a sweet and cheerful obedience arises partly from their nature. There are trying children, just as there are trying dogs that howl and make themselves disagreeable for no discoverable reason but their inherent ‘cussedness’. There are, I doubt not, conscientious painstaking mothers who have been baffled by having to manage what appears to be the utterly unmanageable.
Yet I think that we ought to be very slow to pronounce any child unmanageable. I know full well that in the case of these small growing things there are all kinds of hidden physical commotions which breed caprices, ruffle the temper, and make them the opposite of docile. The peevish child who will do nothing, will listen to no suggestion, is assuredly a difficult subject to deal with. But such moodiness and cross-grainedness springing from bodily disturbances will be allowed for by the discerning mother, who will be too wise to bring the severer measures of discipline to bear on a child when subject to their malign influence. Waiving these disturbing factors, however, I should say that a good part, certainly more than one half, of the difficulty of training children is due to our clumsy bungling modes of going to work.
Sensible persons know that there is a good and a bad way of approaching a child. The wrong ways of trying to constrain children are, alas, numerous. I am not writing an ‘advice to parents,’ and am not called on therefore to deal with the much-disputed question of the rightness and wrongness of corporal punishment. Slaps may be needful in the early stages, even though they do lead to little tussles. A mother assures me that these battles with her several children have all fallen between the ages of sixteen months and two years. It is, however, conceivable that such fights might be avoided altogether; yet a man should be chary of dogmatising on this delicate matter.
What is beyond doubt is that the slovenly discipline—if indeed discipline it is to be called—which consists in alternations of gushing fondness with almost savage severity, or fits of government and restraint interpolated between long periods of neglect and laisser faire, is precisely what develops the rebellious and law-resisting propensities. But discipline can be bad without being a stupid pretence. Everything in the shape of inconsistency, saying one thing at one time, another thing at another, or treating one child in one fashion, another in another, tends to undermine the pillars of authority. Young eyes are quick to note these little contradictions, and they sorely resent them. It is astonishing how careless disciplinarians can show themselves before these astute little critics. It is the commonest thing to tell a child to behave like his elders, forgetting that this, if indeed a rule at all, can only be one of very limited application. Here is a suggestive example of the effect of this sort of teaching sent me by a mother. “At three and a half, when some visitors were present, she was told not to talk at dinner-time. ‘Why me no talk? Papa talks.’ ‘Yes, but papa is grown up, and you are only a little girl; you can’t do just like grown-up people.’ She was silent for some time, but when I told her ten minutes later to sit nicely with her hands in her lap like her cousins, she replied, with a very humorous smile, ‘Me tan’t (can’t) sit like grown-up people, me is only a little girl’.”