Supposing the boy is not to be directed at once into the enchanting field of handcraft; supposing his mother has allowed him to run wild a little too long or has not noticed that he was evincing signs of lawlessness until the neighbors or teachers send home uncomplimentary reports, what’s to be done? Try another tactic. See if you cannot interest him in outdoor sports to a point where he reaches self-respect. Baseball will do, a bat and a ball may help him to rouse the best that is in your lad. Then let him help his father with chores, let him drive the team to town, or sell a load of produce—nothing brings out a boy’s incipient manhood like the thought that he is helping his “dad,” that he can be depended upon, and held responsible for something really worth while.
I know a fine boy of twelve, the son of a store-keeper in a small Georgia town, who is raising hens. He has forty flourishing Wyandottes, a couple of dozen Leghorns and as many Buff Cochins. He has built a substantial hen house, and fenced in a part of the yard. Friends and relatives became interested in his enterprise and gave him suggestions, the benefit of their experience, until now he is a thriving chicken farmer. Last summer, he sold on an average of five dozen eggs a day. We were among his customers, and we paid him thirty cents a dozen, his regular price, which means that the twelve-year-old made $1.50 a day, or $10.50 a week. Besides earning a little money he was having a lot of fun.
He had enough on his mind to keep him out of trouble, and enough on his hands to work off the physical force that otherwise might have gone to waste, making him an undesirable citizen.
ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE BOY
If your boy is mischievous, can you not make a merchant or a farmer or a gardener out of him? It need not be his vocation. Let it be his avocation, his hobby. Don’t shut him in, don’t keep him down; encourage him to come out along life’s highway and show the world the sort of stuff he’s made of.
A very noble-minded woman of my acquaintance is suffering from the effects of having been constantly restrained when she was a child. She is in consequence, diffident, lacking in self-confidence, liable to become the victim of a strong-willed person’s whim. She says that, as a girl, all her natural instincts were put to scorn. Full of abounding life, she loved to leap down the stairs, throw herself into her mother’s arms, shout with laughter, sing at the top of her voice as she went about her tasks. This was looked upon with horror by her sedate and cautious parent. “Don’t run down the stairs,” her mother would say. “Don’t laugh so loud!” “Don’t shout like that!” Don’t, don’t, don’t, until the poor girl did not really know what she might do with impunity. She was constantly being humiliated before visitors, and the joy in life that might have been cultivated and utilized, nay, even glorified, was driven quite out of her soul. Yet her mother was an excellent woman, who meant to do just the right thing by that little girl of hers. She had her own idea of what a young girl should be. This gay, hilarious creature was not just what the mother desired. She had hopes of bringing up a dignified, gentle, lady-like, delicate, feminine daughter rather than a hoyden. What might not that mother have done had she but understood the glorious material God had lent her to work with a little while!
If she had only realized that the quality she was stamping out was a radiant, winged, rare, inspired and inspiring touch of nature springing out of a fullness of life, a superabundance of health, she might have made her child a queen among women, a leader, a creature admired and adored.
THE SOUL NEEDS SPACE TO DEVELOP
Instead, she accomplished not the dainty, refined model she set her unwise hands to, but an anomaly, an unwieldy statue with the helmeted head of Athene and the dancing body of Terpsichore. The mother can do much for her child, but she cannot put her soul into the other body. The child’s soul is its own. Inspirations and energies can be directed, that is all. The soul must grow; it must develop, and for this it must have a wide space. Do not bind the growth with a too compelling hand. Let cooperation, not coercion, be the stimulus between you.
The whole world is yours and your child’s, dear mother, therefore do not cramp his mental or spiritual gymnastics. There are a thousand outlets, a hundred thousand modes of expression. Find your child’s height and depth; sound him, measure his capacity for learning, pleasure, pain, work, and let him grow in beauty, wisdom and peace ever unfolding into the Infinite.