Perhaps the most serious phase of the peculiarities of children's reasoning appears with older children when it comes to reasoning about right and wrong conduct. Professor Swift, of Washington University, has made a careful study of this subject, from replies given by many men to questions about their ideas as boys. It seems that men who are irreproachable in their moral standards pass through a stage in which they consider it legitimate fun to rob orchards or to commit petty thefts.
Children draw fine distinctions between wrong acts and acts that are not very wrong, though they may not be quite right. One man says, "I distinguished between taking money, real stealing, and taking fruit." Another says of fruit taking, "I only partly regarded it as stealing." One man writes, "When a close-fisted employer refused to let me have my clothes at cost, I pocketed enough of his change to bring my clothes down to the cost mark." Few regarded taking money from their parents as "very bad," and distinguished between such stealing and taking money from strangers.
A boy of fifteen was reproved for holding his ear to the keyhole of a room in which his mother and sisters were having an animated discussion. The appellation "eavesdropper" did not disconcert him in the least. On the contrary, he undertook to justify his conduct on the ground that he was being discussed, and as he had no "dictagraph" he was obliged to do the listening in person. The fact that the dictagraph had been so frequently used for getting information that was later used in court was to him a sufficient justification of his conduct.
It is well known that all children pass through the stage illustrated by these cases, in which they have the savage's conception of right and wrong. For most children the difference between going to the reformatory or jail and turning out decent men and women is one of wholesome and sympathetic environment. Undue severity, no less than bad example, confirms many a youth in these habits—which should represent but a passing stage in his development.
Adults should not read their own ideas of morality into the acts of their children and then catalogue them as right or wrong. Most children's acts are neither right nor wrong: they are merely expressions of feelings and ideas peculiar to the stage of development. With young children ideas of right and wrong divide themselves into acts which are permitted and those which are forbidden. They have no conception of right and wrong beyond that.
Many an act that a boy commits, which we consider wrong, is but the expression of the instincts of his age. Our duty consists in helping him to pass through that stage without making permanent habits of these temporary impulses. This help must not be given through branding the acts as wicked or criminal, nor is moralizing itself generally effective. Help must come through providing adequate opportunities for play and games and work that will use up surplus energy both of mind and body. Above all, help must come through the healthy examples and the constant manifestation of high ideals in the home.
Every normal child will in time respond to these influences. There are, unfortunately, some children that will not develop beyond this stage of primitive, savage instincts; but such abnormal children are rare and we cannot deal with them here.
With the problem of reasoning, then, as with all other aspects of child training, it is a question of understanding, of being in close relations with one's children, and being able to fathom the workings of their minds.