Walking-chairs and baby-jumpers are injurious in this respect. They keep the child from his native freedom of sprawling, climbing, and pulling himself up. The activity they do permit is less varied and helpful than the normal activity, and the child, restricted from the preparatory motions, begins to walk too soon.
Alternate Growth
A curious fact in the growth of children is that they seem to grow heavier for a certain period, and then to grow taller for a similar period. That is, a very young baby, say, two months old, will grow fatter for about six weeks, and then for the next six weeks will grow longer, while the child of six years changes his manner of growth every three or four months. These periods arevariable, or at least their law has not yet been established, but the observant mother can soon make the period out for herself in the case of her own child. For two or three days, when the manner of growth seems to be changing from breadth to length, and vice versa, the children are likely to be unusually nervous and irritable, and these aberrations must, of course, be patiently borne with.
Precocity
Early Ripening
In all these things some children develop earlier than others, but too early development is to be regretted. Precocious children are always of a delicate nervous organization.Fiske[D]has proved to us that the reason why the human young is so far more helpless and dependent than the young of any other species is because the activities of the human race have become so many, so widely varied, and so complex, that they could not fix themselves in the nervous structure before birth. There a only a few things that the chick needs to know in order to lead a successful chicken life; as a consequence these few things are well impressed upon the small brain before ever he chips the shell; but the baby needs to learn a great many things—so many that there is no time or room to implant them before birth, or indeed, in the few years immediately succeeding birth. To hurry the development, therefore, of certain few of these faculties, like the faculties of talking, and walking, of imitation or response, is to crowd out many other faculties perhaps just beginning to grow. Such forcing will limit the child's future development to the few faculties whose growth is thus early stimulated. Precocity in a child, therefore, is a thing to be deplored. His early ripening foretells a early decay and a wise mother is she who gives her child ample opportunity for growing, but no urging.
Ample Opportunity for Growth
Ample opportunity for growth includes (1) Wholesome surroundings, (2) Sufficient sleep, (3) Proper clothing, (4) Nourishing food. We will take up these topics in order.
[A]
W. Preyer. Professor of Physiology, of Jena, author of "The Mind of the Child." D. Appleton & Co.
W. Preyer. Professor of Physiology, of Jena, author of "The Mind of the Child." D. Appleton & Co.
[B]
Dr. Robinson. Physician and Evolutionist, paper in The Eclectic, Vol. 29.
Dr. Robinson. Physician and Evolutionist, paper in The Eclectic, Vol. 29.
[C]
Miss Millicent Shinn, American Psychologist, author of "Biography of a Baby."
Miss Millicent Shinn, American Psychologist, author of "Biography of a Baby."
[D]
John Fiske, writer on Evolutionary Philosophy. His theory of infancy is perhaps his most important contribution to science.
John Fiske, writer on Evolutionary Philosophy. His theory of infancy is perhaps his most important contribution to science.
The whole house in which the child lives ought to be well warmed and equally well aired.Sunlight also is necessary to his well-being. If it is impossible to have this in every room, as sometimes happens in city homes, at least the nursery must have it. In the central States of the Union plants and trees exposed to the southern sun put forth their leaves two weeks sooner than those exposed to the north. The infant cannot fail to profit by the same condition, for the young child may be said to lead in part a vegetative as well as an animal life, and to need air and sunshine and warmth as much as plants do. The very best room in the house is not too good for the nursery, for in no other room is such important and delicate work being done.
JOHN FISKE
JOHN FISKE
Temperature
The temperature is a matter of importance. It should not be decided by guess-work, but athermometer should be hung upon a wall at a place equally removed from draft and from the source of heat. The temperature for children during the first year should be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and not lower than 50 degrees at night. Children who sleep with the mother will not be injured by a temperature 5 to 20 degrees lower at night.
Fresh Air
It is important to provide means for the ingress of fresh air. It is not sufficient to air the room from another room unless that other room has in it an open window. Even then the nursery windows should be opened wide from fifteen minutes to half an hour night and morning, while the child is in another room; and this even when the weather is at zero or below. It does not take long to warm up room that has been aired. Perhaps the best means of obtaining the ingress of fresh air without creating a draft upon the floor, where the baby spends so much of his time, is to raise the window six inches at the top or bottom and insert a board cut to fit the aperture.
Daily Outing
But no matter how well ventilated the nursery may be, all children more than six weeks old need unmodified outside air, and need it every day, no matter what the weather, unless they are sick.
The daily outing secures them better appetites, quiet sleep, and calmer nerves. Let them be properly clothed and protected in their carriages, and all weathers are good for them.
Children who take their naps in their baby-carriages may with advantage be wheeled into a sheltered spot, covered warmly, and left to sleep in the outer air. They are likely to sleep longer than in the house, and find more refreshment in their sleep.
Few children in America get as much sleep as they really need.Preyer gives the record of his own child, and the hours which this child found necessary for his sleep and growth may be taken for a standard. In the first month, sixteen, in full, out of twenty-four hours were spent in sleep. The sleep rarely lasted beyond two hours at a time. In the second month about the same amount was spent in sleep, which lasted from three to six hours at a time. In the sixth month, it lasted from six to eight hours at a time, and began to diminish to fifteen hours in the twenty-four. In the thirteenth month, fourteen hours' sleep daily; it the seventeenth, prolonged sleep began, ten hours without interruption; in the twentieth, prolonged sleep became habitual, and sleep in the day-time was reduced to two hours. In the third year, the night sleep lasted regularly from eleven to twelve hours, and sleep in the daytime was no longer required.
Naps
Preyer's record stops here. But it may be added that children from three to eight years still require eleven hours' sleep; and, although the child of three nay not need a daily nap, it is well for him, until he is six years old, to lie still for an hour in the middle of the day, amusing himself with a picture book or paper and pencil, but not played with or talked to by any other person. Such a rest in the middle of the day favors the relaxation of muscles and nerves and breaks the strain of a long day of intense activity.
Proper clothing for a child includes three things: (a) Equal distribution of warmth, (b) Freedom from restraint, (c) Light weight.
Equal distribution of warmthis of great importance, and is seldom attained. The ordinary dress for a young baby, for example, leaves the arms and the upper part of the chest unprotected by more than one thickness of flannel and one of cotton—the shirt and the dress. About the child's middle, on the contrary, there are two thicknesses of flannel—a shirt and band—and five of cotton, i.e., the double bands of the white and flannel petticoats, and the dress. Over the legs, again, are two thicknesses of flannel and two of cotton, i.e., the pinning blanket, flannel skirt, white skirt, and dress. The child in a comfortably warm house needs two thicknesses of flannel and one of cotton all over it, and no more.
The Gertrude Suit
The practice of putting extra wrappings about the abdomen is responsible for undue tenderness of those organs. Dr. Grosvenor, of Chicago, who designed amodel costume for a baby, which he called the Gertrude suit, says that many cases ofrupture are due to bandaging of the abdomen. When the child cries the abdominal walls normally expand; if they are tightly bound, they cannot do this, and the pressure upon one single part, which the bandages may not hold quite firmly, becomes overwhelming, and results in rupture. Dr. Grosvenor also thinks that many cases ofweak lungs, and even of consumption in later life, are due to the tight bands of the skirts pressing upon the soft ribs of the young child, and narrowing the lung space.
Objection to the Pinning Blanket
Freedom from restraint.. Not only should the clothes not bind the child's body in any way, but they should not be so long as to prevent free exercise of the legs. The pinning-blanket is objectionable on this account. It is difficult for the child to kick in it; and as we have seen before, kicking is necessary to the proper development of the legs. Undue length of skirt operates in the same way—the weight of cloth is a check upon activity. The first garment of a young baby should not be more than a yard in length from the neck to the bottom of the hem, and three-quarters of a yard is enough for the inner garment.
The sleeves, too, should be large and loose, and the arm-size should be roomy, so as to prevent chafing. The sleeves may be tied in at the wrist with a ribbon to insure warmth.
Lightness of weight.Theunderclothing should be made of pure wool, so as to gain the greatest amount of warmth from the least weight. In the few cases where wool would cause irritation, a silk and wool fixture makes a softer but more expensive garment. Under the best conditions, clothes restrict and impede free development somewhat, and the heavier they are the more they impede it. Therefore, the effort should be to get the greatest amount of warmth with the least possible weight.Knit garments attain this most perfectly, but the next best thing is all-wool flannel of a fine grade. The weave known as stockinet is best of all, because goods thus made cling to the body and yet restrict its activity very little.
The best garments for a baby are made according to the accompanying diagram.
Princess Garment
DIAGRAM OF THE 'GERTRUDE' SUIT.
They consist of three garments, to be worn one over the other, each one an inch longer in every way than the underlying one. The first is a princess garment, made of white stockinet, which takes the place of shirt, pinning-blanket, and band. Before cutting this out, a box-pleat an inch and a half wide should be laid down the middle of the front, and a side pleat three-fourths of an inch wide on either side of the placket in the back. The sleeve should have a tuck an inch wide. These tucks and pleats are better run in be hand, so that they may be easily ripped. As the baby grows and the flannel shrinks, these tucks and pleats can be let out.
The next garment, which goes over this, is made in the same way, only an inch larger in every measurement. It is made of baby flannel, and takes the place of the flannel petticoat with its cotton band. Over these two garments any ordinary dress may be worn. Dressed in this suit, the child is evenly covered with too thicknesses of flannel and one of cotton. As the skirts are rather short, however, and he is expected to move his legs about freely, he may well wear long white wool stockings.
As the child grows older, the principles underlying this method of clothing should be borne in mind, and clothes should be designed and adapted so as to meet these three requirements.
Natural Food
Bottle-fed Babies
The natural food of a young baby is his mother's milk, and no satisfactory substitute for it has yet been found. Some manufactured baby foods do well for certain children; to others they are almost poison; and for none of them are they sufficient. The milk of the cow is not designed for the human infant. It contains too much casein, and is too difficult of digestion. Various preparations of milk and grains are recommended by nurses and physicians, but no conscientious nurse or physician pretends that any of them begins to equal the nutritive value of human milk. More women can nurse their babies than now think they can; the advertisements of patent foods lead them to think the rather of little importance, and they do not make the necessary effort to preserve and increase the natural supply of milk. The family physician can almost always better the condition of the mother who really desires to nurse her own child, and he should be consulted and his directions obeyed. The importance of a really great effort to this direction is shown by the fact that thephysical culture records, now so carefully kept in many of our schools and colleges, prove thatbottle-fed babies are more likely to be of small stature, and to have deficient bones, teeth and hair, than children who have been fed on mother's milk.
Simple Diet
The food question is undoubtedly the most important problem to the physical welfare of the child, and has, as well, a most profound effect upon his disposition and character.Indiscriminate feeding is the cause of much of the trouble and worry of mothers. This subject is taken up at length in other papers of this course, and it will suffice to say here that the table of the family with young children should be regulated largely by the needs of the growing sons and daughters. The simplified diet necessary may well be of benefit to other members of the family.
The child born of perfect parents, brought up perfectly, in a perfect environment, would probably have no faults. Even such a child, however, would be at times inconvenient, and would do and say thingsat variance with the order of the adult world. Therefore he might seem to a hasty, prejudiced observer to be naughty. And, indeed, imperfectly born, imperfectly trained as children now are, many of their so-called faults are no more than such inconvenient crossings of an immature will with an adult will.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
The Child's World and the Adult's World
No grown person, for instance, likes to be interrupted, and is likely to regard the child who interrupts him wilfully naughty. No young child, on the contrary, objects to being interrupted in his speech, though he may object to being interrupted in his play; and he cannot understand why an adult should set so much store on the quiet listening which is so infrequent in his own experience. Grown persons object to noise; children delight in it. Grown persons like to have things kept in their places; to a child, one place as good as another. Grown persons have a prejudice in favor of cleanliness; children like to swim, but hate to wash, and have no objections whatever to grimy hands and faces. None of these things imply the least degree of obliquity on the child's part; and yet it is safe to say that nine-tenths of the children who are punished are punished for some of these things. The remedy for these inconveniences is time and patience. The child, if left to himself, without a word of admonishment, would probably change his conduct in these respects, merely by the force of imitation, provided that the adults around him set him, a persistent example of courtesy, gentleness, and cleanliness.
Real Faults
The faults that are real faults, as Richter[A]says, are those faults which increase with age. These it is that need attention rather than those that disappear of themselves as the child grows older. This rule ought to be put in large letters, that every one who has to train children may be daily reminded by it; and not exercise his soul and spend his force in trying to overcome little things which may perhaps be objectionable, but which will vanish to-morrow. Concentrate your energies on the overcoming of such tendencies as may in time develop intopermanent evils.
Training the Will
To accomplish this, you most, of course, train the child's own will, because no one can force another person into virtue against his will. The chief object of all training is, as we shall see in the next section, to lead the child to love righteousness, to prefer right doing to wrong doing; to makeright doing a permanent desire. Therefore, in all the procedures about to be suggested, an effort is made to convince the child of the ugliness and painfulness of wrong doing.
Natural Punishment
Punishment, asHerbert Spencer[B]agrees with Froebel[C]in pointing out, should be as nearly as possible a representation of the natural result of the child's action; that is, the fault should be made to punish itself as much as possible without the interference of any outside person; for the object is not to make the child bend his will to the will of another, but make him see the fault itself as an undesirable thing.
Breaking the Will
The effort to break the child's will has long been recognized as disastrous by all educators. A broken will is worse misfortune than a broken back. In the latter case the man is physically crippled; in the former, he is morally crippled. It is only a strong, unbroken, persistent will that is adequate to achieveself-mastery, and mastery of the difficulties of life. The child who is too yielding and obedient in his early days is only too likely to be weak and incompetent in his later days. The habit of submission to a more mature judgment is a bad habit to insist upon. The child should be encouraged to think out things for himself; to experiment and discover for himself why his ideas do not work; and to refuse to give them up until he is genuinely convinced of their impracticability.
Emergencies
It is true that there are emergencies in which hisimmature judgment andundisciplined will must yield to wiser judgment and steadier will; but such yielding should not be suffered to become habitual. It is a safety valve merely, to be employed only when the pressure of circumstances threatens to become dangerous. An engine whose safety valve should be always in operation could never generate much power. Nor is there much difficulty in leading even a very strong-willed and obstinate child to give up his own way under extraordinary circumstances. If he is not in the habit of setting up his own will against that of his mother or teacher, he will not set it up when the quick, unfamiliar word of command seems to fit in the with the unusual circumstances. Many parents practice crying "Wolf! wolf!" to their children, and call the practice a drill of self-control; but they meet inevitably with the familiar consequences: when the real wolf comes the hackneyed cry, often proved false, is disregarded.
HERBERT SPENCER
HERBERT SPENCER
Disobedience
When the will is rightly trained, disobedience is a fault that rarely appears, because, of course, where obedience is seldom required, it is seldom refused. The child needs to obey—that is true; but so does his mother need to obey, and all other persons about him. They all need to obey God, to obey the laws of nature, the impulses of kindness, and to follow after the ways of wisdom. Where such obedience is a settled habit of the entire household, it easily, and, as it were, unconsciously, becomes the habit of the child. Where such obedience is not the habit of the household, it is only with great difficulty that it can become the habit of the child. His will must set itself against itsinstinct of imitativeness, and his small house, not yet quite built, must be divided against itself. Probably no cold even rendered entire obedience to any adult who did not himself hold his own wishes in subjection. As Emerson says, "In dealing with my child, my Latin and my Greek, my accomplishments and my money, stead me nothing, but as much soul as I have avails. If I a willful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But, if I renounce my will and act for the soul, setting that up as an umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me."
Negative Goodness
Suppose the child to be brought to such a stage that he is willing to do anything his father or mother says; suppose, even, that they never tell him to do anything that he does not afterwards discover to be reasonable and just; still, what has he gained? For twenty years he has not had the responsibility for a single action, for a single decision, right or wrong. What is permitted is right to him; what is forbidden is wrong. When he goes out into the world without his parents, what will happen? At the best he will not lie, or steal, or commit murder. That is, he will do none of these things in their bald and simple form.
But in their beginnings these are hidden under a mask of virtue and he has never been trained to look beneath that mask; as happened to Richard Feveril,[D]sin may spring upon him unaware. Some one else, all his life, has labeled things for him; he is not in the habit of judging for himself. He is blind, deaf, and helpless—a plaything of circumstances. It is a chance whether he falls into sin or remains blameless.
Real Disobedience
Disobedience, then, in a true sense, does not mean failure to do as he is told to do. It means failure to do the things that he knows to be right. He must be taught to listen and obey the voice of his own conscience; and if that voice should ever speak, as it sometimes does, differently from the voice of the conscience of his parents or teachers, its dictates must still be respected by these older and wiser persons, and he must be permitted to do this thing which in itself may be foolish, but which is not foolish, to him.
Liberty
And, on the other hand, the child who will have his own way even when he knows it to be wrong should be allowed to have it within reasonable limits. Richter says, leave to him the sorry victory, only exercising sufficient ingenuity to make sure that it is a sorry one. What he must be taught is that it is not at all a pleasure to have his own way, unless his own way happens to be right; and this he can only be taught by having his own way when the results are plainly disastrous. Every time that awillful child does what he wants to do, and suffers sharply for it, he learns a lesson that nothing but this experience can teach him.
Self-Punishment
But his suffering must be plainly seen to be the result of his deed, and not the result of his mother's anger. For example, a very young child who is determined to play with fire may be allowed to touch the hot lamp or a stove, whenever affairs can be so arranged that he is not likely to burn himself too severely. One such lesson is worth all the hand-spattings and cries of "No, no!" ever resorted to by anxious parents. If he pulls down the blocks that you have built up for him, they should stay down, while you get out of the room, if possible, in order to evade all responsibility for that unpleasant result.
Prohibitions are almost useless. In order to convince yourself of this, get some one to command you not to move your right arm or to wink your eye. You will find it almost impossible to obey for even a few moments. The desire to move your arm, which was not at all conscious before, will become overpowering. The prohibition acts like a suggestion, and is an implication that you would do the negative act unless you were commanded not to. Miss Alcott, in "Little Men," well illustrates this fact in the story of the children who were told not to put beans up their noses and who straightway filled their noses with beans.
Positive Commands
As we shall see in the next section, Froebel meets this difficulty by substituting positive commands for prohibitions; that is, he tells the child to do instead of telling him not to do.Tiedemann[E]says that example is the first great evolutionary teacher, and liberty is the second. In the overcoming of disobedience, no other teachers are needed. The method may be tedious; it may be many years before the erratic will is finally led to work in orderly channels; but there is no possibility of abridging the process. There is no short and sudden cure for disobedience, and the only hope for final cure is the steady working of these two great forces,exampleandliberty.
To illustrate the principles already indicated, we will consider some specific problems together with suggestive treatment for each.
[Footnote A: Jean Paul Richter, "Der einsige." German writer and philosopher. His rather whimsical and fragmentary book on education, called "Levana," contains some rare scraps of wisdom much used by later writers on educational topics.] [Footnote B: Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher and Scientist. His book on "Education" is sound and practical.] [Footnote C: Freidrich Froebel, German Philosopher and Educator, founder of the Kindergarten system, and inaugurator of the new education. His two great books are "The Education of Man" and "The Mother Play."] [Footnote D: "The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," by George Meredith.] [Footnote E: Tiedemann, German Psychologist.]
[A]
Jean Paul Richter, "Der einsige." German writer and philosopher. His rather whimsical and fragmentary book on education, called "Levana," contains some rare scraps of wisdom much used by later writers on educational topics.
Jean Paul Richter, "Der einsige." German writer and philosopher. His rather whimsical and fragmentary book on education, called "Levana," contains some rare scraps of wisdom much used by later writers on educational topics.
[B]
Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher and Scientist. His book on "Education" is sound and practical.
Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher and Scientist. His book on "Education" is sound and practical.
[C]
Freidrich Froebel, German Philosopher and Educator, founder of the Kindergarten system, and inaugurator of the new education. His two great books are "The Education of Man" and "The Mother Play."
Freidrich Froebel, German Philosopher and Educator, founder of the Kindergarten system, and inaugurator of the new education. His two great books are "The Education of Man" and "The Mother Play."
[D]
"The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," by George Meredith.
"The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," by George Meredith.
[E]
Tiedemann, German Psychologist.
Tiedemann, German Psychologist.
This, as well as irritability and nervousness, very often springs from a wrong physical condition. The digestion may be bad, or the child may be overstimulated. He may not be sleeping enough, or may not get enough outdoor air and exercise. In some cases the fault appears because the child lacks the discipline of young companionship. Even the most exemplary adult cannot make up to the child for the influence of other children. He perceives the difference between himself and these giants about him, and the perception sometimes makes him furious. His struggling individuality finds it difficult to maintain itself under the pressure of so many stronger personalities. He makes, therefore, spasmodic and violent attempts of self-assertion, and these attempts go under the name of fits of temper.
The child who is not ordinarily strong enough to assert himself effectively will work himself up into a passion in order to gain strength, much as men sometimes stimulate their courage by liquor. In fact, passion is a sort of moral intoxication.
Remedy—Solitude and Quiet
But whether the fits of passion are physical or moral, the immediate remedy is the same—his environment must be promptly changed and his audience removed. He needs solitude and quiet. This does not mean shutting him into a closet, but leaving him alone in a quiet room, with plenty of pleasant things about. This gives an opportunity for the disturbed organism to right itself, and for the will to recover its normal tone. Some occupation should be at hand—blocks or other toys, if he is too young to read; a good book or two, such as Miss Alcott's "Little Men" and "Little Women," when he is old enough to read.
If he is destructive in his passion, he must be put in a room where there are very few breakables to tempt him. If he does break anything he must be required to help mend it again. To shout a threat to this effect through the door when the storm of temper is still on, is only to goad him into fresh acts of rebellion. Let him alone while he is in this temporarily insane state, and later, when he is sorry and wants to be good, help him to repair the mischief he has wrought. It is as foolish to argue with or to threaten the child in this state as it would be were he a patient in a lunatic asylum.
It is sometimes impossible to get an older child to go into retreat. Then, since he cannot be carried, and he is not open to remonstrance or commands, go out of the room yourself and leave him alone there. At any cost, loneliness and quiet must be brought to bear upon him.
Such outbursts are exceedingly exhausting, using up in a few minutes as much energy as would suffice for many days of ordinary activity. After the attack the child needs rest, even sleep, and usually seeks it himself. The desire should be encouraged.
Precautions to be Taken
Every reasonable precaution should be taken against the recurrence of the attacks, for every lapse into this excited state makes him more certain the next lapse and weakens the nervous control. This does not mean that you should give up any necessary or right regulations for fear of the child's temper. If the child sees that you do this, he will on occasion deliberately work himself up into a passion in order to get his own way. But while you do not relax any just regulations, you may safely help him to meet them. Give him warning. For instance, do not spring anydisagreeable commands upon him. Have his duties as systematized as possible so that he may know what to expect; and do not under any circumstances nag him nor allow other children to tease him.
This fault likewise often has a physical cause, seated very frequently in the liver. See that the child's food is not too heavy. Give him much fruit, and insist upon vigorous exercise out of doors. Or he may perhaps not have enough childish pleasures. For while most children are overstimulated, there still remain some children whose lives are unduly colorless and eventless. A sullen child is below the normal level ofresponsiveness. He needs to be roused, wakened, lifted out of himself, and made to take an active interest in other persons and in the outside world.
Inheritance and Example
In many cases sullenness is aninherited disposition intensified by example. It is unchildlike and morbid to an unusual degree and very difficult to cure. The mother of a sullen child may well look to her own conduct and examine with a searching eye the peculiarities of her own family and of her husband's. She may then find the cause of the evil, and by removing the child from the bad example and seeing to it that every day contains a number of childish pleasures, she may win him away from a fault that will otherwise cloud his whole life.
All lies are not bad, nor all liars immoral. A young child who cannot yet understand theobligations of truthfulness cannot be held morally accountable for his departure from truth. Lying is of three kinds.
(1.)The imaginative lie.(2.)The evasive lie.(3.)The politic lie.
Imaginative "Lying"
(1.) It is rather hard to call the imaginative lie a lie at all. It is so closely related to the creative instinct which makes the poet and novelist and which, common among the peasantry of a nation, is responsible for folk-lore and mythology, that it is rather an intellectual activity misdirected than a moral obliquity. Very imaginative children often do not know the difference between what they imagine and what they actually see. Their minds eye sees as vividly as their bodily eye; and therefore they even believe their own statements. Every attempt at contradiction only brings about a fresh assertion of the impossible, which to the child becomes more and more certain as he hears himself affirming its existence.
Punishment is of no use at all in the attempt to regulate this exuberance. The child's large statements should be smiled at and passed over. In the meantime, he should be encouraged in every possible way to get a firm, grasp of the actual world about him. Manual training, if it can be obtained, is of the greatest advantage, and for a very young child, the performance every day of some little act, which demands accuracy and close attention, is necessary. For the rest, wait; this is one of the faults that disappear with age.
The Lie of Evasion
(2.) The lie of evasion is a form of lying which seldom appears when the relations between child and parents are absolutely friendly and open. However, the child who is very desirous of approval may find it difficult to own up to a fault, even when he is certain that the consequence of his offense will not be at all terrible. This is the more difficult, because the more subtle condition. It is obvious that the child who lies merely to avoid punishment can be cured of that fault by removing from him the fear of punishment. To this end, he should be informed that there will be no punishment whatever for any fault that he freely confesses.For the chief object of punishment being to make him face his own fault and to see it as something ugly and disagreeable, that object is obviously accomplished by a free and open confession, and no further punishment is required.
But when the child in spite of such reassurance still continues to lie, both because he cannot bear to have you think him capable of wrong-doing, and because he is not willing to acknowledge to himself that he is capable of wrong-doing, the situation becomes more complex. All you can do is to urge upon him the superior beauty of frankness; to praise him and love him, especially when he does acknowledge a fault, thus leading him to see that the way to win your approval—that approval which he desires so intensely—is to face his own shortcomings with a steady eye and confess them to you unshrinkingly.
The Politic Lie
(3.) The politic lie is of course the worst form of lying, partly because it is so unchildlike. This is the kind of fault that will grow with age; and grow with such rapidity that the mother must set herself against it with all the force at her command. The child who lies for policy's sake, in order to achieve some end which is most easily achieved by lying, is a child led into wrong-doing by his ardent desire to get something or do something. Discover what this something is, and help him to get it by more legitimate means. If you point out the straight path, and show the goal well in view, at the end of it, he may be persuaded not to take the crooked path.