I find that people’s grandest mistakes and most unutterable
failures are connected with the training of their children. Thus it
has been in all time, and even in the families of holy people. Isaac
seems to have had his hands more than full with son Esau; and Jacob
found plenty of trouble among his thirteen. David’s sons turned
out sadly, some of them. It is no wonder that Ishmael went out of
the ways of Abraham so quickly, when Abraham turned him adrift so
early; and while Lot’s children seem to have been a desperate set,
Mrs. Lot was most likely to blame for that, especially with Lot’s
going to live in a wicked place like Sodom just for gain, which no
father of a family should have done. It appears to me that when
there is failure, we can usually go back and put our finger on some
error and say: “Here is where the wrong began.” But then it is
always easier to see the beginning from the end, than the end from
the beginning. We know well enough roads that we have travelled
over! Then when the evil is done, it is often too late to mend it.
How circumspectly then we should go over unknown ground, where a
false step may be fatal!
I remember Mrs. Winton and I went to see Helen when little Tom was a
fortnight old. Helen seemed to have some sense of her
responsibility, and she said: “What a charge I shall have when it
is time to begin to train and educate this child!”
Mrs. Winton looked up: “Helen, you should have begun to train and
to educate a fortnight ago. Education should begin with the first
hour of a babe’s life, and it should from that hour have a fixed
end.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Helen.
“The end of our education should be to develop the child in every
direction, into the very best and highest which it is capable of
attaining. We must always remember that the child will live forever
in another world than this; that in this world it will be a member of
a social system, and will have duties to its race. It is also an
individual, with its private and particular nature and
emotions, which are to be regarded in its up-bringing. So, Helen,
begin at once to train your babe: as an individual, with regard to
its rights; and as a member of society, with regard to its duties.”
“But, Mrs. Winton, what can one teach so young a child?”
“Patience is the child’s earliest lesson. It can be taught to
wait. Don’t give it what it is crying for while it cries.
Calm it tenderly first, and then promptly give the food or the toy;
as it grows older, whatever it is proper for it to have: it soon
associates receiving with quiet and pleasant asking. So you can
teach the child, as a member of society, to cry softly, and not
disturb the house with wild shrieks. You can calm and soothe a very
young child to mild crying, and get it habituated not to roar and
bellow.”
“I always noticed, Mrs. Winton,” I said, “that your children
cried quietly, and did not fill the neighborhood with shrieks.”
“I always pitied them when they were hurt, not in the ratio of the
noise they made, as many do, but in the ratio of their gentleness
about their trouble. Children love sympathy, to be petted and pitied
— if shrieking like Comanches is the price of notice, of course
they will shriek. I used to say ‘softly, softly, and then I shall
feel so sorry for you. Ah! what a good child to be so patient!’
They learned a pride in patience and endurance. I have seen mothers
feeding a child with two spoons, nurse and mother feeding together,
to keep the child from screaming as soon as its mouth was empty. The
thing is a fact, and ruined the child’s temper and digestion. A
child should be taught to wait patiently while its food is preparing,
and while itself is being made ready to eat it. Naturally, the
little one is the centre of its own universe, and believes the world
was made when it was, and for it. We must early teach the child, in
patience, gentleness and generosity, to know that it has compeers
whose rights are as settled as its own.”
