CHAPTER LVII A NEW WAY OF BRINGING UP CHILDREN

"Only a thought, but the work it wrought Could never by tongue or pen be taught, But it ran through a life like a thread of gold, And the life bore fruit a hundredfold."

Not long ago there was on exhibition in New York a young horse which can do most marvelous things; and yet his trainer says that only five years ago he had a very bad disposition. He was fractious, and would kick and bite, but now instead of displaying his former viciousness, he is obedient, tractable, and affectionate. He can readily count and reckon up figures, can spell many words, and knows what they mean.

In fact this horse seems to be capable of learning almost anything. Five years of kindness have completely transformed the vicious yearling colt. He is very responsive to kindness, but one can do nothing with him by whipping or scolding him. His trainer says that in all the five years he has never touched him with a whip but once.

I know a mother of a large family of children who has never whipped but one of them, and that one only once. When her first child was born people said she was too good-natured to bring up children, that she would spoil them, as she would not correct or discipline them, and would do nothing but love them. But this love has proved the great magnet which has held the family together in a marvelous way. Not one of those children has gone astray.

They have all grown up manly and womanly, and love has been wonderfully developed in their natures. Their own affection responded to the mother's love and has become their strongest motive. Today all her children look upon "Mother" as the grandest figure in the world. She has brought out the best in them because she saw the best in them. The worst did not need correcting or repressing, because the expulsive power of a stronger affection drove out of the nature or discouraged the development of vicious tendencies which, in the absence of a great love, might have become dominant and ruined the life.

Love is a healer, a life-giver, a balm for our hurts. All through the Bible are passages which show the power of love as a healer and life-lengthener. " With long life will I satisfy him," said the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me." When shall we learn that the great curative principle is love, that love heals because it is harmony? There can be no discord where it reigns. Love is serenity, is peace and happiness.

Love is the great disciplinarian, the supreme harmonizer, the true peacemaker. It is the great balm for all that blights happiness or breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all the brutal propensities. As cruelty melts before kindness, so the evil passions and their antidote in sweet charity and loving sympathy.

The mother is the supreme shaper of life and destiny. Many a mother's love for her children has undoubtedly stayed the ravages of some fatal disease. Her conviction that she was necessary to them and her great love for them have braced her, and have enabled her to successfully cope with the enemies of her life for a long time.

One mother I know seems to have the magical art of curing nearly all the ills of her children by love.

If any member of the family has any disagreeable experience, is injured or pained, hurt or unhappy, he immediately goes to the mother for the universal balm, which heals all troubles.

This mother has a way of drawing the troubled child out of discord into the zone of perpetual harmony. If he is swayed by jealousy, hatred, or anger, she applies the love solvent, the natural antidote for these passion poisons. She knows that scolding a child when he is already suffering more than he can bear is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.

Our orphan asylums give pathetic illustration of how quickly the child mind matures and ages prematurely without the uplift and enrichment of the mother love, the mother sympathy, - parental protection and home influence. It is well known that children who lose their parents and are adopted by their grandparents and live in the country, where they do not have an opportunity to mingle much with other children, adopt the manners and mature vocabulary of their elders, for they are very imitative, and become little men and women before they are out of their youth.

Think of a child reared in the contaminating atmosphere of the slums, where everything is dripping with suggestions of vulgarity and wickedness of every description. Think of his little mind being filled with profanity, obscenity, and filth of all kinds! Is it any wonder that he becomes so filled with vicious, criminal suggestions that he tends to become like his environment?

Contrast such a child with one that is brought up in an atmosphere of purity, refinement, and culture, and whose mind is always filled with noble, uplifting suggestions of the true, the beautiful, and the lovely. What a difference in the chances of these two children, and without any special effort or choice of their own!

One mind is trained upward, towards the light, the other downward, towards darkness. What chance has a child to lead a noble life when all his first impressionable years are saturated with the suggestion of evil, when jealousy and hatred, revenge, quarreling and bickering, all that is low and degrading, fill his ears and eyes?

How important it is that the child should only hear and see and be taught that which will make for beauty and for truth, for loveliness and grandeur of character! We ought to have a great deal of charity for those whose early lives have been soaked in evil, criminal, impurity thoughts. The minds of children are like the sensitive plates of a photographer, recording every thought or suggestion to which they are exposed. These early impressions make up the character and determine the future possibility.

If you would encourage your child and help him to make the most of himself, inject bright, hopeful, optimistic, unselfish pictures into his atmosphere. To stimulate and inspire his confidence and unselfishness means growth, success, and happiness for him in his future years, while the opposite practice may mean failure and misery. It is of infinitely more importance to hold the right thought towards a child, the confident, successful, happy, optimistic thought, than to leave him a fortune without this. With his mind properly trained he could not fail, could not be unhappy, without reversing the whole formative process of his early life.

Keep the child's mind full of harmony, of truth, and there will be no room for discord, for error. It is cruel constantly to remind children of their deficiencies or peculiarities.

Sensitive children are often seriously injured by the suggestion of inferiority and the exaggeration of defects which might have been entirely overcome. This everlasting harping against the bad does not help the child half as much as keeping his little mind full of the good, the beautiful, and the true. The constant love suggestion, purity suggestion, nobility suggestion will so permeate the life after a while that there will be nothing to attract the opposite. It will be so full of sunshine, so full of beauty and love, that there will be little or no place for their opposites.

The child's self-confidence should be buttressed, braced, and encouraged in every possible way; not that he should be taught to overestimate his ability and his possibilities, but the idea that he is God's child, that he is heir to an Infinite inheritance, magnificent possibilities, should be instilled into the very marrow of his being.

A great many boys, especially those who are naturally sensitive, shy, and timid, are apt to suspect that they lack the ability which others have. It is characteristic of such youths that they distrust their own ability and are very easily discouraged or encouraged. It is a sin to shake or destroy a child's self-confidence, to reflect upon his ability or to suggest that he will never amount to much. These discouraging words, like initials cut in the sapling, grow wider and wider with the years, until they become great ugly scars in the man.

Most parents do not half realize how impressionable children are, and how easily they may be injured or ruined by discouragement or ridicule. Children require a great deal of appreciation, praise, and encouragement. They live upon it. It is a great tonic to them. On the other hand, they wither very quickly under criticism, blame, or depreciation. Their sensitive natures can not stand it.

It is the worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and dull, and that they will probably never amount to anything in the world.

How easy it is for a parent or teacher to ruin a child's constructive ability, to change a naturally, positive creative mind to a negative, non-producing one, by chilling the child's enthusiasm, by projecting into his plastic mind the idea that he is stupid, dull, lazy, a " blockhead " and good-for-nothing; that he will never amount to anything; that it is foolish for him to try to be much, because he has not the ability or physical stamina to enable him to accomplish what many others do. Such teaching would undermine the brightest intellect.

I have known of an extremely sensitive, timid boy who had a great deal of natural ability, but who developed very slowly, whose whole future was nearly ruined by his teacher and parents constantly telling him that he was stupid and dull, and that he probably never would amount to anything. A little praise, a little encouragement, would have made a superb man of this youth, because he had the material for the making of one. But he actually believed that he was not up to the ordinary mental standard; he was thoroughly convinced that he was mentally deficient, and this conviction never entirely left him..

We are beginning to discover that it is much easier to attract than to coerce. Praise and encouragement will do infinitely more for children than threats and punishment. The warm sunshine is more than a match for the cold, has infinitely more influence in developing the bud, the blossom, and the fruit than the wind and the tempest, which suppress what responds voluntarily to the genial influence of the sun's rays.

We all know how boys will work like troopers under the stimulus of encouragement and praise. Many parents and teachers know this, and how fatal theopposite policy is.

But unfortunately a great majority do not appreciate the magic of praise and appreciation. Pupils will do anything for a teacher who is always kind, considerate, and interested in them; but a cross, fractious, nagging one so arouses their antagonism that it often proves a fatal bar to their progress. There must be no obstruction, no ill-feeling between the teacher and the pupil, if the best results are to be obtained.

Many parents are very much distressed by the waywardness of their children; but this waywardness is often more imaginary than real. A large part of children's pranks and mischief is merely the outcome of exuberant youthful spirits, which must have an outlet, and if they are suppressed, their growth is fatally stunted. They are so full of life, energy, and so buoyant that they can not keep still. They must do something. Give them an outlet for their animal spirits. Love is the only power that can regulate and control them.

Do not try to make men of your boys or women of your girls. It is not natural. Love them. Make home just as happy a place as possible, and give them rein, freedom. Encourage them in their play, for they are now in their fun age. Many parents ruin the larger, completer, fuller development of their children by repressing them, destroying their childhood, their play days, by trying to make them adults. There is nothing sadder in American life than the child who has been robbed of its childhood.

Children are little animals, sometimes selfish, often cruel, due to the fact that some parts of their brain develop faster than others, so that their minds are temporarily thrown out of balance, sometimes even to cruel or criminal tendencies, but later the mind becomes more symmetrical and the vicious tendencies usually disappear.

Their moral faculties and sense of responsibility unfold more slowly than other traits, and, of course, they will do mischievous things; but it is a fatal mistake to be always suppressing them. They must give out their surplus energy in some way. Encourage them to romp. Play with them. It will keep you young, and will link them to you with hooks of steel. Do not be afraid of losing your dignity. If you make home the happiest, most cheerful place on earth for your children, if you love them enough, there is little danger of their becoming bad.

Thousands of parents by being so severe with their children, scolding and criticizing them and crushing their childhood, make them secretive and deceitful instead of open and transparent, and estrange them and drive them away from home. A man ought to look back upon the home of his childhood as the Eden of his life, where love reigned, instead of as a place where a long-faced severity and harshness ruled, where he was suppressed and his fun-loving spirits snuffed out.

Every mother, whether she realizes it or not, is constantly using the power of suggestion in rearing her children, healing all their little hurts. She kisses the bumps and bruises and tells the child all is well again, and he is not only comforted, but really believes that the kiss and caress have magic to cure the injury. The mother is constantly antidoting and neutralizing the child's little troubles and discords by giving the opposite thought and applying the love-elixir.

It is possible, through the power of suggestion, to develop in children faculties upon which health, success, and happiness depend. Most of us know how dependent our efficiency is upon our moods, our courage, hope. If the cheerful, optimistic faculties were brought out and largely developed in childhood, it would change our whole outlook upon life, and we would not drag through years of half-heartedness, discouragement, and mental anguish, our steps dogged by fear, apprehension, anxiety, and disappointment.

One reason why we have such poor health is because we have been steeped in poor-health thought from infancy. We have been saturated with the idea that pain, physical suffering, and disease, are a part of life; necessary evils which can not be avoided. We have had it so instilled into us that robust health is the exception and could not be expected to be the rule that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition of things as a sort of fate from which we can not hope to get away. The child hears so much sick talk, is cautioned so much about the dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that he grows up with the conviction that physical discords, aches, pains, all discomfort and suffering, are a necessary part of his existence, that at any time disease is liable to overtake him and ruin his happiness and thwart his career.

Think of what the opposite training would do for the child; if he were taught that health is the everlasting fact and that disease is but the manifestation of the absence of harmony! Think what it would mean to him if he were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full, complete, instead of sickness, that certainty instead of uncertainty were his birthright! Think what it would mean for him to expect this during all his growing years, instead of building into his consciousness the opposite, instead of being saturated with the sick thought and constantly being cautioned against disease and the danger of contracting it!

The child should be taught that God never created disease, and never intended that we should suffer; that we were made for abounding health and happiness, made for enjoyment not for pain-made to be happy, not miserable, to express harmony, not discord. Children are extremely credulous.

They are inclined to believe everything that an adult tells them, especially the nurse, the father and mother, and their older brothers and sisters. Even the things that are told them in jest they take very seriously; and their imaginations are so vivid and their little minds so impressionable that they magnify everything. They are often punished for telling falsehoods, when the fault is really due to their excessively active imagination.

Many ignorant or thoughtless parents and nurses constantly use fear as a means of governing children. They fill their little minds full of all sorts of fear stories and terror pictures which may mar their whole lives. They often buy soothing syrups and all sorts of sleeping potions to prevent the little ones from disturbing their rest at night, or to keep them quiet and from annoying them in the day time, and thus are liable to stunt their brain development.

Even if children were not seriously injured by fear, it would be wicked to frighten them, for it is wrong to deceive them. If there is anything in the world that is sacred to the parent or teacher, it is the unquestioned confidence of children. I believe that the beginnings of deterioration in a great many people who go wrong could be traced to the forfeiting of the children's respect and confidence by the parents and teachers. We all know from experience that confidence once shaken is almost never entirely restored.

Even when we forgive, we seldom forget; the suspicion often remains. There should never be any shadows between the child and his parents and teachers. He should always be treated with the utmost frankness, transparency, sincerity. The child's respect is worth everything to his parents. Nothing should induce them to violate it or to shake it. It should be regarded as a very sacred thing, a most precious possession.

Think of the shock which must come to a child when he grows up and discovers that those he has trusted implicitly and who seemed almost like gods to him have been deceiving him for years in all sorts of ways. I have heard mothers say that they dreaded to have their children grow up and discover how they had deceived them all through their childhood; to have them discover that they had resorted to fear, superstition, and all sorts of deceits in order to govern or influence them.

Whenever you are tempted to deceive a child again, remember that the time will come when he will understand, and that he will receive a terrible shock when he discovers that you, up to whom he has looked with such implicit trust, such simple confidence, have deceived him. Parents should remember that every distressing, blood-curdling story told to a child, every superstitious fear instilled into his young life, the mental attitude they bear towards him, the whole treatment they accord him, are making phonographic records in his nature which will be reproduced with scientific exactness in his future life.

Whatever you do, never punish a child when he is suffering with fear. It is a cruel thing to punish children the way most mothers and teachers do, anyway; but to punish a child when he is already quivering with terror is extremely distressing, and to whip a child when you are angry is brutal. Many children never quite forget or forgive a parent or teacher for this cruelty.

Parents, teachers, friends often put a serious stumbling-block in the way of a youth by suggesting that he ought to study for the ministry, or the law; to be a physician, an engineer, or enter some other profession or business for which he may be totally unfitted.

I know a man whose career was nearly ruined by the suggestion of his grandmother when he was a child that she would educate him for the church, and it was her wish for him to become a clergyman. It was not that she saw in the little child any fitness for this holy office, but because she wanted a clergyman in the family, and she often reminded him that he must not disappoint her. The boy, who idolized his grand mother, pondered this thought until he became a young man. The idea possessed him so strongly that every time he tried to make a choice of a career the picture of a clergyman rushed first to his mind, and, although he could see no real reason why he should become a clergyman, the suggestion that he ought to worked like leaven in his nature and kept him from making any other choice until too late to enable him to succeed to any great extent.

I know a most brilliant and marvelously fascinating woman who is extremely ambitious to make a name for herself, but she is almost totally lacking in her ability to apply herself, even in the line where her talent is greatly marked. She seems to be abundantly endowed in every faculty and quality except this. Now, if her parents had known the secret of correcting mental deficiencies, building up weak faculties, this girl could have been so trained that she would probably have had a great career and made a world-wide name for herself.

I have in mind another woman, a most brilliant linguist, who speaks fluently seven languages. She is a most fascinating conversationalist and impresses one as having read everything, but, although in good health, she is an object of charity today, simply because she has never developed her practical faculties at all, and this because she was never trained to work, to depend upon herself even in little things when she was a child. She was fond of her books, was a most brilliant scholar, but never learned to be practical or to do anything herself.

Her self-reliance and independence were never developed. All of her early friends predicted a brilliant future for her, but because of the very consciousness of possessing so many brilliant qualities and of the fact that she was flattered during all her student life and not obliged to depend upon herself for anything, she continued to exercise her strong scholarship faculties only, little dreaming that the neglect to develop her weaker ones would wreck her usefulness and her happiness.

It is not enough to possess ability. We must be able to use it effectively, and whatever interferes with its activity to that extent kills efficiency. There are many people who are very able in most qualities and yet their real work is seriously injured and often practically ruined, or they are thrown into the mediocre class, owing to some weakness or deficiency which might have been entirely remedied by cultivation and proper training in earlier life.

I know a man of superb ability in nearly every respect who is so timid and shy that he does not dare push himself forward or put himself in the position of greatest advantage, does not dare begin things. Consequently his whole life has been seriously handicapped.

If children could only be taught to develop a positive, creative mind, it would be of infinitely more value and importance to them than inheriting a fortune with a non-productive one. Youths should be taught that the most valuable thing to learn in life next to integrity is how to build their minds up to the highest possible producing point, the highest possible state of creative efficiency.

The most important part of the education of the future will be to increase the chances of success in life and lessen the danger of failure and the wrecking of one's career by building up weak and deficient faculties, the suggestion of his grandmother when he was a child that she would educate him for the church, and it was her wish for him to become a clergyman.

It was not that she saw in the little child any fitness for this holy office, but because she wanted a clergyman in the family, and she often reminded him that he must not disappoint her. The boy, who idolized his grandmother, pondered this thought until he became a young man. The idea possessed him so strongly that every time he tried to make a choice of a career the picture of a clergyman rushed first to his mind, and, although he could see no real reason why he should become a clergyman, the suggestion that he ought to worked like leaven in his nature and kept him from making any other choice until too late to enable him to succeed to any great extent.

I know a most brilliant and marvelously fascinating woman who is extremely ambitious to 'make a name for herself, but she is almost totally lacking in her ability to apply herself, even in the line where her talent is greatly marked. She seems to be abundantly endowed in every faculty and quality except this. Now, if her parents had known the secret of correcting mental deficiencies, building up weak faculties, this girl could have been so trained that she would probably have had a great career and made a world-wide name for herself.

I have in 'mind another woman, a most brilliant linguist, who speaks fluently seven languages. She is a most fascinating conversationalist and impresses one as having read everything, but, although in good health, she is an object of charity to-day, simply because she has never developed her practical faculties at all, and this because she was never trained to work, to depend upon herself even in little things when she was a child. She was fond of her books, was a most brilliant scholar, but never learned to be practical or todo anything herself.

Her self-reliance and independence were never developed. All of her early friends predicted a brilliant future for her, but because of the very consciousness of possessing so many brilliant qualities and of the fact that she was flattered during all her student life and not obliged to depend upon herself for anything, she continued to exercise her strong scholarship faculties only, little dreaming that the neglect to develop her weaker ones would wreck her usefulness and her happiness.

It is not enough to possess ability. We must be able to use it effectively, and whatever interferes with its activity to that extent kills efficiency. There are many people who are very able in most qualities and yet their real work is seriously injured and often practically ruined, or they are thrown into the mediocre class, owing to some weakness or deficiency which might have been entirely remedied by cultivation and proper training in earlier life.

I know a man of superb ability in nearly every respect who is so timid and shy that he does not dare push himself forward or put himself in the position of greatest advantage, does not dare begin things. Consequently his whole life has been seriously handicapped.

If children could only be taught to develop a positive, creative mind, it would be of infinitely more value and importance to them than inheriting a fortune with a non-productive one. Youths should be taught that the most valuable thing to learn in life next to integrity is how to build their minds up to the highest possible producing point, the highest possible state of creative efficiency.

The most important part of the education of the future will be to increase the chances of success in life and lessen the danger of failure and the wrecking of one's career by building up weak and deficient faculties, correcting one-sided tendencies, so that the individual will become more level-headed, better balanced, and have a more symmetrical mind.

Many students leave school and college knowing a great deal, but without a bit of improvement in their self-confidence, their initiative ability. They are just as timid, shy, and self-depreciatory as before entering. Now, what advantage is it to send a youth out into the world with a head full of knowledge but without the confidence or assurance to use it effectively, or the ability to grapple with life's problems with that vigor and efficiency which alone can bring success?

It is an unpardonable reflection upon a college which turns out youths who dare not say their souls are their own, who have not developed a vigorous self-confidence, assurance, and initiative. Hundreds of students are turned out of our colleges every year who would almost faint away if they were suddenly called upon to speak in public, to read a resolution, or even to put a motion.

The time will come when an education will enable a youth while upon his feet in public to express himself forcefully, to use the ability he has and summon his knowledge quickly. He will be so trained in self-control, in self-confidence, in level-headedness, that he will not be thrown off his guard in an emergency. The future education will mean that what the student knows will be available, that he can utilize it at will, that he will be trained to use it efficiently. Many of our graduates leave college every year as weak and inefficient in many respects as when they began their education. What is education for if it is not to train the youth to be the master of his faculties, master of every situation, able to summon all of his reserves of knowledge and power at will?

A college graduate, timid, stammering, blushing, and confused, when suddenly called upon to use his knowledge whether in public or elsewhere, ought to be an unknown thing.

Of what use is education which can not be summoned at will? Of what good are the reserves of learning which can not be marshalled quickly when we need them, which do not help one to be master of himself and the situation, whatever it may be?

The time will come when no child will be allowed to grow up without being taught to believe in himself, to have great confidence in his ability. This will be a most important part of his education, for if he believes in himself enough, he will not be likely to allow a single deficient faculty or weakness to wreck his career. He should be reared in the conviction that he was sent into this world with a mission and that he is going to deliver it.

Every youth should be taught that it was intended he should fill a place in the world which no one else can fill; that he should expect to fill it, and train himself for it; taught that he was made in the Creator's image, that in the truth of his being he is divine, perfect, immortal, and that the image of God can not fail. He should be taught to think grandly of himself, to form a sublime estimate of his possibilities and of his future. This will increase his self-respect and self-development in well-proportioned living.