2. What Are Gentle Measures
Back to Gentle Child Training
It being thus distinctly understood that the gentle measures in the training of children herein recommended, are not to be resorted to as a substitute for parental authority—but as the easiest and most effectual means of establishing and maintaining that authority in its most absolute form. We have now to consider what the nature of these gentle measures—and by what characteristics they are distinguished, in their action and influence, from such as may be considered more or less violent and harsh.
Gentle measures are those which tend to exert a calming, quieting, and soothing influence on the mind, or to produce only such excitements as are pleasurable in their character, as means of repressing wrong actions, and encouraging right actions. Ungentle measures are those which tend to inflame and irritate the mind, or to agitate it with painful irritability.
There seem to be three grades or forms of punishment to which a mother may resort in controlling her children, or, perhaps, rather three classes of measures which are more or less violent in their effects. To illustrate these we will take an example.
Case supposed. One day Louisa, four years old, asked her mother for an apple. "Have you had any already?" asked her mother. "Only one," replied Louisa. "Then Bridget may give you another," says the mother. What Louisa said was not true. She had already eaten two apples. Bridget heard the falsehood—but she did not consider it her duty to betray the child, so she said nothing. The mother, however, afterwards, in the course of the day, accidentally ascertained the truth. Now, as we have said, there are three grades in the kind and character of the measures which may be considered violent that a mother may resort to in a case like this.
1. BODILY punishment. The child may be whipped, or tied to the bed-post, and kept in a constrained and uncomfortable position for a long time, or shut up in solitude and darkness, or punished by the infliction of bodily suffering in other ways. And there is no doubt that there is a tendency in such treatment, to correct or cure the fault. But measures like these, whether successful or not, are certainly violent measures. They shock the whole nervous system, sometimes with the excitement of pain and terror, and most always, with that of resentment and anger. In some cases this excitement is extreme. The excessively delicate organization of the brain, through which such agitations reach the senses, and which, in children of an early age, is in its most tender and sensitive state of development, is subjected to a most intense and violent agitation.
The evil effects of this excessive punishment, may perhaps entirely pass away in a few hours, and leave no trace of injury behind; but then, on the other hand, there is certainly reason to fear that such violent measures, especially if often repeated, tend to impede the regular and healthful development of the organs, and that they may become the origin of mental derangements in future years. It is impossible, perhaps, to know with certainty, whether permanent ill effects follow in such cases or not. At any rate, such a remedy is a violent one.
2. Punishment by FRIGHTENING. There is a second grade of punishment in the treatment of such a case, which consists in exciting terror, or other painful or disagreeable emotions, through the imagination, by presenting to the imagination of the child images of phantoms, hobgoblins, and other frightful monsters, whose ire, it is pretended, is greatly excited by the misdeeds of children, and who come in the night-time to take them away, or otherwise visit them with terrible retribution. Domestic servants are very prone to adopt this mode of discipline. Being forbidden to resort to physical punishment as a means of exciting pain and terror, they attempt to accomplish the same end by other means, which, however, in many respects, are still more injurious in their action.
Servants and attendants upon children from certain nationalities in Europe, are peculiarly disposed to employ this method of governing children placed under their care. One reason is that they are accustomed to this mode of management at home; and another is that many of them are brought up under an idea, which prevails extensively in some of those countries—that it is right to tell falsehoods where the honest object is to accomplish a good or useful end. Accordingly, inasmuch as the restraining of the children from wrong is a good and useful object, they can declare the existence of ghosts and hobgoblins, who carry away and devour bad girls and boys—with an air of positiveness and seeming honesty, and with a calm and persistent assurance, which aids them very much in producing on the minds of the children a conviction of the truth of what they say.
While, on the other hand, those who, in theory at least, occupy the position that the direct falsifying of one's word is never justifiable, act at a disadvantage in attempting this method. For although, in practice, they are often inclined to make an exception to their principles in regard to truth in the case of what is said to young children; they cannot, after all, tell children what they know to be not true with that bold and confident air necessary to carry full conviction to the children's minds. They are embarrassed by a kind of half guilty feeling, which, partially at least, betrays them, and the children do not really and fully believe what they say. They cannot suppose that their mother would really tell them what she knew was false.
In all countries there are many, among even the most refined and highly cultivated classes, who are not at all embarrassed by any lying of this kind. This is especially the case in those countries in Europe, particularly on the Continent, where the idea above referred to, of the allowableness of falsehood in certain cases as a means for the attainment of a good end, is generally entertained.
The French have two terrible bugbears, under the names of Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine, who are as familiar to the imaginations of French children as Santa Claus is, in a much more agreeable way, to the children at our firesides. Monsieur and Madame Croqtuemitaine are frightful monsters, who come down the chimney, or through the roof, at night—and carry off bad children. They know who the bad children are, where they live, and what they have done. The instinctive trust of young children in their mother's truthfulness is so strong that no absurdity seems gross enough to overcome it.
There are many mothers among us who, though not quite prepared to call in the aid of ghosts, giants, and hobgoblins, or of Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine, are poorly managing their children still, sometimes, try to eke out their failing authority by threatening them with the "black man," or the "policeman," or some other less supernatural terror. They seem to imagine that while there is no such thing in existence as a hobgoblin, there really are policemen and prisons, they only half tell an untruth by saying to the unruly little one that a policeman is coming to carry him off to jail.
Injurious Effects. Although, by these various modes of exciting imaginary fears, there is no direct and outward infliction of bodily suffering, the effect produced on the delicate organization of the brain by such excitements is violent in the extreme. The feelings of dread, agitation and terror which they sometimes excite, and which are often spontaneously renewed by darkness and solitude, and by other exciting causes—are of the nature of temporary insanity. Indeed, the extreme fear which they produce, sometimes becomes a real insanity, which, though it may, in many cases, be finally outgrown—may probably in many others lead to lasting and most deplorable results.
3. Punishment by harsh rebukes and threatenings.
There is a third mode of treatment, more common, perhaps, among us than either of the preceding, which, though much milder in its character than they—we still class among the violent measures, on account of its operation and effects. It consists of stern and harsh rebukes, such as denunciations of the heinousness of the sin of falsehood, with solemn premonitions of the awful consequences of it, in this life and in that to come, intended to awaken feelings of alarm and distress in the mind of the child, as a means of promoting repentance and reformation. These are not violent measures, it is true, so far as outward physical action is concerned; but the effects which they produce are sometimes of quite a violent nature, in their operation on the delicate mental susceptibilities which are excited and agitated by them.
If the mother is successful in making the impression which such a mode of treatment is designed to produce, the child, especially if a girl, is agitated and distressed. Her mind is greatly disturbed. If calmed for a time, the paroxysm is very liable to return. She wakes in the night, perhaps, with an indefinable feeling of anxiety and terror, and comes to her mother's bedside, to seek, in her presence, and in the sense of protection which it affords—a relief from her distress. The conscientious mother, supremely anxious to secure the best interests of her child, may say that, after all, it is better that she should endure this temporary suffering, than not be saved from her sins. This is true. But if she can be saved just as effectually without it—it is better still.
4. GENTLE punishment. We now come to the gentle measures which may be adopted in a case of discipline like this. They are endless and varied in form—but, to illustrate the nature and operation of them, and the spirit and temper of mind with which they should be enforced, with a view of communicating to the mind of the reader some general idea of the characteristics of that gentleness of treatment which it is the object of this work to commend, we will describe an actual case, substantially as it really occurred, where a child, whom we will still call Louisa, told her mother a falsehood about the apple, as already related.
Choosing the right TIME. Her mother, though Louisa's manner at the time of asking for the apple, led her to feel somewhat suspicious. Yet she did not express her suspicions—but gave her the additional apple. Nor did she afterwards, when she ascertained the facts, say anything on the subject. The day passed away as if nothing unusual had occurred. When bed-time came she laid Louisa in her bed, playing with her, and talking with her in an amusing manner all the time, so as to bring her into a contented and happy frame of mind, and to establish as close a connection as possible of affection and sympathy between them. Then, finally, when the child's prayer had been said, and she was about to be left for the night, her mother, sitting in a chair at the head of her little bed, and putting her hand lovingly upon her, said—"But first I must tell you one more little story.
Once there was a boy, and his name was Ernest. He was a pretty big boy, for he was five years old." Louisa, it must be recollected, was only four. "He was a very pretty boy. He had bright blue eyes and curling hair. He was a very good boy, too. He did not like to do anything wrong. He always found that it made him feel uncomfortable and unhappy afterwards, when he did anything wrong. A good many children, especially good children, find that it makes them feel uncomfortable and unhappy when they do wrong. Perhaps you do." "Yes, mamma, I do," said Louisa. "I am glad of that," replied her mother; "that is a good sign. Ernest went one day," added the mother, continuing her story, "with his little cousin Anna to their uncle's, in hopes that he would give them some apples. Their uncle had a beautiful garden, and in it there was an apple-tree which bore most excellent apples. They were large, and rosy, and mellow, and sweet. The children liked the apples from that tree very much, and Ernest and Anna went that day in hopes that their uncle would give them some of them. He said he would. He would give them three apiece. He told them to go into the garden and wait there until he came.
They must not take any apples off the tree, he said—but if they found any on the ground, they might take them, provided that there were not more than three apiece; and when he came he would take enough off the tree, he said, to make up the number to three. So the children went into the garden and looked under the tree. They found two apples there, and they took them up and ate them—one apiece. Then they sat down and began to wait for their uncle to come. While they were waiting Anna proposed that they should not tell their uncle that they had found the two apples, and so he would give them three more, which he would take from the tree; whereas, if he knew that they had already had one apiece, then he would only give them two more. Ernest said that his uncle would ask them about it.
Anna said, 'That doesn't matter—we can tell him that we did not find any.' Ernest seemed to be thinking about it for a moment, and then, shaking his head, said, 'No, I think we had better not tell him a lie!' So when he saw their uncle coming, he said, 'Come, Anna, let us go and tell him about it, just how it was.' So they ran together to meet their uncle, and told him that they had found two apples under the tree, one apiece, and had eaten them. Then he gave them two more apiece, according to his promise, and they went home feeling contented and happy. They might have had one more apple apiece, probably, by combining together to tell a falsehood; but in that case they would have gone home feeling guilty and unhappy."
Louisa's mother paused a moment, after finishing her story, to give Louisa time to think about it a little. "I think," she added at length, after a suitable pause, "that it was a great deal better for them to tell the truth, as they did." "I think so too, mamma," said Louisa, at the same time casting down her eyes and looking a little confused. "But you know," added her mother, speaking in a very kind and gentle tone, "that you did not tell me the truth today about the apple that Bridget gave you." Louisa paused a moment, looked in her mother's face, and then, reaching up to put her arms around her mother's neck, she said, "Mamma, I am determined never to tell you another wrong story as long as I live."
Now it is not at all probable that if the case had ended here, Louisa would have kept her promise. This was one good lesson, it is true—but it was only one. And the lesson was given by a method so gentle, that the child's mind was not irritated or morbidly excited by it. Moreover, no one who knows anything of the workings of the childish mind can doubt that the impulse in the right direction given by this conversation was not only better in character—but was greater in amount, than could have been effected by either of the other methods of management previously described.
How gentle measures operate. By the gentle measures, then, which are to be here discussed and recommended, are meant such as do not react in a violent and irritating manner, in any way, upon the extremely delicate condition of the child's mind, in which the gradual development of the mental and moral faculties are so intimately involved. They do not imply any relaxation of the force of parental authority, or any lowering whatever of the standards of moral obligation—but are, on the contrary, the most effectual, the surest and the safest way of establishing the one and of enforcing the other.
Back to Gentle Child Training