The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

A Child's Leisure.

A child's life is divided into four parts--sleeping, eating, playing, and being taught.

A parent who does not study the character of the child under each of these four different sets of circumstances, is doing the most important of duties in a very inadequate way, and is in the position of a blindfold person leading a baby along the edge of a steep precipice. Both *may* come safely out of the journey, but the chances are that they will not.

It is, however, with the third division, the playtime of the child, that this paper has to do, and in the majority of cases it is the part least studied and most neglected, because comparatively few parents understand that the child and his play are the harbingers of the adult and his business. There are two great rocks on which much child-life in our country is shipwrecked--the rock of too much playtime and that of too little. On the one hand there are those who look on the child's playtime with suspicion, and allow as little as possible with a niggardliness that is stupid and cruel, and on the other there are those whose ideas are lax, and their good nature lazy, and they would let the whole of the day be spent in play to save trouble. To the first of these two classes, belongs a family of whose ways I have some opportunity of knowing. Their two little girls have no leisure. They attend a High School, and they have a home governess, who is expected to fill up all the time not spent at school or with their music-master, who gives them an hour each three times a week. These two children carry in their manners and faces, an eloquent condemnation of the folly and heartlessness of the system, under which they are plodding, but unpleasant in voice and manner. It is probable that they are well drilled in book lessons but it is a thousand chances to one that they will ever be useful women, for even as teachers they will lack the very first quality necessary for teaching, and that is spontaneity. A child's leisure is the time in which he occupies himself as he likes, and does what his growing fancy dictates, and much original genius is lost to the world in the educating of children, because this doing as you like and what you like is not recognized as one of the essentials in the training of character, and is left to the chance mercy of circumstances. Of course the ignorance and inexperience of a child call for most untiring watchfulness on the part of parent or guardian, but that watchfulness should be unknown to the child for the most part. It is the very highest art to conceal art. The law of the fussy and inadequate parent is an everlasting "Don't do this; don't do that," and a despotic one, "You shan't do this; you shall doe that."

It reminds one of the mother pictured in *Punch*, "What is Baby doing? Tell her she mustn't do it!" It is lamentable to think of the numbers or children, whose tempers are kept in perennial irritation and revolt, by constant interference with what they naturally wish to do, and of those who grow up callous and self-willed under the toughening process of constant fault-finding and nagging. It is for that reason that the child luxuriously housed in a well-kept nursery, fed, dressed, and tended in the most costly manner, may be a far greater object for the pity than the ragged urchin with his oyster shells in a dirty city alley.

There are not, after all, many nurses in well-to-do families who are chosen for their special virtues as wise companions and intelligent interpreters of child-character. The majority are selected solely for their qualifications in keeping the children "nice," making garments, and keeping the nursery in trim.

Over and over again I have heard mothers extolling their nurses as such treasures, because of the children's appearance, and defending hasty temper and so-called strictness, which is often another name for harshness, and sometimes for cruelty, on that ground.

Of course if all parents started on their solemn duties with clear knowledge of what a healthy child ought to be, and a zealous desire to put all else on one side to help the little one realize that ideal, this paper need not have been written, and the P.E.U. is unnecessary. But the majority of parents enter suddenly into an unknown land--the kingdom of baby; and some of them are no more fit to govern that kingdom than a Crowfoot Indian to govern Great Britain!

First of all, a child ought to be happy; and no silly fables about crying being good for it, and expanding its lungs, can explain the fact that crying means hunger or pain, and that the former must be fed, and the latter relieved as quickly as possible. A cross baby exists eighter in the brain of its mother, or is a testimony to her wretched mismanagement. Lungs are best expanded by the sweet nature plan of comfortable breathing, happy cooing, and later, laughter, shouting, and singing.

Then a child ought to be full of movement. A still child is either a sick child, or an unhappy one; and at whatever cost to our own nerves, we must secure to the children as much movement in their waking hours as they wish. The child itself is a much better guide as to its needs for movement, than a sedate adult whose restless days are in the distant past. Also a healthy child ought to want to be busy: and nothing to do, is as ruinous to the virtue of two year old, as to that of twelve, twenty, or fifty. How often children are accused of being mischievous and wicked, when they are simply industrious and inventive.

Of course the little one will want to do what those about him do, imitation is the faculty by which progress has evolved a Shakespeare from the primeval man; but the most puzzling thing to a child, is to be punished or scolded for doing what it sees others do as a matter of course.

The father of a five-year-old boy was met by his young wife with a pale and anxious face on his return from town. "You will have to punish him sharply, I'm certain, if his mischievous propensities are to be nipped in the bud," was her summing up, when she had laid the whole dreadful business before him.

It appeared that while taking charge of the children during the nurse's dinner hour, the mother had left Five-year-old and Two, in the sitting-room for a minute or two, as she thought, to go and speak to a friend who would not come in; and behold, when she returned, "Five" was sitting with his little chair drawn close up to the fender, and his pretty little tan boots, with the owner's feet in them resting on the top bar of the grate, and scorching vigorously! By his side sat "Two," with her short legs resting on the fender-bar, unable by her size to reach the bar of the grate.

Poor little boy! He had seen both his father and mother put their feet close to the fire to dry their wet boots, and no one scolded them. Only a few days before he had heard his mother say:--You'll feel more comfortable when your soles are dry."

If that mother had been intelligent enough to remember, that it is simply criminal to leave little ignorant beings alone for a moment with danger near, she would have been far more disturbed by her propensity to be selfishly careless, than by her little one's to be imitative.

It is of the utmost importance that waking hours should not flag in their interest, both to the child and the adult. Growing life is movement. The growing brain of a little child is, to begin with, wholly engrossed in dictating and controlling movement of the body. If the progress of co-ordination were better understood by mother and nurse, we should banish soon and for ever the ridiculous long draperies, and carefully packed up baby-bundles, so long supposed to be a beautiful manifestation of tender care for the little stranger. But behind that tiny hand making strange futile efforts to grab apparently at nothing, and the apparently aimless kicks of the unmanageable legs, there is a slowly evolving intention in the brain of holding and moving: and many are the blunders of eye, hand, and leg, before co-ordination of thought and act shall have become perfect enough for the baby to do the right thing in the right way, even if it be only the prompt grasping of some object, or the endeavor to touch with the foot.

Who needs to be told that the dearest love and admiring patience, are the best atmosphere for the baby to develop in during this stage? Much more, a thousand times, shall that same unfaltering love and patience be the best atmosphere for the older child to develop in, when the co-ordination of a thousand thoughts and acts shall have to be enhanced by a fast rowing intelligence. For mark this, O father and mother, the greater needs more than the less, and the child shall make many more blunders in acquiring co-ordination between intelligent thought and purpose, and the successful putting them into form by a score of acts, than ever he did over only one; and if your love is not to fail, you must have just the same quality immeasurably increased in quantity, for the increasing demands made on it. Yet more, a million times multiplied, is co-ordination between moral nature, the intellectual, and the physical, difficult of process and long of achievement--so difficult that the veteran St. Paul cried out in heartfelt sorrow, "When I would do good evil is present in me!"

The law of kindness may in some cases be slower in its results than that of compulsion, and it sometimes appear to fail and harshness to succeed. But constraining love cannot fail; it is of God, for God is love, and the failure is only in our patience, because we do not wait long enough or look deep enough into springs of character. Of course there are many instances of where very harshly brought up children have turned out better than very leniently reared ones. The reason is not far to seek. Some parents are harsh from a mistaken sense of duty, and because they are religiously alive to the sins and miseries of the world outside the home, and sincerely anxious to save their children from its temptations. Consequently they handed on a conscience and an honest sense of duty to their children, which would go far to helping them safely along.

On the other hand, many parents have been lenient only because they were selfish and lazy, and would not take the trouble to train their little ones, and the uncontrolled, undisciplined nature of the parents has been the curse of their children.

But the alternative does not lie between these two conditions at all. It lies between loving or not living. The harsh parent who loved did not love enough; the lazy parent either did not love enough or did not love at all.

True love gives large liberty, and there are no boundaries in her kingdom beyond which the child may not go, no hours during which her gardens and meadows are closed. But however early the child's energy wakes, hers has woke yet earlier, and is ready with morning greeting. However long the road along which the young feet wander, love is always waiting at the far end of the pilgrimage to meet them.

My four children have had the largest liberty accorded to them, yet it would be difficult to find more docility and readier obligingness than they have always displayed, or a home-circle where there have been fewer casualties.

I realized at the first that constant and happy employment was as necessary for that mite on the floor, as the adult in the chair. No matter at what cost to sofa-cushions, tidies, bric-a-brac, and sometimes even book-bindings, the devils of laziness, discontent, boredom, and ill-temper must be kept at bay, and if infantine toys were not forthcoming or adequate, well, the little dirty fingers that marked the satin were of more value than many cushions, and the happy mysterious hiding-places where the Mummy-cat and the Baby-kit played in dull and foggy winter days, will someday be graves where sacred memory has laid rich treasures for use in another life, when love's resurrection shall be.

To be sure, being a human woman, I grieved in secret when the baby desires went resolutely from an unintellectual china shepherdess, price one penny, to one of the precious Dresden children on the mantelpiece! But then I had done the same thing, had I not, or the shepherdess would have been occupying the place of the Dresden children? So we played very carefully with the beautiful little flowered china baby, and the delight and happiness of my living one were well worth securing.

Later on, when babyhood began to demand variety of occupation, I taught my tiny ones to play with pins, and cut with scissors, and throw coals on the fire with their hands. The secret of all teaching, is an earnest purpose in learning. There was an earnest purpose behind all we did. The box of pins were some poor little cold tired babies, who were crying to go to bed. So as a matter of kind love they had all to be stuck into an old soft pincushion. When the last of the babies was safely stuck in, it was time to give them their supper. A biscuit, or a small lump of sugar did duty for the vicarious meal, and always met a certain fate.

The scissors cut whole squadrons of paper playmates out of old newspapers or grocers' bags. They did not, to an outsider, bear much resemblance to boys and girls, it is true; but when the various fragments were called "Plumpy" or "Lanky," or "Cry-baby," or "Mooley," they assumed such vivid personality, that it became a matter of parental duty to lay a nice lace tidy on the floor, and sit the scraps of paper in front of paint saucers, empty moist colour-pans, thimbles, pill-boxes, empty cotton-reels, etc., and treat them to a splendid Christmas feast of Barmecidal proportions.

Dear little children! We got over their early years so industriously, so kindly, and reasonably this way. No slapping and scolding, nor that most hateful of noises, children crying or screaming, to mar the sober dignity, and innocent gaiety of our intercourse, day by day.

Consequently having from their first month learnt the happiness of work, and of full liberty to follow one's own bent, and not another's, they are to-day full of eager plans of work, always busy, full of compassion, and thoroughly in earnest.

There is also another very important aspect of this subject of letting children have plenty of leisure for doing what they like, as they like.

There is stupendous need for original thinkers in the midst of the great problems that face us as a nation and demand a solution. There are many of them beyond the wisdom of this generation to solve; yet that they remain unsolved with the passionate attention that is being given to them, is a disaster the nature of which grows more terrible every day. It is to our children we must leave their solution, and if their thinking is to cover a wider area, and go farther and deeper than ours, we must look upon ourselves as the bow from which their arrow is shot, and not as the track, or the goal of that arrow. If they are to be independent seekers after truth, and to love truth for truth's sake, we must teach them how to think for themselves, instead of accepting our thought merely because it is ours. When I think of the pious idiots who have set themselves to break a child's will, ad reduce a human ego to the condition of permanent dittoism which stands with such fold for amiability, I am not surprised at the types in which their success is set; on the one hand the rude and noisy iconoclasts, on the other the puny and feeble crawlers and parasites for whom what is morbid and debasing seems to have a most fatal attraction.

Strengthen your child's will; thank God for it; respect it; train it; consecrate it by the consecration of your own. Bring up your child from the first in innocent freedom, and healthy occupation. "Fear hath torment." Let reverence, not fear be maker of manners. Let joy be the air of your companionship, and let your motto for waking hours be, "Without haste, without rest," and for the sleeping ones, "in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

Typed by Amanda C., Aug. 2024