Hints on Child-training. H. Clay TrumbullЧитать онлайн книгу.
been “trained” (Gen. 14: 14). A proverb of the ages gives emphasis to a parent’s duty to “train up” his child with wise considerateness (Prov. 22: 6). And nowhere else in the inspired record does the original of this word “train,” in any of its forms, appear.
The Hebrew word thus translated is a peculiar one. Its etymology shows that its primary meaning is “to rub the gullet;” and its origin seems to have been in the habit, still prevalent among primitive peoples, of opening the throat of a new-born babe by the anointing of it with blood, or with saliva, or with some sacred liquid, as a means of giving the child a start in life by the help of another’s life. The idea of the Hebrew word thus used seems to be that, as this opening of the gullet of a child at its very birth is essential to the habituating of the child to breathe and to swallow correctly, so the right training of a child in all proper habits of life is to begin at the child’s very birth. And the use of the word in the places where we find it, would go to show that Abraham with all his faith, and Solomon with all his wisdom, did not feel that it would be safe to put off the start with a child’s training any later than this.
Child-training properly begins at a child’s birth, but it does not properly end there. The first effort in the direction of child-training is to train a child to breathe and to swallow; but that ought not to be the last effort in the same direction. Child-training goes on as long as a child is a child; and child-training covers every phase of a child’s action and bearing in life. Child-training affects a child’s sleeping and waking, his laughing and crying, his eating and drinking, his looks and his movements, his self-control and his conduct toward others. Child-training does not change a child’s nature, but it does change his modes of giving expression to his nature. Child-training does not give a child entirely new characteristics, but it brings him to the repression and subdual of certain characteristics, and to the expression and development of certain others, to such an extent that the sum of his characteristics presents an aspect so different from its original exhibit that it seems like another character. And so it is that child-training is, in a sense, like the very making of a child anew.
Child-training includes the directing and controlling and shaping of a child’s feelings and thoughts and words and ways in every sphere of his life-course, from his birth to the close of his childhood. And that this is no unimportant part of a child’s upbringing, no intelligent mind will venture to question.
II.
THE DUTY OF TRAINING CHILDREN.
It is the mistake of many parents to suppose that their chief duty is in loving and counseling their children, rather than in loving and training them; that they are faithfully to show their children what they ought to do, rather than to make them do it. The training power of the parent is, as a rule, sadly undervalued.
Too many parents seem to take it for granted that because their children are by nature very timid and retiring, or very bold and forward; very extravagant in speech and manner, or quite disinclined to express even a dutiful sense of gratitude and trust; reckless in their generosity, or pitiably selfish; disposed to overstudy, or given wholly to play; one-sided in this, or in that, or in the other, trait or quality or characteristic—therefore those children must remain so; unless, indeed, they outgrow their faults, or are induced by wise counsel and loving entreaty to overcome them.
“My boy is irrepressible,” says one father. “He is full of dash and spirits. He makes havoc in the house while at home; and when he goes out to a neighbor’s he either has things his own way, or he doesn’t want to go there again. I really wish he had a quieter nature; but, of course, I can’t change him. I have given him a great many talks about this; and I hope he will outgrow the worst of it. Still he is just what he is, and punishing him wouldn’t make him anybody else.” A good mother, on the other hand, is exercised because her little son is so bashful that he is always mortifying her before strangers. He will put his finger in his mouth, and hang down his head, and twist one foot over the other, and refuse to shake hands, or to answer the visitor’s “How do you do, my boy?” or even to say, “I thank you,” with distinctness, when anything is given to him. And the same trouble is found with the tastes as with the temperaments of children. One is always ready to hear stories read or told, but will not sit quiet and look at pictures, or use a slate and pencil. Another, a little older, will devour books of travel or adventure, but has no patience with a simple story of home life, or a book of instruction in matters of practical fact.
Now it is quite inevitable that children should have these peculiarities; but it is not inevitable that they should continue to exhibit them offensively. Children can be trained in almost any direction. Their natural tendencies may be so curbed and guided as no longer to show themselves in disagreeable prominence. It is a parent’s privilege, and it is a parent’s duty, to make his children, by God’s blessing, to be and to do what they should be and do, rather than what they would like to be and do. If indeed this were not so, a parent’s mission would be sadly limited in scope, and diminished in importance and preciousness. The parent who does not recognize the possibility of training his children as well as instructing them, misses one of his highest privileges as a parent, and fails of his most important work for his children.
The skilled physician in charge of a certain institution for the treatment of feeble-minded and imperfectly developed children, has said, that some children who are brought to him are lacking in just one important trait or quality, while they possess a fair measure of every other. Or it may be said, that they have an excess of the trait or quality opposite to that which they lack.
One girl, for example, will be wholly without a sense of honesty; will even be possessed with a love of stealing for stealing’s sake, carrying it to such an extent that when seated at the table she will snatch a ball of butter from a plate, and wrap it up in a fold of her dress. If she should be unchecked in this propensity until she were a grown woman, she might prove one of the fashionable ladies who take books or dry goods from the stores where they are shopping, under the influence of “kleptomania.”
Again, a boy has no sense of truth. He will tell lies without any apparent temptation to do so, even against his own obvious interests. All of us have seen persons of this sort in mature life. Some of them are to-day in places of prominence in Christian work and influence. Yet another child is without any sense of reverence, or of modesty, or of natural affection. One lacks all control of his temper, another of his nerves. And so on in great variety.
The physician of that institution is by no means in despair over any of these cases. It is his mission to find out the child’s special lack, and to meet it; to learn what traits are in excess, and to curb them; to know the child’s needs, and to train him accordingly.
Every child is in a sense a partially developed, an imperfectly formed child. There are no absolutely perfect children in this world. All of them need restraining in some things and stimulating in others. And every imperfect child can be helped toward a symmetrical character by wise Christian training. Every home should be an institution for the treatment of imperfectly developed children. Every father and every mother should be a skilled physician in charge of such an institution. There are glorious possibilities in this direction; and there are weighty responsibilities also.
III.
SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF CHILD-TRAINING.
Child-training can compass much, but child-training cannot compass everything, in determining the powers and the possibilities of a child under training. Each child can be trained in the way he should go, but not every child can be trained to go in the same way. Each child can be trained to the highest and fullest exercise of his powers, but no child