Spasm and Habit in Governing Children by Ernest Hamlin Abbott

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 26, 1907

Spasm and Habit in Governing Children

By Ernest Hamlin Abbott

(Concluded)

THERE is no reason why regularity once established should not become for all future years a routine. We all know how hard it is to break up a bad habit. Happily, it is just as hard to break up a good one. The difference between the child who teases for every new variety of food on the table, pushes away the dishes that are set before him, whines when he is told it is bedtime, eats and goes to sleep only after much coaxing, and the child who accepts his food and his hours for sleep as a matter of course, as he accepts the house he lives in, is simply the difference between a bad habit and a good one. It is no easier to change the one habit than it is the other. After a child has learned to get his food and go to bed with whining and teasing, it is very difficult for him to

learn to eat and sleep in any other fashion; it is equally difficult for a child who has learned to eat and enjoy food adapted to him, and to go to bed at a suitable hour, to understand why all sorts of strange decoctions should be offered to him, and why he should not get undressed when his bedtime comes. Of course the spirit of adventure, which is strong in most normal children, will lead them sometimes to sample some things that they see their elders—or, for that matter, the animals—eating; and to race about the halls, exploring the domain of the dark, after they are supposed to be asleep; but even this spirit of adventure, which sometimes brings discouragement to the mother, is a tribute to regular life; and it is denied to those children whose whole life consists in a series of parental experiments. The little lad who at a children's party declines the sweetmeats is no angel. Nor is his companion who grabs the dainties an imp. They are both, like the rest of us, creatures of habit. The theory of total depravity, by which our forefathers explained the unpleasant doings of youngsters, is, I have concluded, a doctrine which parents devised in order to shift the burden of their offspring.

This practise of regularity in the physical care of children will lay the foundation, not only of health and contentment, but also of moral discipline. When we have eliminated the opportunities for collision with our children at meal-time and bedtime, we are well on our way toward eliminating government by collision altogether. The quiet exercise of authority involved in carrying out a simple regimen of diet and of rest will almost automatically extend to other matters. The most difficult part of this exercise of authority will be overcome when the parent learns self-restraint. Not to run to a child every time he cries is the beginning of learning not to yield to a child every time he wants something. In many cases authority is thus exercised by doing nothing. The mother, for example, has left the baby creeping about alone in his nursery. She has left him a ball and two or three blocks with which he can experiment, and another ball hanging from a cord within his reach which he can swing to and fro. He is learning that the ball is soft and can roll, that the blocks are hard and can not roll, and that the pendulum swings regularly. He is as well occupied in his work as the mother is in hers. Suddenly she hears a cry of vexation. If it continues, she steps to the door to see what has happened. He has raised himself up by the window and is trying to reach the tassel at the end of the cord on the window-shade, and finds it above his outstretched hands. She might go to the window, draw down the shade, and, holding it firm, let him play with the cord till he tires; but she knows that it would be inconvenient to have him continually playing with the window-shade in the house, and she does not want him to begin. She might then take him up and distract his attention till he forgets. But she knows that if she does this once, she will be called upon to do it again. So she shakes her head and says 'No,' which she has taught him to understand, and, after making sure that he is in no danger of a fall, leaves him and returns to her work. By doing nothing she has done what for the time being is the hardest thing. As she closes the door, she hears another wail of vexation, but she does not interfere. She has exercised her authority simply by exercising self-restraint.

It all depends on what we want our children to be whether we employ the method of spasm or the method of self-restraint. Of course those of us who think pertness in a child is a virtue, who regard a fit of teasing as 'smart' or 'cunning,' who enjoy the exhilaration of encountering a child as an adversary and breaking down his opposition, can develop in children habitual pertness, teasing, and disobedience with the utmost ease. It requires, however, no especial genius to avoid these qualities. Other traits, it may be, require something like genius—something at least beyond persistence and self-restraint—to create; but to provide children with a contented acquiescence in a regular life and an habitual disposition to obedience requires of the parents no qualities of mind which are not common to all us mortals.—Ernest Hamlin Abbott, in The Outlook.