Denying a Child Wisely by Dr. Madison C. Peters

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 3, 1910

Denying a Child Wisely

By Dr. Madison C. Peters

CHILDHOOD is appealing—when the innocent eyes are upraised to ours in beseeching look, and the little hands extended for the expected gift, it is hard to refuse the request. It is always pleasant to gratify a child, and there is a real enjoyment in giving what he asks for when we can do it prudently.

But wise withholding is quite as important as generous giving—the unkindest treatment of a child is giving him everything he asks for. Love may become folly, and it is possible so to gratify a child’s whims as to hinder rather than to help him. Many a promising youth has had his career blasted by well-meaning parents, who in misguided love denied the child nothing he asked which they had in their power to give.

A child ought to be denied many things that are harmless. We often see children at the table pampered with delicacies, giving the child the slice it craves, the pie it wants, and the cake that tastes sweetest, with never a thought of digestion and health. The child who has never a legitimate desire denied is poorly fitted for the duties and trials of every-day life. It is to a parent’s discredit when the child can say: “I was never denied any pleasure which it was in father’s or mother’s power to give.”

Lately, an elaborately dressed American baby, six years old, walked unattended into the huge dining-room in one of our great hotels, seated herself at a table, and said to the waiter: “Bring me some deviled crabs and pink ice-cream.” The child ate the medley while the smiling guests looked on. What’s ahead of that child?—Digestion ruined, vanity increased, independence forced before time, and the whole sensibility blunted.

Overindulged children generally grow up selfish and exacting, overbearing, and tyrannical, and, if they can not get their whims gratified, will resort to any measure, however base, to satisfy themselves.

Many children hardly know what self-denial is—fulness falls upon them; it is hard to surprise them with an unexpected pleasure. They grow up selfish and exacting, and lack that enjoyment which comes of the occasional gratification of their desire, which has been long felt without the expectation of its being speedily met.

Even an only child need not be spoiled. Some of the best-trained children of the world have been only children. Few people can have everything they want, and can get along without many things others have. Overindulgent parents are very often those who were denied many things when children, and they do not now realize that it was all for their good that thus they were taught to deny themselves, and that they enjoyed the little that they did have, in spite of the lack of a great deal which they would like to have had.

Men to-day who were children of the rich very often find themselves disadvantaged in comparison to those who have risen from poverty. Their parents’ wealth, so freely at their disposal, increased the number of wants which they now think must be gratified, and their pampering in childhood so enervated them for the struggles which are a necessity in business that they frequently find themselves distanced by those who in early life were disciplined through enforced self-denial and made strong by enduring hardships and by finding contentment with a little.

The rigid discipline of constant self-denial was characteristic of the child training of the old Spartans. The best primitive peoples everywhere have recognized the importance of teaching the child self-denial, and its neglect has come only with the growth in luxury among peoples whose civilization, however high, has not yet gotten beyond the material.

—Dr. Madison C. Peters, in Washington Post.