The Tussle with Freddie—How the Child Is Spoiled by the Mother's Lying—The Manufacture of Criminals
By Mary Alice Hare Loper, M. S.
Fairy tales are not the only source of deception that affects the childhood of the twentieth century, nor are they doing the greatest amount of harm in destroying confidence in humanity. Very many children are taking lessons daily in deception, in their own homes, with their parents as teachers, and it is little wonder that many of them are becoming proficient in the art—are learning to deceive their parents in return.
Many mothers who really love their children, and who desire them to be obedient and truthful on all occasions, scarcely permit a day to go by without telling them that which is not true, though seemingly quite unconscious of the fact. The practice may begin in the morning, something like this:
“Freddie, get your shoes on right away.”
As Freddie is not accustomed to mind until he gets ready, he keeps on playing. Presently his mother, knowing his dilatory manner—she would be surprised if he should mind her first command—exclaims in a harsh tone, “Freddie, did you hear me?”
“Yes,” faintly replies Freddie.
“Well, then, get your shoes on. I'm not going to speak to you again about it.”
Freddie leisurely draws on one shoe, and continues to play. After a while, his mother takes in the situation again, and says: “Freddie, why don't you mind when mother speaks? I don't know what I shall ever do with you”—and Freddie doesn't know either. He knows his mother has broken her word, and so he does not know what to expect next. Presently there is another echo:
“Freddie, have you your shoes on yet?”
Discerning thunder in her tones, and fearing a storm, Freddie meekly answers, “Yes,” imitating his mother's untruthfulness, and hoping to complete the task before she appears on the scene.
“Well, then, why don't you get ready for breakfast?”
In another minute his mother's temper gets the better of her, and she rushes in where Freddie sits on the floor. Seeing that he has told her an untruth, she begins a vigorous assault with a rod.
Of course Freddie wails loudly, and presently the whole house is in an uproar. If Freddie is compelled to sit at the breakfast table, he is in no condition to relish or digest properly his food. But his mother wears “a consciousness of duty done,” and saves her rod for the next struggle, which is sure to follow.
No More Swing To-Day
“Freddie, you must bring in some wood,” is the next command.
“I don't want to,” replies Freddie.
His mother, still angry, begins the rod process, and again Freddie begins to wail. His mother gets the wood, and ejaculates, “You are a naughty boy, and the bad man will get you.”
“Children are imitators. They learn from babyhood to follow whatever example is set before them.”
But Freddie knows that although he has heard this same threat many times before, the “bad man” has never “got him” yet, and so he has small fears for the future.
Presently there is a scene, perhaps in the back yard. Freddie and a little neighbor boy are quarreling over a swing.
“Freddie, get right out of that swing, and don't let me see you in it again to-day,” says his irascible mother. Freddie remains out of the swing only a few minutes; and although his mother is in full view when he again resumes the pastime, she says nothing about it, and Freddie feels that he has conquered—which he has.
“I Would Skin You”
“If I just had the energy, I would skin you,” said a mother to her little son one warm summer day. But the small boy knew his mother so well that there was no call for special fear from the barbarous threat.
Children cannot be always deceived. They learn, when very young, just how much dependence can be placed upon their parents' word. One little boy asked another if he was not afraid to disobey his mother since she had threatened him so severely. “O, no,” he replied. “Ma has told forty lies already.”
Too Visionary to Realize
It is a deplorable thing for a child to have his confidence shaken in his parents' word. But somehow it is so easy to seek to extort obedience by means of threats—threats which are entirely out of harmony with the possible offense in view. There are persons whose ordinary language is so profuse with superlatives, that when they wish to describe something really worth while, they are at a loss to find words to meet the case. So there are parents whose punishments for trivial offenses are so severe that when they encounter something really deserving of correction in their children's misbehavior, they are at a loss to know what to do, and their threats are often too visionary to be capable of realization.190
They Learn Not to Fear Bears
There is no true obedience except that which is rendered through love. No “rod of correction”—the rod which really corrects a fault—is ever wielded except by the hand of love. That mother who keeps her children in sight by telling them that if they go out of the yard the bears will eat them, will find later on that her children have learned better, and that along with the knowledge of the non-presence of bears has come distrust in mother's word, which distrust is fatal in its results.
Such deception on the part of her whose duty it is to be the personification of truth to her children, is worse in its results than the reading of such a story as “Jack and the Beanstalk.” If a child has sincere confidence in his mother,—if she has never deceived him, never told him anything but truth,—he will believe her when she tells him that fairy stories are not true, and not profitable to read. Blessed is that child who believes implicitly in his mother, whose confidence can never be shaken in her word!
Mothers Training Criminals
But the mother who constantly tells untruths, who seeks to secure obedience by means of deception, becomes to her child as unreliable as a fairy tale. He learns to believe one just about as much as the other—he learns to believe neither, and to disbelieve the world in general, and perhaps the great truths of inspiration and salvation.
Children are imitators. They learn from babyhood to follow whatever example is set before them. If parents seek to deceive their children, their children will seek to deceive them in return. Lying and stealing go hand in hand. When a child has learned to tell an untruth, it is easy to take that which does not belong to him; and when a child has learned to lie and steal, he has taken a long step toward becoming a criminal.
The lengthened criminal list of to-day attests to the gross neglect on the part of parents, for generations past, to give to their children the training which it was their duty to give, and which it was the right of their children to receive. Our multiplied jails, penitentiaries, and asylums have within their gloomy walls to-day many poor souls who would be enjoying the sunlight of freedom were it not for the fact that they did not receive the proper training in childhood.
The Beautiful Mother Character
Parenthood carries with it the greatest responsibility ever committed to mortals. But those who bear it wisely, will have the joy of achieving the greatest success of which mortals are capable. Ah, it pays to be true to the cooing infant, the prattling baby, the trusting child, the ambitious youth; for time can never obliterate the blessed influence of the beautiful lives that help to mold one's destiny.
Imagination spans the distance of two thousand miles, and I am again beside the lowly resting place of her who was to me a bright example of Christian piety for more than forty years. From the depths of a grateful heart there wells up this blessed epitaph in memory of my sainted mother: “She was always true to her children.” Whittier has beautifully said, “Truth should be the first lesson of the child, and the last aspiration of manhood.” Truly, “great is truth, and mighty above all things.”
