THE CHILD by Mary Wood-Allen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 27.

THE CHILD

By Mary Wood-Allen

By Mrs. Mary Wood-Allen, M.D.

IV.—TRUSTWORTHINESS.

“You would not assert,” said my friend to me, “that trustworthiness can be called a characteristic of infancy? Surely a child must have been developed until it can understand what is said to it, and until it has some powers of judgment of its own, before it can be taught to be trustworthy.”

In reply, let me ask you a question. Would you assert that the child is not learning language during the period of its infancy, when it is hearing words, but is making no effort to pronounce them? Would you wait until it is old enough to talk before you would talk to it or in its hearing?

In its very earliest infancy, the child may be learning lessons of trustworthiness. He must first learn to trust, before learning to be trustworthy. The very regularity of his times of feeding gives him a feeling of assurance and of trust. If he learns by experience that food does not come regularly, and that he must cry or fret before he is cared for, he comes to have a feeling of uncertainty which must make him more or less unhappy.

All of his little experiences are educating him, either in trustworthiness or in distrust. He feels a confidence in the strong arms that hold him, until some one—perhaps in mere playfulness—frightens him with a pretense of being about to drop him. He trusts all the implied promises of good care, until repeated disappointments prove to him that they are not to be relied upon.

Mothers sometimes deceive their children by a pretense of going to bed with a child, and then slipping away after he is asleep. Sometime he discovers her absence, and becomes suspicious; distrust takes possession of his little heart, and the ruse is no longer successful. Perhaps the mother, finding that baby objects to her absence, deceives him by hiding her wraps and slipping away from him, it may be going so far as to say to him, “Mama is not going anywhere; she is right here in the next room.” Some day he discovers her absence; after that he is on the alert, and she has great difficulty in carrying out this deception. He is becoming distrustful, and through distrust is learning to be untrustworthy.

Parents very frequently make promises to the child which they do not fulfil. It may be that mother purchases freedom to absent herself with the promise that she will bring something home for baby. That part of the contract slips her memory, and she returns empty-handed. Baby discovers that the promise made to him has no value in her mind; therefore it will be only natural that he should attach no value to a promise made by himself in later years. Promises made to children should be kept to the very letter, even if it be a whipping that is promised. Children soon learn to rate at their proper valuation the threats made by angry parents. “If you do that again, I will whip you within an inch of your life,” may at first frighten the child into obedience; but discovering that disobedience is not followed by so severe a punishment, and perhaps not by any punishment at all, he learns to disregard the threat, and loses confidence in the parent.

It is a serious matter when the child doubts the truthfulness of the parent, even if the fulfilling of the promise which was made were better broken than kept, and would have been better still if never made.

A little child on a railway train was very restless. The mother said, “If you don’t keep still, the conductor will come along and cut off your nose.”

Seeing the conductor enter with his gleaming punch, the child shrank behind the bulwark of its mother’s shoulder, waiting for what might come. The conductor came along punching the tickets, and paid no attention to the child. After he had gone, the little girl came out from her hiding-place, and looking into her mother’s face, said, “Mama, you lied;” and the mother laughed as if it were something amusing; but it was a most terrible and truthful arraignment, which should have overwhelmed the mother with shame and confusion.

A little girl of five was once left in my charge while her mother went on an errand. The child cried and would not be pacified. “Your mother will be back soon,” I said, comfortingly.

“No, she won’t,” said the little one stoutly.

“But she said she would,” I asserted.

“O, I know her,” said the little one faithlessly.

It is not a little thing when a child of five so distrusts the mother’s word.

Long before the child can manifest untrustworthiness in himself, he must have absorbed into his nature the idea from the conduct of others. If we would have our children worthy of trust, we must ourselves be worthy of their trust. They learn all of their first lessons of life through imitation. If those who are training them live up to the highest ideals; are truthful in the smallest matters, treating even the most unimportant personages with scrupulous honesty, keeping all promises, even the most trivial, the idea of reliability and trustworthiness will become part of the fabric of the child’s character; and even before he can talk, he will manifest that he can be trusted.