THE CHILD by Mary Wood-Allen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 9, 1902

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

THE CHILD

By Mary Wood-Allen

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

V.—JUSTICE.

JUSTICE is represented as blindfolded and holding a pair of scales in her hand, indicating that she judges, not by appearances, but by an actual balancing of facts. Justice involves a comparing of relations, a recognition of what is due to two or more individuals. It is necessary to harmonious social life. Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, had no call to exercise justice; but as soon as he was joined by his "man Friday," the need for justice began.

As the child is born into social life, he should early learn to become harmonious with it. As in early childhood he can not judge and compare, he must learn justice through his daily experiences. Very often he learns of it principally by experiencing injustice.

The difficulty in the way of treating a child with justice lies in the difficulty the adult finds in putting himself into the place of the child, and thereby coming to understand him. The standpoints of the mature and immature must be different, and it is unjust to judge the latter by the standards of the former.

The child not only lacks the experiences which would enable him to form the judgments upon which just conclusions should rest, but he has not the comprehension of language which will enable him always to understand what is said to him, or to express his ideas in words.

Very often unjust treatment of the child arises from these two facts. H. Clay Trumbull illustrates this through an incident. He had forbidden his little daughter to go to a forest near by. She disobeyed and was punished. Again she disobeyed with like result. The father began to think her very obstinate and talked severely to her. At length the child, with a puzzled face, said, "Papa, where is the forest? Is it anywhere near the woods?"

Are you sure that your child always comprehends what you ask of him? Do you always feel certain, when you punish him for disobedience, that he may not be wondering what it is that he has done?

Children are sometimes punished for impertinence when they have had no such feeling in mind. A little lad was watching his father intently, and at length spoke up impulsively, "Papa, you look just like a blockhead!" The father was offended, and whipped the child for impertinence. It afterward was seen that the child was only endeavoring to express a fact which he had just observed, and which he thought was a compliment to the father, namely, that his head looked like the model head of wood from which the older children at school were drawing, and which by them was called a blockhead.

One obstacle to just treatment of the child is the failure to recognize his individuality. He is now, even in his babyhood, as much of an individual as he will ever be, and possessed of the rights of an individual; that is, the right of personal opinion, property, and personal reserve.

As an adult, he will need to have opinions and decided views. He has them as a child. They are, of course, crude and often unwise, but he should be educated to wiser opinions, not punished for those which he has formed through ignorance, nor laughed at for their expression.

His right to property should be recognized. This is difficult where the child is an only one. None of the "grown ups" want his belongings, so there is no call for him to surrender them, and he grows up with an undue idea of his own importance.

In a family of children there is a constant opportunity for teaching the recognition of each other’s belongings, the injustice of taking without leave that which belongs to another. In order to teach this to the child, the older people should never seize his possessions and dispose of them without his consent. His sticks or pebbles or bits of paper are his treasures, and their wanton destruction means as much to him as the destruction of a watch or purse or pen would mean to the parent.

He should be taught to keep them in place; and when warned that if found out of place they will be destroyed, he can not complain of injustice if the promise is kept; but he certainly has a right to feel aggrieved if they are swept up and thrown away or burned simply because to the mother they seem to be "trash." And she need not wonder if, in turn, the child is careless and destructive of her property.

Along with the recognition of property rights should come lessons in the surrendering of rights at the higher command of love. There is a right of giving as well as of keeping; and while teaching justice, we must not forget to teach generosity. Macdonald says, "One of the grandest things in having rights is, that, being your rights, you may give them up."

The right of personal reserve is one of the most difficult things to recognize. We feel that the child belongs to us; but, in truth, he belongs to himself. We have him entrusted to our care to train, and we should not needlessly encroach upon his personality.

There is no more reason why the child should be compelled to kiss people than that the parent should. It is often said that children like men better than women; and I have sometimes wondered if the reason may not be that men are more apt to treat the child as an individual. Women pounce upon the little one with exclamations and overwhelm him with caresses, giving the child no chance to express himself. Whereas men are less demonstrative, and are quite apt to greet the child with some such phrase as, "Hello, old chap, how are you?" Thus giving the little one the feeling that he too is a person.

As a final word of suggestion in regard to justice, let me quote from Mrs. Aldrich, "We are not to instruct before we develop, and not to require belief when knowledge is possible."