Essay No. 8
Wanted—a Fair Start in Life
SOME THOUGHTS FOR WORKING MOTHERS
BY
Isabel D. Marris
MAY I be allowed to say a few words to mothers about the training of their children from the teacher's point of view ? A child is what a mother makes it during the first years of its life, not what the teacher makes it. Have you not sometimes heard parents say, "Oh, all that nonsense will be knocked out of Tommy as soon as he goes to school, so I need not mind spoiling him a little bit now," or, "Teacher will see to that all in good time, and better than I can—I needn't bother about it " ? Such remarks are only partly true; but it is wholly true that a child who is spoilt at home stands a poor chance at school, and that school will do him, or her, very little good in the long run. Let me show you what I mean.
Two children come fresh to school. Tommy Jones and Mary Brown.
Tommy's mother thinks all the world of him, and means to take great care of him and make him a very happy child. So she has waited on him all his little
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life—she dresses him herself, he never goes out alone his meals are always ready for him, and, no matter how busy or tired she is, Mrs. Jones runs and fetches for him, clears up his toys and messes, and never lets him cry for anything- She has hardly ever said "No" to him in her life.
Mary's mother is very fond of her, but there are seven of the Browns, so Mrs. Brown is very busy• moreover, she is a sensible woman. So Mary as baby was taught to lie quiet and not cry, and as she grew older she had to look after herself, and the baby too, sometimes. Since she was quite tiny she has always dressed herself, and sometimes helped in the house by lighting the fire, or by setting the table, or washing up ; indeed, Mrs. Brown does not forget to make all the children help. She has no time to say things twice over, and doesn't believe in doing so, either. If she says, "Mary, be quiet while I get the baby to sleep, and don't you go in the street while I'm upstairs," Mary knows quite well it means slapping—not on the head, but in the proper place—if she goes out, and a scolding if she makes a noise; but mother is never cross, although she is very strict.
Well, when Tommy and Mary come to school they start unfairly from the beginning. In the cloakroom Tommy stands and stares, and expects someone to come and take off his coat for him. Mary, on the other hand, whips off her things and hangs them up, and watches to see what happens next. In the school
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room it is just the same. Mary, who is used to looking after herself, slips into a desk and finds a slate and pencil like the other children do, and watches the teacher ready to start work. Tommy sees some plants and birds' eggs on the window sill, so he strolls across the room to look at them, and wants to play with them. At last, when he has been put into a desk, he is all behind the others, and his thoughts still wander round the plants and eggs instead of being busy with the lesson going on. He has never been taught to obey, or to fix his thoughts on what he is doing, and so it is not long before he gets into trouble with the teacher. A few days more, and he finds himself punished for the first time in his life, and goes home crying to his mother. She, silly woman, instead of telling him how foolish he was to get into trouble, as Mary's mother would have done, pities him and blames the teacher in his hearing. However, after this Tommy takes care to be good at school, though not at home. He is as good as gold as long as he is at school, for he is kept busy and is expected to be good, and is punished if he is not. When he goes home, however, he is cross at once, and sulks if he does not get his own way, and grumbles at everything. He does not like it at all if his mother asks him to go and buy some wood or oil, or to wash up the tea-things while she goes out.
Mary rarely gets into trouble, she makes good progress in her lessons, and is liked by her teachers
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and schoolfellows. At home, as she grows older, s becomes more and more helpful to her mother, and i quite a sunbeam in the house.
As the years go on and Tommy gets a big lad he becomes more and more selfish and a torment at home. He never watches his mother's face to see if she is tired, but always expects his clothes and his meals to be ready for him. He never offers to scrub; the floor for her on Saturday afternoons, or to fill the coal-boxes, and he even grumbles if he is asked; to clean his father's boots as well as his own. His mother sighs over it all sometimes, and finds it is-not such a joy to have a son as once she thought it was ; but she supposes it is only what one must expect, and, above all, having never managed Tommy when he was young, she now fears that if she suddenly became strict she might drive the boy from home, and that he might go with bad companions or get larking with the girls.
Then Tommy goes to business. Still it is the same tale. He doesn't like hard work. He has never been taught to bear pain well, so if his work leaves him stiff and sore, or with aching head or back, he either throws the job up to look for something easier, or he does as little as he can, shirks every time the foreman's back is turned, and watches the clock till it is time to leave off work. He may save his money or spend it, but, whichever, he does, it is for his own good, not for anyone else's,
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All the love and care and money his parents spent on him till he was fifteen or sixteen years old he takes as a matter of course.
Then he grows to be a man, and thinks he would like a wife, and you can well imagine the kind of girl he will choose. They will not wait till he has earned enough to make a home properly, so they take a house or a couple of rooms and furnish on the "hire purchase system."
Then trouble comes; he loses his work, things go wrong at home, and he gets into debt. What chance has he got, the poor lad, to pull things straight again ? He has never been taught from the day he was born to do a single thing he did not like, or to go without what he fancied (except during the short hours of his school-days); nor, indeed, to think of anything or of anybody but himself. So there he is, with no power to do anything but sulk and growl, and think what a poor, ill-used, miserable chap he is, who might have done really well if only "he'd had the luck some folks seemed to have." Luck ! It is pluck he is lacking in
Now, the point is this. Nearly all the trouble in Tommy's life was the mother's fault, not his nor his teachers'. She did not mean it in the least, but she was downright selfish to her child, and even cruel, too. These words sound very hard indeed, but they are quite true, and they are equally true of the father. If Mrs. Jones had given herself the trouble (for
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trouble it is) to teach Tommy to dress himself, to do what he was told at once and without arguing about it; if she had taught him to wait on her and his father and to help in the house ; and if she had been brave enough (for it hurts the mother most) to whip him when he was a tiny child for low and dirty tricks, or for stealing the sugar when she was away, or for using bad words just because he thought it grand, there would not have been all this trouble. If only his father had tried to train him when he was a little chap, and had said to the lad as he was growing up, " Look here, Tommy my lad, you behave yourself and wait on your mother, not she on you," things would have been very different.
There is no cruelty so hard and so bitter in its results as the cruelty of spoiling a child.
" Well," you say, "how are we to prevent it? What are we to do? " I can only give you one or two hints, there is no time for more.
1. Never give an order unless you mean to see it obeyed.—Do not say, "If you do that again I'll punish you," and then never punish the child, or "Don't you touch that," and then, after the little one's coaxing, say, "Well, perhaps you may this time." Whatever you say you must stick to it, or the children will never learn that "No ! " means "No!
2. Do not always save the children from the consequences of their faults.—If they deserve a whipping, do not keep their father from knowing it. Let
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them have it, and have done with it. For you to "keep things from father" is shocking, and leads to all kinds of wrong. It is the very way to teach the children to be deceitful. If they can't get ready for school in time, or leave their books behind, let them be late a time or two and take the consequences —it will save them trouble in later years, many and many a time. Children must be taught that, though they will be forgiven for being naughty, they must bear the results of their naughtiness. Nature and life teach this lesson, so it is only fair to let the children understand it when they are young.
3. Always say " Do," and seldom say " Don't."—It is no good nagging at a child. If it is really naughty, punish it without talking about it. Whenever you can, say, "Please do this to help mother," or "You would like to help grannie, wouldn't you ? " or "Do stir the porridge, will you ? " This is called the power of suggesting good, and it crowds out the wish to do naughty things, while if you are always saying, "Don't do this ! " and "You are not to do that ! " it makes the child want to do it all the more. Also, it makes you feel always cross and the child feel always naughty.
4. Don't talk about the children in front of them. —It is very bad for Tommy to hear, when he is stand-in by, "Oh, Tommy ! He's such a naughty boy; I can't take my eyes off him—he's that disobedient, he takes no notice of me." All this makes Tommy think
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one of two things—either that it is no use ever trying to be good, or else that his mother is really rather proud of his naughtiness. "He's that high-spirited, you know," he often hears her say, and he feels that she likes to tell the neighbours all about it, and that he is rather a wonderful little person after all.
It is just the same with praise. When a child is praised to her face, and hears it often said that she is so good and kind, and so pretty, too, and taller than Mrs. Somebody's girl, and so on—she soon becomes a horrid, conceited little thing, who thinks she can do nothing wrong ; she will not stand a word from anyone, but tosses her head and goes her own way.
5. Let the children have plenty of wholesome pleasure, but see that they give pleasure and help to others in their turn.—We hear a great deal about giving children "a good time," and about the value of a happy childhood. This is true and right, but it will only lead to unhappy selfishness if we heap pleasures and treats on the bairns, and do not make them give pleasure and loving help to mother and father and others in their turn.
Indeed, it is perfectly true that no teacher and no school in the world can do what a mother and father can do, and they can rarely, if ever, undo the harm the parents may do.
Therefore, to give the children a fair chance in life, there is nothing for it but to sacrifice your own
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feelings, your strength, your patience, your time in teaching even the little baby to wait for what it wants, food or play, without crying for it. In spite of all the trouble it means, make the young child wait upon itself, and upon you too, and do not give it " sweeties " or pleasures every time it cries or whines for them. Say what you mean and stick to it, punish when it is necessary (but never when you have lost your own temper, or by boxing the ears or head), then by six or seven years old the child will have a fair start in life, and every chance of doing well.
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