Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young | Page 4

trace of injury behind; but then,
on the other hand, there is certainly reason to fear that such
commotions, especially if often repeated, tend to impede the regular
and healthful development of the organs, and that they may become the
origin of derangements, or of actual disorganizations, resulting very
seriously in future years. It is impossible, perhaps, to know with
certainty whether permanent ill effects follow in such cases or not. At
any rate, such a remedy is a violent one.
The Frightening System.
2. There is a second grade of violence in the treatment of such a case,
which consists in exciting pain or terror, or other painful or
disagreeable emotions, through the imagination, by presenting to the
fancy of the child images of phantoms, hobgoblins, and other frightful
monsters, whose ire, it is pretended, is greatly excited by the misdeeds
of children, and who come in the night-time to take them away, or
otherwise visit them with terrible retribution. Domestic servants are
very prone to adopt this mode of discipline. Being forbidden to resort
to personal violence as a means of exciting pain and terror, they attempt
to accomplish the same end by other means, which, however, in many
respects, are still more injurious in their action.
Management of Nurses and Servants.
Nurses and attendants upon children from certain nationalities in
Europe are peculiarly disposed to employ this method of governing
children placed under their care. One reason is that they are accustomed
to this mode of management at home; and another is that many of them

are brought up under an idea, which prevails extensively in some of
those countries, that it is right to tell falsehoods where the honest object
is to accomplish a charitable or useful end. Accordingly, inasmuch as
the restraining of the children from wrong is a good and useful object,
they can declare the existence of giants and hobgoblins, to carry away
and devour bad girls and boys, with an air of positiveness and seeming
honesty, and with a calm and persistent assurance, which aids them
very much in producing on the minds of the children a conviction of
the truth of what they say; while, on the other hand, those who, in
theory at least, occupy the position that the direct falsifying of one's
word is never justifiable, act at a disadvantage in attempting this
method. For although, in practice, they are often inclined to make an
exception to their principles in regard to truth in the case of what is said
to young children, they can not, after all, tell children what they know
to be not true with that bold and confident air necessary to carry full
conviction to the children's minds. They are embarrassed by a kind of
half guilty feeling, which, partially at least, betrays them, and the
children do not really and fully believe what they say. They can not
suppose that their mother would really tell them what she knew was
false, and yet they can not help perceiving that she does not speak and
look as if what she was saying was actually true.
Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine.
In all countries there are many, among even the most refined and highly
cultivated classes, who are not at all embarrassed by any moral delicacy
of this kind. This is especially the case in those countries in Europe,
particularly on the Continent, where the idea above referred to, of the
allowableness of falsehood in certain cases as a means for the
attainment of a good end, is generally entertained. The French have two
terrible bugbears, under the names of Monsieur and Madame
Croquemitaine, who are as familiar to the imaginations of French
children as Santa Claus is, in a much more agreeable way, to the
juvenile fancy at our firesides. Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine
are frightful monsters, who come down the chimney, or through the
roof, at night, and carry off bad children. They learn from their _little
fingers_--which whisper in their ears when they hold them near--who

the bad children are, where they live, and what they have done. The
instinctive faith of young children in their mother's truthfulness is so
strong that no absurdity seems gross enough to overcome it.
The Black Man and the Policeman.
There are many mothers among us who--though not quite prepared to
call in the aid of ghosts, giants, and hobgoblins, or of Monsieur and
Madame Croquemitaine, in managing their children--still, sometimes,
try to eke out their failing authority by threatening them with the "black
man," or the "policeman," or some other less, supernatural terror. They
seem to imagine that inasmuch as, while there is no such thing in
existence as a hobgoblin, there really are policemen and prisons, they
only half tell an untruth by saying to the recalcitrant little