Your Child Today and Tomorrow | Page 4

learned to know their
children without the help of science. These general laws and principles
may be profitably learned and used in bringing up the rising generation.
Too many people, and especially too many parents, think of the child as
merely a small man or woman. This is far from a true conception of the
child. Just as the physical organs of the child work in a manner
different from what we find in the adult, so the mind of the child works
along in a way peculiar to its stage of development. If a physician
should use the same formulas for treating children's ailments as he uses
with adults, simply reducing the size of the dose, we should consider
his methods rather crude. If a parent should feed an infant the same
materials that she supplied to the rest of the family, only in smaller
quantities, we should consider her too ignorant to be entrusted with the
care of the child. And for similar reasons we must learn that the
behavior of the child must be judged according to standards different
from those we apply to an adult. The same act represents different
motives in a child and in an adult--or in the same child at different
ages.
Moreover, each child is different from every other child in the whole
world. The law has recognized that a given act committed by two
different persons may really be two entirely different acts, from a moral
point of view. How much more important is it for the parent or the
teacher to recognize that each child must be treated in accordance with
his own nature!
It is the duty of every mother to know the nature of her child, in order
that she may assist in the development of all of his possibilities. Child
Study is a new science, but old enough to give us great help through
what the experts have found out about "child nature." But the experts
do not know your child; they have studied the problems of childhood,

and their results you can use in learning to know your child. Your
problem is always an individual problem; the problem of the scientist is
a general one. From the general results, however, you may get
suggestions for the solution of your individual problem.
We all know the mother who complains that her boys did not turn out
just the way she wanted them to--although they are very good boys.
After they have grown up she suddenly realizes one day how far they
are from her in spirit. She could have avoided the disillusion by
recognizing early enough that the interests and instincts of her boys
were healthy ones, notwithstanding they were so different from her
own. She would have been more to the boys, and they more to her, if,
instead of wasting her energy in trying to make them "like herself," she
had tried to develop their tastes and inclinations to their full
possibilities.
How much happier is the home in which the mother understands the
children, and knows how to treat each according to his disposition,
instead of treating all by some arbitrary rule! As a mother of three
children said one day, "With Mary, just a hint of what I wish is
sufficient to secure results. With John, I have to give a definite order
and insist that he obey. With Robert I get the best results by explaining
and appealing to his reason." How much trouble she saves herself--and
the children--by having found this much out!
A mother who knows that what we commonly call the "spirit of
destruction" in a child is the same as the _constructive impulse_ will
not be so much grieved when her baby takes the alarm clock apart as
the mother who looks upon this deed as an indication of depravity or
wickedness.
[Illustration: The impulse to action early leads to "doing."]
Some of the directions in which the parents may profit from what the
specialists have worked out may be suggested. There is the question of
punishment, for example. How many of us have thought out a
satisfactory philosophy of punishment? In our personal relations with
our children we all too frequently cling to the theory of punishment that

justifies us in "paying back" for the trouble we have been caused--if,
indeed, we do any more than vent our temper at the annoyance. It is not
viciousness on our part; it is merely ignorance. But the time is rapidly
approaching when there will be no excuse for ignorance, even if it is
not yet time to say that preventable ignorance is vicious.
How many mothers, for example, realize that the desire on the part of
the child to touch, to do--to get into mischief--is a fundamental
characteristic of childhood, and