BE PATIENT WITH THE LITTLE ONES.
By H. M. Brooks
Undoubtedly the admonition, “Be patient with the little ones,” is often misunderstood and misapplied, and that, too, by parents who earnestly desire to do right. It is not at all surprising that a person who, without experience, and with very little theoretical knowledge of any value, engages in the work of training children, should presently be seeking somewhat anxiously for easy ways to do right. For this work is in itself so nice and difficult as long ago to have given rise to the saying, trite enough, “You must bring up one family before you can know how it should be done.” The instincts of parental love, if they had a chance for full play, would, no doubt, find ways to surmount or to avoid many difficulties; but with the majority of us these instincts are not allowed their full freedom nor their natural action. In the sharp struggle for daily bread, in the often-times sharper struggle for social superiority, for wealth, for distinction, the affections are, in numberless instances, half smothered or wholly warped—put off from day to day with the promise of “a more convenient season,” which, perhaps, never comes, or comes only when it is too late. Beset by the innumerable embarrassments that must attend an ignorant attempt to manage a most complex and delicate business, with every moment of time seemingly occupied to its utmost capacity with pressing cares and labors, almost precluding the possibility of coherent thought, the affectionate parents look out anxiously for advice. They are told on every side to “Be patient with the little ones,” “Do not hold them with a stern, restraining hand,” “Do not visit upon all their little faults and follies continual reproof and punishment” (the faults, however, seem to be continual and in endless variety), and one of the best educational writers of the present day says plainly, “Do not expect much moral goodness from children.” The parental heart is sadly warped which does not throw assent to every kindly word that is uttered for children; and what wonder, then, if, amid the hurry and anxiety and the disappointing tangle of mistakes, the quality of the patience enjoined be mistaken, and the little faults and follies excused or ignored, until they become great and uncontrollable ones? Indeed, looking at the subject from this point of view, it is a matter for wonder that the work of home-training is so well done, that so many children do finally come up to worthy manhood and womanhood. The patience needed in this work, however, is not merely a quiet endurance of the cares and vexations inseparably connected with it; there must be patience to labor on, though no immediate results of that labor be observable; to give “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little,” even though the lessons seem to be lost; in short, patience “to labor and to wait.” To labor, not leaving the little failings unnoticed, because they are little; to wait, not attempting too much at once, nor crowding the work of years into months; but steadily, calmly, and unyieldingly striving to build up noble and symmetrical character, keeping always in view the end to be attained. For just here we are beset by a great danger—the danger of becoming confused in a labyrinth of the little details of every-day work, thus entirely losing sight of, or wandering far aside from, the final object of our labors. While we must remember that no circumstance of a child’s life, no peculiarity of its mind, is too trivial to be noticed, since upon any one of them may hinge the mightiest consequences, we yet must never forget, in our watch of particulars, that it is the general tendency of all these combined which constitutes the progress of development. Yet how frequently it happens—alas, that it should ever happen—that the impatient thought, culminating, perhaps, in the impatient word or the impetuous deed, so magnifies some troublesome yet really trivial fault, that the child seems to us to be retrograding frightfully, when he is really making all practicable normal progress. Therefore it is well for us to know just what normal development really is. The moral development which brings a great religious experience into a child’s life; the judgment which knows to choose the good from the evil every time, ere yet the subject has reached his teens; the affection which, in childhood, always forgets itself in ministering to others, are not natural and well-timed phases of progress. They may be very convenient and gratifying to parents, and teachers, and friends, but they are not to be trusted for what they seem to be; these apparently lovely manifestations may be but the prelude to permanent disorganization; something in the mental economy is jarred or thrown out of place. With a wise care which holds in check, or, at least, refrains from encouraging any precocious action either of the intellect or of the sensibilities, the equilibrium may be restored. But the clear reflections, the steadily ruling conscience, the affectionate self-denial, which should be attributes of the mature mind, do not belong to childhood—should not be welcomed there. The immature forms of all human faculties should be there, and their crude and occasional expression should be gladly observed and carefully encouraged and directed; but everything in child-nature must grow to its appointed form and stature, in order to be reliable. Therefore, love’s wise patience passes lightly over those childish peculiarities, which, though they may be somewhat troublesome and disagreeable, are yet certain to disappear as childhood disappears; and labors, with a faith that never despairs, upon the forming habits that will grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength.—H. M. Brooks, in Arthur’s Home Magazine.