Read Ebook: Bringing up the Boy A Message to Fathers and Mothers from a Boy of Yesterday Concerning the Men of To-morrow by Werner Carl Avery

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Punishment other than corporal will not always do it, because at the time when this condition must be established the boy's baby mentality is not capable of compassing the long distances between cause and effect. At the early age at which it is necessary to establish perfect obedience, the moral penalties are too slow in action, too complex and too much dependent upon local condition to be effective. There are exceptions, of course. For example: You have a box of sweets and you tell the boy he may take one. He takes two. As a penalty for his disobedience you make him return both pieces to the box and you cast the package into the fire. There you have incorporal punishment that is instant, direct and effective; but this incident is made to order and of rare occurrence in fact. Suppose that the boy swallows the two pieces instantly, or suppose the more usual occurrence that you have forbidden him to partake of the sweets at all and he has surreptitiously eaten one. What then? Casting the remainder into the fire will not impress him at the time because his appetite has been satisfied, the desire is dulled. You may deprive him of his allowance on the day following, but the lapse of time dims the relation of the penalty to the offence. This kind of treatment works well with some of the minor errors but not with disobedience. The tendency to disobey is too constant, too persistent and too frequent, and too early in the boy's process of development.

A mother said: "It is not necessary for me to strike my child. I compel him to sit in a chair for one hour without speaking. He fears that more than the rod." Of course, he does, poor little chap! And that mother did not realise that she was substituting a barbaric torture for mild punishment. I reverse her reasoning: It is not necessary for me to so torture my boy. Nor shall I deprive him of his play, of the outside air, of his supper, of anything that makes for his health and happiness, nor of any good thing that it is in my power to give him.

Disobedience calls for a punishment that is short, direct and impressive. A sharp tap on the palm of a boy's hand, or on the calf of his leg--or two or five or ten--is the only kind of penance I know of that fills the requirements. It is the one short and sure road to an immediate result. Naturalists tell us that the sense of touch is the first experienced by a newborn child. It is the first and quickest wire from the outer world to the brain. Then come hearing and smelling and seeing and long after these come the moral perceptions, the power of deduction and the distinction of right and wrong. My experience has been that this first sense continues to be the live wire until well on toward the maturity of the child--if the child is a boy. There are many men, who can undergo the severest mental torture with calm resolution and fortitude, but who tremble at the sight of a dental chair. Not long ago I was chatting with a friend, who is a dentist, when a burly policeman rushed in, plumped himself into the operating-chair and asked the dentist to ease his aching tooth. The dentist looked at the tooth and reached for his forceps. "The only way to fix that is to extract it," he said. The officer of the law sprang from the chair like a jack-in-the-box and made for the door, remarking apologetically as he went out that he couldn't spare the time. "That man," said the dentist, when he had gone, "has a medal for bravery, and three times has been commended for saving lives at the risk of his own."

It is not that the boy fears pain, but that he fears the certainty of it, he dreads the deliberate, the inevitable punishment, accompanied by no moral stimulus with which to combat it. I have known my boy to take a severe beating from another boy in a struggle for the possession of an apple--and all without shedding a tear. The spat on the hand that I inflicted was a mere flea-bite to that beating, but because of it I could leave an apple within reach of his hand indefinitely and, though he might want it ever so much, he would not touch it if I had forbidden him.

So much for the psychology of corporal punishment. Now for the practice of it.

While I may have been guilty of many literary offences, a list of "Don'ts" has not, up to this time, been among them. But as the word obedience necessarily captions an imposing array of "Don'ts" for the boy, I think his parents may be better equipped to enforce them by considering some very important ones applying to themselves. At any rate, having spoken freely in favour of the use of the rod, it is vitally important to qualify my advocacy of it in accordance with my experience and belief. Every one of the qualifications or conditions that I am about to enumerate is essential to this system of discipline, so much so that if they were not to be considered as part of it, all that I have written would go for naught and I would ask to withdraw it completely.

Corporal punishment is resorted to for one kind of offence only--disobedience. Absolutely for no other.

Corporal punishment consists of a few sharp taps on the palm or calf with a thin wood ruler.

The boy is never punished in the presence of a third person, even a brother or sister.

Punishment must partake of the nature of a simple ceremony rather than of a torture; it must be regarded as a duty, not as a personal retaliation.

Say no more than that. Drive home the inseparability of the cause and the consequence; let the idea of instant, infallible obedience be telegraphed to his brain simultaneously with the sting of the ruler.

Have no fear that this form of chastisement will break your boy's spirit or will weaken the bond of love between him and yourself. Both will be strengthened by it. For one punishment inflicted, there are hundreds of kind words and deeds to prove your affection.

No child should be punished corporally other than as I have described.

To strike him in the face, to strike him at all with the hand or fist is brutal, and brutality is not only sinful but ineffective. Corporal punishment inflicted impulsively is dangerous because it lacks the earmarks of good intent.

To waver is unfair to the child. Yesterday he was punished. To-day he commits the same infraction and is not punished. Here is inconsistency and the boy is confused. If it were not deserved to-day, he reasons, it was undeserved yesterday; therefore, he is aggrieved. Every time you miss the atonement you lose a link, and the chain of your discipline is broken.

This is the chief error of parent disciplinarians. We fail to grasp the all-important truth that the unfailing application of corporal punishment is the very thing that can render punishment of any kind unnecessary. Many a boy is punished a hundred times where but a few would have sufficed had the penalty been exacted consistently and unfailingly. The right kind of discipline neither spoils the child nor spoils the rod. It spares both. It is like good dentistry. Every moment of hurt saves years of suffering in later life. And good painless discipline is as rare as good painless dentistry.

Further than this I have but little to say about discipline, for, once you have achieved infallible obedience, you are bound to achieve perfect discipline. The two words are synonyms in effect. No mother can hope for the best results if she seeks to train her boy as she would arrange her hair--to please her vanity--or as she would plan a shopping tour--to suit her convenience. Self must be submerged and the child's future kept uppermost. For discipline is a mother's duty to her boy. If she falters in it the boy will suffer. And every penalty that the unwatched boy escapes through a parent's frailty, he will have to pay, many fold, in the future years.

AS THE TWIG IS BENT

You hear the sound of sobbing in the distance, and as it draws nearer and grows more distinct you recognise the voice. A moment later the door flies open and there stands your boy, crying as though his heart would break. Little rivulets of tears are trickling down his dust-covered cheeks, and on the side of his face is the mark of a cruel blow.

Between sobs he tells you that the boy across the street did it. Why? He doesn't know why; he wasn't doing anything at all, "jes' playin' around."

You wipe the tears away and kiss the hurt, and as you note the quivering lip and the angry bruise, a wave of indignation swells within you. Glancing out through the window you see the boy across the street, cavorting triumphantly on the curb. How much bigger and coarser and rougher than your boy he appears--isn't it always so? Your little chap has come to you partly for sympathy, but mainly for retaliation. He shows you his wound and points to the boy who did it. He has been hurt, he has been grievously wronged, and he has come to you whom he has learned to look upon as his one never-failing protector and friend. You spring to your feet, fired with an overwhelming desire to rush into the street and avenge the wrong that has been done your child.

Madam, one moment! Don't do it. The retaliation you contemplate may be justice so far as the tormentor across the street is concerned, but it is a rank injustice to your own boy. I want to tell you on the authority of an ex-boy that if you would serve your son best, you will not interfere.

None but a mother knows the trials and heartaches of the fighting period in a boy's life; and none but a father realises what an important part that period plays in the shaping of the boy's career. The period runs approximately from the ages of five to ten. Prior to that the child is too young to indulge in it, and subsequently he is too old to tell about it. In the interim these affairs of the street are of daily occurrence and are to the mother a source of annoyance as mysterious as they are harrowing.

The right way to deal with this problem may not be the easiest way but it is the simplest, and it is the best for the boy. It is to let him alone. It is to teach him from the very beginning that outside of his own dooryard he must protect himself with his own hands. Have a distinct understanding that if he gets himself into a fight, he must get himself out of it. Tell him that by helping him you would only make more trouble for him because he would get to be known as a coward, and all the boys would annoy him more than before.

I went further than this with my boy. I told him that I did not approve of fighting, but that if he were forced into it, I would expect him to hit out hard and fast and defend himself blow for blow. I provided him with a punching-bag and a set of boxing-gloves and I showed him how to use them. He was just five when I established this rule and in one year it proved itself.

At six we started him off to school, and a few days later he came home one afternoon with a discoloured eye.

But there was no tear in it. He threw his books in a corner and ran, whistling, out to play. At dinner that evening my curiosity got the better of me, but I assumed indifference.

"Where did you get the eye, old chap?" I asked casually.

He looked up sheepishly, smiled and pushed his cup toward me.

"Some more milk, if you please, father," he said. The fighting problem had been solved forever.

The mother who coddles her boy shows him a double unkindness. She not only increases his boyhood miseries, through making him the particular target of other boys, but she retards the development of his self-reliance and his manliness.

It is natural for a very young boy to seek to evade responsibility for an offence by disclaiming it. The first time he does this he must be made to know that, however serious the offence may be, it is as nothing compared to the lie that he seeks to cover. I did not go so far as to promise my boy immunity for infractions that he frankly confessed; but I did make it a rule unto myself that he should never suffer through confession, and I did invariably commend him, in the highest terms, when he told the truth under conditions that made it peculiarly praiseworthy. An example: I find my inkstand tipped over and a great black stain upon the carpet. I summon the boy and ask him sternly: "Who did that?" My manner is threatening. The offence is grave. He is thoroughly frightened, but after a moment he answers, falteringly, "I did." Instantly my attitude changes from admonitive to commendatory. I say to him: "This is an awful thing that you have done. The carpet is spoiled. The stain will always be there. Nothing can remove it. But you have told the truth and that is the finest thing that a boy can do. As bad as this is, I would rather you would do it a hundred times than tell one lie."

If, on the other hand, he falsifies, I grieve before him. I tell him that nothing that a boy can do is as bad as a falsehood: that a lie is the very meanest and lowest thing in the world. I tell him that I fully forgive him for spilling the ink, but it is almost impossible to forgive him for that lie. I leave him to meditate upon it.

I never allow an untruth to pass without bringing a blush of shame to the boy's cheek. I never let a lie show itself without holding it up as a thing to be despised. The boy first gets to fear a falsehood, then to despise it--and finally to forget it. And by forgetting I mean that it passes beyond the pale of things considerable. Truth has become a fixed habit.

Having accomplished this, you have given your boy a solid foundation upon which to rear the structure of good character.

I believe in sending the boy to the church. Regardless of the parents' attitude toward religion, I believe it is their duty to give the boy the benefit of a church environment while he is still a boy. Irrespective of sect or creed, he is sure to absorb some good in an atmosphere of divine worship. In later years he may depart from the precepts there learned, but the early teachings and associations of the church or the Sunday school will leave their influence in some degree, and whether it is much or little, it will never be for anything but good.

I give my boy the Bible to study and the Golden Rule to live by. I teach him to speak or think deprecatingly of no religious faith, and show him that all are working for the betterment of man.

From his infancy I guard him from superstition and discourage the fear of fancied dangers. I do not believe it is necessary for a boy, at any age, to fear the dark. Mine never did. Fear of the dark is born of suggestion, and he has been successfully guarded from any word that would couple darkness with danger. Throughout his entire childhood he never sensed the usual terrors of the unlighted room and the darkened passage. I would never confirm even the Santa Claus myth, though I did not dissuade him from it, because I well remember the added joy it brought to me when I was a boy. When the question was put to me I said: "I shall not tell you because the mystery of Christmas adds much to your enjoyment of it. Believe it or not, as you choose; I have nothing to say." With this pleasant exception he has never asked me a question that I have not answered truthfully and as completely as I could.

I live close to my boy, and by so doing I find his level and see his narrowed horizon as he sees it. When he was only six we lived together in the woods, slept under the same blanket, fished and sailed and took our daily swim together. Beginning at that early age we have sat by the campfire at night and talked of the stars and the moon and the strange noises of the wood. Nowhere can you get as close to your boy as you can out under the sky with only Nature about you. It would be a splendid thing if every father could devote a few weeks each year to "roughing it" with his boy. Besides the opportunities it offers for community of thought, it brings out a phase of the boy's character that under other conditions might never come to the surface. I recall one evening, as the boy and I were lolling on the bank of a river, how he astonished me by exclaiming: "See! What a beautiful sunset!" He had seen the sun go down many times over the housetops of the town, but it needed the solitude of that particular place and time to give him an appreciation of its beauties. Unexpectedly there was disclosed to me an aesthetic side of his nature that I had never known.

These are opportunities that open peculiarly to the father, and he should take advantage of them.

I believe that every boy should be encouraged to acquire a college education and that he should be made to pay for it. We hear a good deal of talk nowadays about the lack of real advantage that the college man has over the other fellow. Thousands of college men fail in their struggles with the work-a-day world, and often you find a degree man working in a subordinate capacity to a man of his own age who missed a college education. It is a fact, too, that the honour men of our colleges rarely distinguish themselves in their chosen professions. But none of these things prove anything, because the personal equation has to be reckoned in. I believe that the young man who takes his college course and takes it seriously is better fitted for the work of life than he would otherwise have been. The unschooled man who succeeds would have succeeded with more ease and to a higher standard had he been schooled. The college man who fails would have failed more miserably had he been untrained. I believe that failure of an educated man is in spite of his education, and not because of it.

If you want to make sure that your boy is going to use his college education to the best advantage, let him pay his way. The failures that our institutions of learning turn out are not the men who work their way through; they are the sons of the affluent, the little brothers of the rich. The boy who drives the hay-rake or works behind the counter of his father's store in vacation time is rarely found among the derelicts. Let the boy share the cost with you, and you need have no fear that either the time or money spent for education will go for naught.

From the first time that he trots over to the candy store with his penny, the boy should be trained to know the intrinsic value of money. Encourage him in moderate frugality, not because the accumulation of money is a desideratum, but because profligacy is bad for the morals.

Whether it is the mother or the father who takes especial charge of the boy, or both, they should aim steadfastly to have his complete confidence always. He should be made to feel that they are not only dearer to him, but nearer to him than any one else in the world.

If a condition of implicit confidence can be established between you and the boy, you can depend upon him to be receptive of the good which you seek to charge him with.

Then, with truth as his anchor, no storm of the outer world can sweep him beyond the influence of home. The bulwark of the good character that you have builded will stand throughout his lifetime.

A TALK AT CHRISTMAS TIME

On a Christmas Eve some thirty-odd years ago a very small boy, guarded on either side by sisters older than himself, knelt at the low sill of his bedroom window and looked wonderingly out into the night. Above was the sky, studded with twinkling stars. Below was a soft, silent blanket of white--the unsullied snow of a northern winter. Everything was very still.

The boy looked first at the sky. Being of the baby age when the children of the wise are put to bed with the sun, the night sky was more mystic than the snow. There were so many of those stars, and they appeared to be twinkling at him with cheerful friendliness. One attracted him particularly. It did not twinkle and was not so merry as the others, but it was larger and shone with a bright, steady glow. It seemed to be reaching down toward the boy as though it would speak to him.

He recalled the story that had been told him only the day before, the story of the first Christmas and of three wise men who had been guided to the manger wherein lay the infant Christ; and the thought came to him that this, perhaps, was the star that led them. The suggestion of the manger brought the boy's eyes downward to the snow-topped stable opposite his window; and from the stable he turned to the white-roofed houses with their chimneys still smoking from the evening fires. He wondered if Santa Claus would have to wait till all the fires were out before he could make his rounds.

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