This would be, at least, a commendably frank statement of the tyranny
under which most children are held if it were not for the unjustified
intrusion of the love motive. This occurs, however, in a still more
objectionable form in a reply to a mother, in which the author writes,
"Should it ever be necessary to spank him I should not refuse to kiss
him, even while you are doing so. He can learn that no punishment is
inflicted in anger and that punishment does not turn aside your
affection."
Such conduct is adding insult to indignity. It goes beyond the tyranny
which few parents can resist in a state in which interests are
necessarily so conflicting as one which is inhabited by growing persons
and grown-ups. It is probably not to be expected, or even desirable,
that parents should always allow the interests of the child to displace
their own, but when they cannot resist the temptation to sweep over the
borders of childhood with all their armed forces it is a little too much
to ask that the conquered people should be not only docile but grateful.
In other words, the father or mother who says as a prelude to
punishment, "I am doing this for your own good," is a liar at least nine
times out of ten. What he means is, "I am doing this for my own
convenience," and he ought to be frank enough to say so.
The trouble is, as Mr. Floyd Dell has pointed out, that the parent wants
complete submission and complete affection too. He can't have both
without making a hypocrite of his child. It is perfectly healthy that
the child should have fierce outbursts of resentment against his parents
when they get in his way, and he should be allowed, and even encouraged,
to express his protest. It is the most arrant nonsense to suppose that a
relationship of continual love is a desirable thing to keep up. It is
much too wearing.
The other day I tried to take a small fragment of newspaper out of H.
3rd's mouth, and he tried to swing his right to the jaw. I still have
the reach, and I was able to protect myself by a frequent use of a
lightning left jab. Finally I rescued the paper. It was only a small
section of an editorial in an evening newspaper about the trial of the
five Socialist Assemblymen. Probably I might just as well have permitted
H. 3rd to swallow it. Without doubt, the paper would have taken it back
the next day, anyway.
In speaking of his endeavor "to make the small duties of life pleasant
to the child" one parent writes: "These items should never enter the
arena of argument; they may, if taken up early, by a gentle, loving
firmness, be treated always as though they were as certain as sunrise,
for there is a curious conventionality, a liking for having things done
in a dependable fashion, with little folks, and there is nothing to
which human nature in young or old more cheerfully submits than the
inevitable."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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