LITMIR.BIZ

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his. Each child can be trained to his utmost possibilities, but not every child can be trained to the utmost possibilities of every other child. Child-training has the fullest scope of the capacity of the particular child under treatment, and child-training is limited in every case by the limitations of that child’s capacity.

      

      A child born blind can be trained to such a use of his other senses that he can do more in the world than many a poorly trained child who has sight; but a blind child can never be trained to discern differences in colors at a distance. A child who has by nature a dull ear for music can be trained to more or less of musical skill; but a child who is born without the sense of hearing can never be trained to quickness in the discerning of sounds. A child can be trained to facility in the use of every sense and faculty and limb and member and muscle and nerve which he possesses; but no training will give to a child a new sense, a new faculty, a new limb, a new member, a new muscle, a new nerve. Child-training can make anything of a child that can be made of that child, but child-training cannot change a child’s nature and identity.

      The limitations of child-training are more likely to be realized than its extensive scope. Indeed, the supposed limitations of child-training are very often unreal ones. Many a parent would say, for example, that you cannot change a child’s form and features and expression by training; yet, as a matter of fact, a child’s form and features and expression can be, and often are, materially changed by training. The chest is expanded, the waist is compressed, a curved spine is straightened, or a deformity of limb is corrected, by persistent training with the help of mechanical appliances. Among some primitive peoples, the form of every child’s head is brought to a conventional standard by a process of training; as, among other primitive peoples, the feet or the ears or the eyes or the lips are thus conventionally trained into—or out of—shape. And in all lands the expression of the face steadily changes under the process of persistent training.

      As it is with the physical form, so it is with the mental and moral characteristics of a child; the range is wide within the limitations of possible results from the training process. A nervous temperament cannot, it is true, be trained into a phlegmatic one, or a phlegmatic temperament be trained into a nervous one; but a child who is quick and impulsive can be trained into moderation and carefulness of speech and of action, while a child who is sluggish and inactive can be trained to rapidity of movement and to energy of endeavor. An imbecile mind can never be trained into the possibilities of native genius, nor can a moral nature of the lowest order be trained to the same measure of high conscientiousness as a nature that is keenly sensitive to every call of duty and to the rights and the feelings of others; but training can give unsuspected power to the dormant faculties of the dull-minded, and can marvelously develop the latent moral sense of any child who is capable of discerning between right and wrong in conduct.

      The sure limitations of a child’s possibilities of training are obvious to a parent. If one of the physical senses be lacking to the child, no training will restore that sense, although wise training may enable the child to overcome many of the difficulties that meet him as a consequence of his native lack. And so, also, if the child have such unmistakable defects of mind and of character as prove him to be inferior to the ordinary grade of average humanity, the wisest training cannot be expected to lift him above the ordinary level of average humanity. But if a child be in the possession of the normal physical senses, and the normal mental faculties, and the normal moral capacities, of his race, he may, by God’s blessing, be trained to the best and fullest use of his powers in these several spheres, in spite of all the hindrances and drawbacks that are found in the perversion or the imperfect development of those powers at his start in life.

      In other words, if the child be grievously deformed or defective at birth, or by some early casualty, there is an inevitable limitation accordingly to the possibilities of his training. But if a child be in possession of an ordinary measure of faculties and capacity, his training will decide the manner and method and extent of the use of his God-given powers.

      It is, therefore, largely a child’s training that settles the question whether a child is graceful or awkward in his personal movements, gentle or rough in his ways with his fellows, considerate or thoughtless in his bearing toward others; whether he is captious or tractable within the bounds of due restraint; whether he is methodical and precise, or unsystematic and irregular, in the discharge of his daily duties; whether he is faithful in his studies, or is neglectful of them; whether he is industrious or indolent in his habits; whether the tastes which he indulges in his diet and dress and reading and amusements and companionships are refined, or are low. In all these things his course indicates what his training has been; or it suggests the training that he needed, but has missed.

      

      IV.

       DISCERNING A CHILD’S SPECIAL NEED OF TRAINING.

       Table of Contents

      Some one has said, that a mother is quite right when she declares enthusiastically of her little one, “There never was such a child as this, in the world, before!” for in fact there never before was such a child. Each child starts in life as if he were the only child in the world, and the first one; and he is less like other people then than ever he will be again. He is conformed to no regulation pattern at the outset. He has, to begin with, no stock of ideas which have been passed on and approved by others. He neither knows nor cares what other people think. He is a law unto himself in all matters of thought and taste and feeling. He is, so far, himself; and, just so far, he is different from everybody else.

      

      Left to himself, if that were a possibility, every child would continue to be himself; but no child is left to himself: he is under training and in training continually. And so it is that the training of a child is quite as likely to change him from his best self to a poorer self, as it is to develop and perfect that which is best in his distinctive self. Child-training is, in many a case, the bringing of a child into purely conventional ways, instead of bringing out into freest play, in the child, those qualities and characteristics which mark him as a unique and individual personality among the sons of men. How to learn wherein a child’s real self needs stimulating, and wherein it needs curbing or changing, is a question of questions in child-training.

      No quality of a good physician is of more importance than skill in making a diagnosis of a patient’s case. If a master-mind in this realm were to pass with positiveness on the disease of every patient, the treatment of that disease would be comparatively easy. A young graduate from the medical school, or a trained nurse, would then, in most instances, be capable of knowing and doing that which was needful in the premises. But until the diagnosis is accurate, the best efforts of the ablest physician are liable to be misdirected, and so to be ineffective for good. As it is with the physician and his patient, so it is with the parent and his child. An accurate diagnosis is an essential prerequisite to wise and efficient treatment. The diagnosis secured, the matter of treatment is a comparatively easy matter. A parent’s diagnosis of his child’s case is in the discerning of his child’s faults, as preliminary to a process of training for their cure. Until that is secured, there is no hope of intelligent and well-directed treatment.

      Yet it is not the easiest thing in the world to say what are a child’s peculiar faults, and what is, therefore, that child’s peculiar need of training. Many a parent is disturbed by a child’s best traits, while he underestimates or overlooks that child’s chief failings. And many another parent who knows that his child is full of faults cannot say just what they are, or classify them according to their relative prominence and their power for evil. “That boy’s questions will worry my life out. He is always asking questions; and such questions. I can’t stand it!” This is said by many a father or mother whose child is full of promise, largely because he is full of questions.

      But if a boy has a bright mind and positive preferences, and is ready to study or to work untiringly in the line of his own tastes, and in no other line, it does not always occur to his parents that just here—in this reluctance to apply himself in the line of wise expediency

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