LITMIR.BIZ

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the parent.

      A child’s will ought to be strong for right-doing. If it be not so at the start, it is the parent’s duty to guide, or train, it accordingly. But to break, or crush, a child’s will, is inconsistent with the educating and training of that will. A conflict between a parent and a child, where the only question is, Whose will shall yield to the other? is, after all, neither more nor less than a conflict of brute force.

      Whether, in any instance, the will of the parent be set on having his child commit some repulsive crime against which the child’s moral nature recoils, or whether the will of the parent be set on the child’s reciting a Bible text or saying a prayer, the mere conflict of wills as a conflict of wills is a conflict of brute force; and in such a conflict neither party ought to succeed—for success in any such case is always a failure. If the parent really wills that the child shall do right, the parent’s endeavor should be to have the child will in the same direction. Merely to force one will into subjection to the other is, however, an injury both to the one who forces and to the one who submits.

      A hypothetical illustration may make this matter clearer. A father says to his strong-willed child: “Johnny, shut that door.” Johnny says, “I won’t.” The father says, “You shall.” Johnny rejoins, “I won’t.” An issue is here made between two wills—the father’s and the son’s. Many a parent would suppose that in such a case the child’s will ought to be broken, subjugated, forced, if need be, under the pressure of the father’s will; and the more conscientious the parent, the firmer is likely to be his conviction of duty accordingly.

      It is at such a point as this that the evil of breaking a child’s will, instead of training it, finds its foothold in many a Christian home. The father is determined not to yield his will to his child’s will. The child is determined not to yield his will to his father’s will. It is the old conflict between “an irresistible force and an immovable body.” In such a case, brute force may compel the child to do that which he chooses not to do, just as the rack and thumb-screws of the Inquisition could compel the tortured one to deny a belief which he chooses to adhere to; but in the one case, as in the other, the victim of the torturing pressure is permanently harmed, while the cause of truth and right has been in no sense the gainer by the triumph. Oh, what if God should treat his children in that way!

      What, then, it may be asked, should be done with such a child in an issue like this? It certainly would have been better, it would have been far better, for the parent not to make a direct issue by following the child’s first refusal with the unqualified declaration, “You shall.” But with the issue once made, however unfortunately, then what? Let the parent turn to the child in loving gentleness—not then in severity, and never, never, never in anger—and tell him tenderly of a better way than that which he is pursuing, urging him to a wiser, nobler choice. In most cases the very absence of any show of angry conflict on the father’s part will prompt the child to choose to do that which he said he would not do. But if worst comes to worst (for we are here taking the extremest supposable issue, which ought indeed rarely, if ever, to occur), let the parent say to the child: “Johnny, I shall have to give you your choice in this matter. You can either shut that door or take a whipping.” Then a new choice is before the boy, and his will is free and unbroken for its meeting.

      Be it understood, the father has no right to say, “I will whip you until you shut that door;” for that would be to deprive the boy of a choice, to deprive the boy of his will-power in the direction of his action: and that no parent is ever justified in doing. If the boy chooses to be whipped rather than to obey, the father must accept the result so far, and begin again for the next time; although, of course, there must be no undue severity in a child’s punishment; even the civil law forbids that. The father as a father is not entitled to have his will stand in the place of his child’s will; even though he is privileged to strive to bring the child to will in the same direction that the father’s will trends.

      All the way along through his training-life, a child ought to know what are to be the legitimate consequences of his chosen action, in every case, and then be privileged to choose accordingly. There is a place for punishment in a child’s training, but punishment is a penalty attached to a choice; it is not brute force applied to compel action against choice. No child ought ever to be punished, unless he understood, when he chose to do the wrong in question, that he was thereby incurring the penalty of that punishment.

      

      In most cases it is better, as has been said, for a parent to avoid a direct issue with a child, than to seek, or even than to recognize and meet, an issue. And in the endeavor to train a child’s will, there is often a gain in giving the child an alternative consequence of obedience or disobedience. That is God’s way of holding out rewards and punishments. For example, a wise young mother was just giving her little boy a bit of candy which was peculiarly prized by him, when, in speaking to a lady visitor he called her by the familiar term used by older members of the family in addressing her. The mother reminded him of the manner in which he should speak to the lady. He refused to conform to this. “Then I cannot let you have this candy,” said the mother. “All right,” was the wilful reply. “I’d rather go without the candy than call her what you tell me to.” The mother turned quietly away, taking the candy with her. An hour later that child came to his mother, saying, “Mamma, perhaps you can give me that candy now; for I will always call that lady just what you tell me to.” A few added words from the mother at that juncture settled that point for all time. Thenceforward the child did as he had thus been led to will to do. His will had not been broken, but it had been newly directed by judicious training.

      But, it may be asked, if a child be told by his mother to leave the room, at a time when it is peculiarly important that he should not remain there, and he says that he will not go, what shall be done with him? Shall he be permitted to have his own way, against his own true welfare? If the chief point be to get him out of the room, and there is no time just then for his training, the child can be carried out by main strength. But that neither breaks nor trains the child’s will. It is not a triumph of will, but of muscle. The child, in such a case, leaves the room against his will, and in spite of it. His will has simply been ignored, not broken. And there are times when a child’s bodily removal from one place to another is more important for the time being than is, just then, the child’s will-training. Such would be the case if the house were on fire, or if the child were taken suddenly ill. But that is apart from the question of will-training or will-breaking. The distinction here noted ought not to be lost sight of in considering this question.

      If, however, in the case above cited, the purpose of the mother be to meet the issue which is there raised, and to have it settled once for all whose will shall triumph, right or wrong, the mother can bring the pressure of brute force to bear on the child’s will, in order to its final breaking. Under that pressure, the child’s life may go out before his will is broken. In many an instance of that sort, this has been the result. Or, again, the child’s will may then be broken. If it be so, the child is harmed for life; and so is his mother. The one has come into a slavish submission to the conscientiously tyrannical demands of the other. Both have obtained wrong conceptions of parental authority, wrong conceptions of filial obedience, and wrong conceptions of the plan and methods of the Divine-Paternal government. But if, on the other hand, now be the time for teaching a child to use his own will aright, at the summons of one who is older and wiser than himself, and who is over him in the plan of God for his guidance and training, there is a better way than either the forcing a child out of the room against his will, or the breaking of his will so that that will is powerless to prompt him to stay or to go.

      The course to be pursued in this case is that already suggested in the case of the child whose father told him to shut the door. Let the mother give herself, at once, to firm and gentle endeavors to bring that child to use his own will, freely and gladly, in the direction of her commands to him. If necessary, let there be no more of sleeping or eating in that home until that child, under the forceful pressure of wise counsel and of affectionate entreaty, has willed to do that which he ought to do—has willed to be an obedient child. Here, again, is the difference between the wise training of the will, and the always unwise and unjustifiable breaking of the will.

      Even in the matter

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