 Preface of Living with Our Children, a book of little essays for mothers. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Living with Our Children by Clara D. Pearson. Preface. Since the little essays in this volume may seem to many too simple to deserve publication, the author begs the privilege of accounting for their existence. A mother and grandmother herself, she has by virtue of her past experiences as teacher and training teacher, frequently been called upon to speak before mother's clubs and parent teacher associations. The questions, perplexities and discouragements, which have been submitted to her afterward both publicly and privately, have brought home to her the absolute pathos of the situations in which most parents sooner or later find themselves through inexperience and eagerness with which they avail themselves of the chance to counsel with those who they feel can help them. These perplexities come to fathers and mothers alike, but more frequently and insistently to mothers, since their days are spent in more constant association with their children. Sometimes there is no elderly advisor at hand. Sometimes the one consulted seems to have had no parallel experience. Sometimes the books read seem too theoretical, too remote, from the reader's commonplace everyday problems, yet somewhere there is a wealth of experience to draw upon, somewhere there is a clue to the right way of doing. It is hoped that the very simplicity and homeliness of method of this book may help eager, devoted, perplexed parents to realize that similarity in a parent diversity which underlies the experiences of different people, to perceive more clearly that the small affairs of childhood are really very large in their significance, and that our way of dealing with them concerns far more than the present moment. Hoping that a lifetime spent in teaching, living with, and writing for children has enabled the author more perfectly to understand them and their problems, and that this understanding may be passed on through the medium of the printed page. She sends her little essays forth, with no further apology. She does, however, wish to acknowledge her indebtedness to Mrs. John B. Martin of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the beautiful short prayer compiled of Bible verses. End of preface. Chapter 1 of Living with Our Children, a book of little essays for mothers. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Living with Our Children, by Clara D. Pearson. Enjoying the Job. There is work that is work, there is play that is play. There is play that is work, there is work that is play. In one of these lies your happiness. Find it. The job may be a big one, or it may be small. It may be one to be accomplished under the scrutiny and criticism of the public, or it may consist of laborious days in obscurity. It may be one of intensive work against time, or it may require slow and steady devotion through many years. These details may vary, and yet our job is sure to have many elements in common with that of the other person who seems to be so differently situated. White bread is white bread, even though the ingredients vary somewhat in proportion and the methods of handling the dough are dissimilar. The great thing is to have the resulting loaves all that they ought to be. In one way or another we generally qualify for our new tasks by more or less systematic training. The bookkeeper has his course in business college. The stenographer progresses from the simple loops and pot hooks to the rapid intricacies of practical shorthand. The daughter in the home begins with the making of easy dishes and plain underwear, and learns by slow degrees until she can serve elaborate dinners and turn out party gowns. But for the most important and delightful work that is required of human beings, the care of their children, there is very little advanced training. There are, it is fortunately true, more and more books dealing with the physical care of infants and older children. Books which tell all sorts of more or less intimate details in the simplest of language. The supplement, or replace the tuition of the nurse whose departure, when the baby is a few weeks old, is apt to leave the young parents quite odd and overwhelmed by their unwanted responsibility. There are also the old-fashioned doctor books, which one knows better than to follow in the treatment of the disease, but which describe ailments with such convincing accuracy that the panic-stricken young mother can generally make sure that her air has not the particular illness which she had feared. All these publications are helpful, to many who are treading new paths of perplexity, but when the physical well-being of the first born is assured, there remain a new set of problems which are even more baffling, and for which clearly enough our experiences in home and business world do not seem to have fitted us. We find that this attractive little person has personality, that his will is not always a reflection of our own, that he finds pleasure in things which do not appeal to us in the least, that his mental processes are not as ours. We bathe him and feed him and provide him with suitable clothing, but something still remains undone. We begin to suspect that there is more to the business of bringing up children than we had foreseen, and we have not always an intimate and experienced counselor at hand. If then there is some way of taking counsel with books, if our problem which seems so intensely personal and peculiar has yet much in common with those which others have solved, is there not some way in which we may grip the principles involved and work out our own solution more quickly and happily? There are certain questions which we do well to consider, questions which have to do with all kinds of employment, no matter how great their superficial differences. First, is the job worthwhile? It is. There is nothing in all creation so fine as a thoroughly fine human being, whether one considers the scriptural order of creation or the relative importance at the present moment of all that exists, the climax is the fine human being, and fine human beings are the results of many influences and much care, the most constant and potent of which come from the parents. Is it necessary? It is. The child cannot bring himself up from the time he is weaned as a young animal does. Is it dignified? It is, in spite of the fact that many undignified and menial duties must contribute to its success. There is no royal road to any fine accomplishment. New continents are one, new elements are conquered by tedious drudgery which we often forget when the achievement is complete, and by faithfulness to many grimy and uninteresting details which are redeemed from being commonplace by the end which they subserve. Are we well equipped to succeed with our new responsibilities? Probably not at the outset, but what of that? We can develop ourselves as we go along. The great thing is to realize our own inadequacy and determine to remedy it. We can learn the wise conservation of physical strength, can broaden our mental outlook by taking thought, and can deepen our spiritual life by reading and by association with those who are spiritually strong. To many of us think that we cease to develop when children come to make their many imperative demands upon our strength and time. That is the mistake. There is no education in the world to equal it. Always provided that we have in our hearts the desire to measure up to our opportunities. It was not idly ordained that our strongest instincts should lead us towards our most rigorous training. It is not a training in the accomplishments of the drawing room, nor is it so much a delving into the learning of past ages to which we are invited. It is an education for life itself, the deepening and vitalizing of every ability which we have. The fullest unfolding of many aspirations which budded in our youth and may flower in middle age. It is learning to live the most perfectly rounded life there is. And last of all, does it pay? It does most gloriously. No work is enjoyable or profitable if undertaken in the wrong spirit or done half-heartedly. To one, however, who will accept the responsibility and enter heartily into the developing companionship of his children, there comes from day to day the sweetest of compensations for old pleasures forsaken and new tasks assumed. There comes a satisfaction in giving back to the race a return in kind for the training he has received and in passing on the torch. There comes, too, in spite of weary days, and sometimes sleepless nights a certain youthfulness of heart possessed only by those adults who have truly learned to live with their children. CHAPTER 2 Normal children reason fairly well concerning matters in their own little world. If they want a certain thing which seems especially desirable to them, why should they not ask for it? They do. If they do not receive it, for the first asking, why should they not ask again? They do. And as long as there is a chance that persistence will bring them the coveted object they persist, that is perfectly natural. Regarded in one way, it is even commendable. Whence would the world draw its supply of canvassers, promoters, even reformers, if there were no such thing as reward for persistence? One logical feature of the case which we sometimes overlook is that the requests persist because there is a chance of success. No canvasser wastes his time talking vacuum cleaners to a housewife who already has a perfectly satisfactory one. No promoter squanders those hours which are money to him on a man who has nothing to invest. Reformers discern the points at which they can accomplish most and turn their energies there. If there is absolutely no chance of success, why expend one's energies in fruitless endeavor? They do not. If there is absolutely no chance of success, why should a child tease? He does not. At least he does not, after he has proved the matter to his own satisfaction. Of course he tries the method out pretty thoroughly before drawing his conclusions. We all would. Conclusions are worthless unless based on ascertained facts. And of course they may be reversed later if the facts are altered. He may find that teasing never works with his father. Then he stops teasing his father. He may find that it does work with his mother. If so, he continues to tease. Why not? Or he may find that when she is well and not too hurried he can at harasser into conceding to him that of which her judgment disapproves. But that, when she is half ill or rushing to make a train, he can do so. In that case he acts accordingly. Or perhaps new members come into the household, guests, uncles, or aunts, perhaps grandparents. It is noticeable that grandmothers have the reputation of being particularly docile under the machinations of their descendants. Instantly there begins a more or less unconscious testing of power on the part of the child. Why not? His way seems good to him. Why should he not try to establish it? If he succeeds we sometimes hear a perplexed little mother say, I do not see what has come over willy of late. He never used to tease at all, but lately he has been very naughty about it. There are all sorts of problems connected with the right rearing of our children. Some of them require for their solution all the intelligence that we have. Some appear to take more than we have. It is a great comfort to find one perfectly simple to deal with. Partizan is. If we take time to consider the first request fairly and give the answer distinctly, it is unjust to both the child and ourselves to change the decision unless some new element arises to alter the situation. If he learns that the first decision is to stand, learns it, not from assertations of the fact, but from its standing, teasing will cease. Fortunately for all of us human nature is so constituted that it yields to whatever is proved to be inevitable. Chapter 3 of Living with Our Children by Clarity Pearson On having to mind Imagine yourself small, young, and weak in comparison with those with whom you live, yet full of energy and longings for all sorts of fascinating things in which they, strangely enough, seem to take no personal interest. Imagine wanting to take all sorts of bewitching, shining or brightly colored objects in your eager hands and being constantly admonished with a stern no-no or balked by having things which you have obtained by surreptitious climbing snatched from your very grasp by a person at least twice your height and many times your strength. Imagine having this sort of thing happen hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month and with some variations in objects and methods year after year. Would you not sometimes rebel? Might you not sometimes make faces at your parental nemesis or even when tired or hungry kick and scream or conceivably strike out? Would that not be a perfectly reasonable proceeding from your own point of view? And would it not impress you as the height of injustice that you should be scolded, shaken, possibly even spanked for this perfectly reasonable proceeding? Yet precisely the situation arises in every home where a little child is being brought up. In a few homes where children simply grow up following all their primitive impulses, demolishing more or less of the breakables around them, falling asleep on the floor when tired, nature asserts herself and receiving various enlightening burns when they play with fire in these latter homes it may not. The question is, what are we going to do about it? For their own protection children must learn to respect certain prohibitions. They must learn to mind. Let us consider the problem of obedience from the beginning. As long as the child is merely a little animal with no wants save those of food, warmth and rest, the problem does not dawn upon us. We expect no more of him than of any other little animal. We do our part, and he does his. Temptations in the way of Brick-a-brack do not approach him, and he cannot approach them. But he begins to creep, and instantly the ever-growing problem is ours. If he were a little tropical baby we should not have to worry about his disarranging the sand or shattering the stones. He would have no domestic animals to abuse, and if he should extend his investigating spirit to some prowling wild beast, well, the problem would very shortly resolve itself with the assistance of the wild beasts, and we should have more time to devote to his numerous little brothers and sisters. That is parenthood in the tropics. That in a different environment. But with the essential problem unchanged, is parenthood in the arctic or among primitive people anywhere. But we, fortunately or otherwise, are civilized. We dwell in houses. We use artificial heat and light. We have upholstered furniture. We have curtains. We have almost infinite number of things which are really non-essential to the vital processes of life. Naturally, the thing which exists for ornament is precisely the thing which first attracts the little person who is just beginning to find that he has a radius of activity. The inevitable happens, and we begin to look fierce, shake our heads, and say, no, no. Now what is the fundamental difficulty? It is that we have to teach a child all the restraints of an established civilization. This task is complicated by the fact that owing to the lack of a nursery and a nursery attendant in the average home, the child, while yet too young to reason or fully to understand, is surrounded by a really vast number of temptations which he is too young to successfully withstand. Here begins a conflict of wills which often persists up to and through adolescence. A feeling of division of interest. A conviction on the part of the child that he is constantly dictated to and punished by his parents who are themselves accountable to nobody. There will always be many occasions in which absolute obedience must be required. There will always be a certain number of conflicts of will. These are inevitable. The child cannot easily get the adult's point of view, because he has never been an adult. The parent should try to understand the child's point of view, and having been a child, the obligation to do this is a perfectly fair requirement. It is not beneath the dignity of a parent to explain why he must ask the child to yield his way. At the same time it is not always possible to explain. As soon as a child is old enough to comprehend a little simple reasoning, it helps if he can be made to feel that although frequently given the reason for a request he cannot always be. Sometimes there are reasons which little people cannot understand, and sometimes there is not time to explain. Soldiers and policemen and nurses and many other grown people who are really very important often have to do things instantly when they have no idea why they are asked to do so. That always helps, especially if some concrete example of this fact is recalled to his mind. The thing that grinds the worst in this apparent autocracy of parents is the fact that the child thinks that grown-ups never have to mind anybody. That is a perfectly natural error on his part and a mischief making one. It is only fair that as soon as he is old enough to comprehend the reasoning, it should be presented to him somewhat as follows. Do you think that only children have to mind? That is a mistake, you see. Haven't you heard me tell the cook what to have for dinner? And haven't you noticed that she serves what I asked her to? Father tells the furnaceman how he wants things managed in the basement, and the furnaceman always minds. Father goes down to the office every day and then he has to mind the man who pays him for working there. We are not there to see and hear it, but it is true. When I was a little girl I had to mind older people even though I did not know why, and when I grew as tall as grandfather and grandmother I still minded them, for they had lived much longer than I and knew much more about things than I did, and they were my parents. I still do as I know they wish me to, even though they are not here to speak to me, and that is one kind of minding. Everyone has to mind somebody else at times. We all have to mind the laws which have been made by the government. Even if we do not understand why they were made, we have to mind them, and it is better so. And then, you know, we all have to mind God. Some foolish and wicked people think it is not necessary to do so, but they are always punished in one way or another for their disobedience. There is always trouble of some sort when people do not mind those whom they should mind. You just watch and see, if grown people do not have to mind also, and then we will talk this over again. People who have not learned to mind are not safe. CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 OF LIVING WITH OUR CHILDREN BY CLARA D. PIERSON At one of our great national conferences of social work, a well-known social worker asked the honest opinion of his companions at lunch as to whether they had ever heard him laugh. I was shocked recently, he said, to overhear my children discussing whether I ever laughed. They decided that I did not. I asked my wife and the staff in my office the next day, and none of them could remember my laughing, although they admitted having seen me smile several times. It has become a serious question with me, for if the sorrows and anxieties of my work have robbed me of my power to laugh, so that to my wife and children I am a constantly grave presence, I must in some way achieve a change. The man had the right idea, and it might be, elaborated much more than, was then done for his wife, children, and co-workers, were not the only losers in his gravity. He himself was also impoverished. Nature is a most invaluable element in life. It is, to our drab days, what a ray of sunshine is, bursting through the clouds of dreary March weather. It, like courtesy, is alubricant, making the domestic machinery run more smoothly. It lessens the tension of overwork and nervous strain. It beguiles the weary. It may be made an agent of reform, for many a small wrong can be laughed out of existence when heavier methods would fail. It is a basis of friendship, a healer of breaches. You cannot hate a man wholeheartedly after you have laughed with him, you know. Don't you remember how, in his Velima letters, Stevenson tells of finding himself while at a native dance vis-a-vis to a certain Samoan official, whom he despised, and whom he had been trying to have removed, and how the absurdity of the surroundings struck them at the same moment, so that their eyes met in mutual amusement. And after that they danced and keepered for each other all evening. Fortunately no normal child needs to be taught how to laugh. He knows far better than his seniors. Steve has not yet turned down the corners of his mouth, often enough to incline them to stay down. He will laugh whether we do or not. He will laugh over things that are funny, over things which he thinks are funny, and over things which are not funny at all. Save that they happen in a place where gravity is expected, as when a bird flies in through the window of a hushed and solemn church. He will laugh anyhow, you see. The question is whether his companionship of laughter is to include his parents or be limited to his playmates, and a discerning teacher or two. That is for us to decide. Of course it may cost us some of our fictitious dignity, but that is a negligible loss. Real dignity is the result of character and cannot be lost unless the character itself is debased. Someone whose esteem is worth possessing recognizes this fact. Roms and frolics are as good for the tired businessman as for his six-year-old. Jokes of the absurd, childish, grotesque kind are wholesome for the busy homemaker and for her small daughter alike, so long as they are always kind jokes. There are too many people whose original jokes are always either unkind or untrue. It is well to teach your children, while they are still small, that the misfortunes of others, especially their physical or mental defects, should never be made the subject of ridicule, and that practical jokes which cause annoyance are always wrong. There are plenty of other things to laugh about. Many of our newspaper cartoons are most objectionable in the way of making misfortunes a subject of jest, or in treating, flippantly, a matter which is most grave, like the evasion of the law, but other cartoons are fine and wholesome, good for the family to enjoy together around father's armchair. And then there are the little quips and turns by which unpleasantness is changed after, like deciding which of the two little brothers shall have the first chance at a new plaything, by ordaining that the one who can stand the longer on one foot shall be so favored. Even when the participants begin the contest, frowningly, if they are standing face-to-face, the funny contortions of each are sure to make the other grin, and after that happens the possession of the plaything does not seem to matter so much. In fact, it is sometimes forgotten altogether in the fun of trying it over again. Nonsense? Of course! But, forstalling a quarrel is something more than nonsense, and so is the companionship of laughter, which usually includes a parent who is stealing a minute from work to umpire the contest. This sort of thing takes much less time than settling out and out disputes, and punishing one or more participants. Moreover, it keeps us grown-ups young and approachable. We gain while giving, in our frolics as well as in our philanthropies. Let us laugh with our children. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. of Living with Our Children by Clara D. Pearson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. MOTIVS. Why do we do this or that? Why do we refuse to do the other? Being mature and busy, it is not often that we consciously weigh our motives. We know instinctively that this venture is not for us because we are too weak, too poor, too much occupied, or too poorly equipped by training or education. Besides, it may be inexpedient for a score of different reasons, or it may be wrong. Or we may know instinctively that the new task calling us is one which, for at least one of a score possible motives, we must perform. Being normal human beings, neither neurothenics nor introspective novelists, we decide and go on, and the matter is usually a closed incident from that moment. We do not realize how much habit has to do with our decisions, nor on how many years of experience they are based. Neither do we often consider how much our elders had to do with the forming of those habits and the shaping of our experiences. But when it is our turn to pass on to the next generation what has been done for us, we feel peculiarly awkward, self-conscious, and incompetent. Our small son asks us, why must I do this? And we say, Papa says you must, or because Mama wants you to, and at once we are perplexed by some new whys. Papa says you must. Is Papa then just a big strong person to be minded because he is big and strong, and his son is not? Is he to be minded because when children do not mind him they are likely to have unpleasant experiences, privileges canceled, punishments received? There is perhaps a stage of development when this motive, fear, must be appealed to, but it is the poorest of all possible ones and not to be used if avoidable. Because Mama wants you to, Mama seems to the child to have queer and unreasonable whims, most inconvenient to gratify. Why should her preferences outweigh those of the child whom she professes to love? That is the way in which this immature reasoning will run. It does not strike him as fair, but he loves her and she is really good to him, so he makes the concession purely as a personal favor. This is better than doing it from fear. The hope of a caress is always better than the dread of a spanking for several reasons. Suppose the answer to the child's first why has been, as it too often is, what would people think of you if you did that? It isn't pretty or nice to do such things. That is an appeal to the wish for popularity, and we all like to be popular. Moreover, it implies that public opinion is worth taking into account as it often is, yet it has at least two disadvantages. Frequently repeated, it is the foundation for self-consciousness and sometimes of hypocrisy. If the situation seems to demand some such expedient, it were better to coach the answer in different words. It would disappoint Aunt Jesse and Cousin David and Mr. and Mrs. Blank if you were to do so, I am sure. They would expect something better of you. And in such a reply is a subtle appeal to the perfectly justifiable longing for the respect of those whom the child respects and loves, and who yet stand quite outside of the matter than under discussion. You see, it is a step higher in its implication. Or suppose the first why had been answered thus. It will make you a great deal of trouble if you do that. Even if Papa and Mama do not punish you, things will go wrong with you. You will take cold and be ill, or you will have an accident on that dangerous hill if you insist on coasting there. This is an appeal to self-interest, something which we all have to take into the reckoning to some extent as long as we live, and which is not evil in itself, but only when it is allowed to obscure our interest in others. So here we have four possible motives instanced. There might be others, but these are the most common. What is wrong with them? They are neither base nor malicious, and yet all four reasons are open to criticism, and are at best but make shifts with which to tide over in emergencies until the child can be made to feel the appeal of a higher one. Analyze them, and you will find a flaw in every one, a something that leaves a thinking adult vaguely dissatisfied even when he carries his point by using it. A motive to satisfy and endure must be one binding on all classes and not merely on a favored few. It must have the element of permanence, not be valid today and invalid tomorrow. It must appeal to timid and courageous alike. It must operate equally well in solitude or in society. It must take an account of the other person as well as the one who makes the decision. It should leave one satisfied with a sense of comfortable finality after the decision is made, and there is only one motive which will fulfill all these requirements. We must teach our children to do right because it is right. You think it is not always easy to know what is right? Not always, of course, but much easier than most people are willing to admit if they but put aside all other concerns in their endeavor to see their duty. Our first impression in any matter is usually correct. Subsequent considerations are usually not always given to finding a way to avoid doing what we secretly know we should do. And in any case, we are called upon only to do the right as God gives us to see the right. If we do this, after acquainting ourselves with all the elements of the situation, we have done our part and can rest easy, whatever the result may be. Knowing this we should, as early as possible, lead our children to see the dignity and peace of doing right because it is right. There is no other motive so satisfying, so unimpeachable, so strong. Lincoln knew this. Recall his debates with Douglas and how he over and over again met arguments as to the inexpediency of abolition, with declarations as to the impossibility of settling great issues merely as a matter of expediency. Over and over again he reverted to his great and unanswerable argument that if human slavery were wrong no expediency, no legislation could ever make it right. He aligned himself with the power that rules the world whether or not his public agreed with him and how he was vindicated. If we wish to leave our children the richest of all heritages, when we can no longer walk with them to guide and to counsel, let us leave them the habit of doing the right as it is given them to see the right, for then we leave them a great legacy of tranquility, honor, and power. CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI Save under most exceptional circumstances one does not attain the happy dignity of grandmotherhood without a very thorough knowledge of the complications both physical and emotional produced by fatigue. A fatigue does not express it all, for it is frequently exhaustion. Few are the mothers who cannot recall the weary stretches of time when the days and nights seem to be merged in a new and bewildering fashion, when one was sleepy all day going about the domestic tasks mechanically, the body fairly numb from lack of rest, and the mind tense with anxiety for the sick child in the next room. When a night's rest had come to mean only the short intervals of sleep snatched between doses of medicine, the stealing about in slippers to avoid disturbing other members of the family, the unreasonable relief when a faint streak of light began to redden the eastern sky, the comfort of hearing a kindly voice ask, did he rest fairly well last night? Under these circumstances fatigue is less a problem than a recognized and inevitable fact. One may be tousaled, haggard, generally unkempt, even downright unreasonable and irritable, and one is exempt from criticism. The emergency is adequate excuse. There is nothing to be done about it but to carry on. The real problems of fatigue in the child's home are the everyday ones, and quite frequently it is not realized until years afterwards that it was primarily fatigue which made the trouble. We apologize for the baby, of course, when he misses his nap and becomes fretful. We make allowances for the five-year-old who enters flushed and irritable from long activity in the hot sun, but when a child has one of those exasperating nerve-wearing attacks of asking questions, questions which we know he could answer perfectly well himself, it does not strike us that it may be an indication, as it frequently is, of his being too tired to do his own thinking. Such a situation calls for extra consideration, not reprimands, and the treatment indicated is an early supper and undressing for bed, with permission to look at picture-books there for a while, it being distinctly understood that this is because he is tired not because he is naughty. It is wise to have children realize that it is difficult to be pleasant and reasonable when overtired, and that they must guard their words in actions with a special care then. It is also good to have them feel a certain responsibility in the matter of becoming overtired. Of course everybody has to overwork sometimes, father and mother both do, and it cannot be helped. They just have to make the best of it and try all the harder to be patient when that is so. But they do not mean to play too hard, and you ought to be careful about doing so. Play can be put off, you know, until another day. Work cannot always be, so there is more excuse to be made for people tired and unreasonable from overwork than for those who overplay. You can see how it is. Somebody has to get the meals and take care of the house and do the mending, and someone has to open the store and sell the goods which people need, but nobody has to play tag in the hot sun all afternoon. Why not admit, in the emergencies which cannot be avoided, that we are human tired and especially likely to be irritable. One gains nothing by assuming that he is as well poised as usual, and that the causes of ill nature are all external, and one frequently loses the very sweet sympathy and helpfulness of children. It is far better to state the case fairly and ask for a special consideration. I am very tired tonight, dear. I have been canning fruit all day for the family to enjoy next winter, and the weather has been very hot. I do not mean to be cross at all. I shall try very hard not to be, but you can see just how it is. I had to can the fruit before it spoiled, even if it did tire me too much. So if I should not be so pleasant as usual, please try to forgive me, and please try not to ask me any more questions than necessary. We rob our children of a birthright when we fail to allow them to make their share of sacrifice or to show their share of mutual consideration which is essential to happy family life. When these emergencies arise, there should be no feeling of apology if they have to leave play and youthful companionship to lend a hand in housework which they are able to perform, and they will not expect apology if it is taken as a matter of course and begun when they are little. Tolstoy was wont to speak often of the companionship of bread labour, that labour which concerns itself with the more primitive processes of life, the providing of the essentials of food, shelter, and rain, and it is easy to establish this in the home, especially where there are no servants. Companionship in play is necessary, but companionship in work real work is no less so. There is no substitute for it. Without it there can be no true comprehension of the lives of the workers, either in the home or outside, no sense of their value to the world, no idea of the solid satisfaction and dignity of doing a piece of necessary work and doing it well. It is a short-sighted policy which permits many American children of to-day to tire themselves out with play while their parents exhaust themselves with work, and the companionship of bread labour is unknown. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Living with Our Children by Clara D. Pearson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Embarrassing questions. In the days of our great-grandmothers, or perhaps our great-great-grandmothers, the mention of sex questions was so utterly taboo that it was considered immodest to speak of eggs. Blate them to be sure, but presumably so disguised in cooking that respectable persons could partake of them without blushing. It must have been a courageous housewife who first ventured to offer one boiled egg in the shell to a guest. One can imagine her debating the question the previous evening. Shall I or shall I not? To be sure we have them that way once in a while, when only Jedidaya and I are at the table, but—and then Prachanta's spirit of recklessness swept her away, and she braved ostracism by serving that valuable food in its natural form. The next generation had overcome a certain amount of such reticence, at least as far as foodstuffs were concerned, but any mention of domestic animals, which implied that they were possessed of sex, was still bad form. It apparently required the third generation to reach the point of openly conceding sex to animals—animals which would never have been kept on their farms but for their reproductive value. Undoubtedly they assured themselves, at this point, that, after all, it was not as though they were human beings. Youths and maidens were allowed to mature, to court, and to wed, with only such knowledge of life's beginnings as they had been able to absorb from evil-minded playmates or conjoaled from the lips of some reluctant and conscious stricken parent or aunt. Then there began to appear and be surreptitiously circulated books on sex education—books which parents could obtain and leave upon the bureaus of their adolescents, thereby purchasing immunity from personal conversation on a subject which they shrink from discussing. To see what the trend has been and still is, we decent and clean-minded people have not yet gone far enough. The people of unclean minds go too far. The inevitable result of all this is that the children who have been so carefully shielded from all such information at home are almost certain to get it from contact with less protected children and get it in a very dangerous and impure form. As matters now stand, most parents have the right idea of giving correct and authoritative information to their children when they are old enough. The present trouble is that they do not recognize when their children are old enough. They lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. The result is they might almost as well leave it unlocked. To carry out the comparison, they may be safeguarding a few harnesses and some feed, but the horse—the horse is gone. If nature would only delay the maturing of our children's bodies and minds until we get around to our parental responsibility of sex instruction, it would be much simpler. But mother nature does not await our back, and we might far better heed hers than to stand hesitant and perplexed while the young people grow up. It is an axiom among the most progressive that, when a child is old enough to ask a question, he is old enough to have it answered. And this is good practice. There is only one flaw in the method implied. How can you be sure of whom he will ask the first question? Or what that question will be? You may be carefully prepared for the most beautiful and wholesome of careful conversations with him, and yet his wandering may impel him to ask quite innocently of some little degenerate those questions which you have been waiting to answer. First impressions are very important things. A mistake like this leaves a stain on his thoughts, which can never be entirely obliterated by later ones. Do not take a chance on anything so vital to your child's purity of life and conduct. If you do, he may come through decent, but with stinging memories of early mistakes growing from that same youthful ignorance which you so carefully preserved. It is not protection enough for young people to know that there is evil in the world and that sin is wicked. There are very few growing up in good homes who intend to do wrong. What such most frequently lack, even after their parents have talked with them with what they consider absolute candor, is the realization that there may be base people in any circle in which they find themselves, and that sin is not so often a matter of deliberate intention as of drifting unawares. It is far better not to wait for that expected significant first question, but to forestall it unobtrusively. If it is done early enough and wisely enough, the child does not recognize it as anything personal to himself and finds nothing embarrassing in it. To him it is all good and pure and awe-inspiring, and the injunctions given can all be do this, instead of you should cease to do that. The subject should become a simple matter of course to him, months before passion is likely to awaken in him or in those with whom he plays. These latter are always a part of the problem. It is not as though each family were dwelling on a desert island, you know. Begin with the development of seeds in the ovaries of large and familiar flowers, and show how the pistol which is above the ovary has to be fertilized with pollen from the stamens before the seeds can begin to mature. Just the barest smattering of botanical knowledge will suffice for this, and there need be no hushed and private conferences about it. Come back to the subject once in a while for weeks, examining different flowers, and never pursuing it long enough for his interest to flag. Meanwhile ask your librarian to give you or recommend to you some simple book which deals with reproduction in the various forms of life in the ascending scale between fishes and human beings. So you can familiarize yourself and pass on the same sort of information in regard to them that you did in regard to flowers. Do not wait until the emergency is upon you, and you have to do it hurriedly and badly. Remember Pascal's wise saying, he who foresees rules, and prepare for it while yet it is a far off. Be ready to avail yourself of the opportunities as they present themselves in the shape of sticklebacks, frogs, nesting birds, and other entrancing out-of-door folk to whom the child is instantly drawn. One summer wisely used should give a child a beautiful great background of understanding of the story of reproduction in the various forms of animal life, so that when he first begins to wonder where he came from, the truth comes to him either from another human being or by intuition with no shock, whatever. In fact it is often the best way to mention the expected birth of some little relative or some reminiscence of his own babyhood with a casual assumption that he already understands about it. Perhaps fate will play into your hand about this time with a litter of kittens or some other wee animals, and while the miracle of it all is still fresh and entrancing to him, you can lead up to the last stage of the story of life. Isn't it interesting, dear, to see how the baby mice all lie in the same position when they are newly born? You understand why that is, do you not? Why? It is simply because they were in the habit of lying in that position before they were born. After a little they will lie in different positions. You see, before they were born, while they were still being carried about by their mother, each was cuddled into a smooth little shape with all the sharp parts folded down so that he could be carried more comfortably. His tail was folded forward between his hind legs and lay along his belly. His hind legs lay on either side of it, his ears were laid forward close to his head, and his dainty little four feet were folded close to his curled down face. Such things are so very, very wonderful, so rather sacred. If you know what that means, they are not to be joked about, you know, nor talked about loudly and carelessly, when many people are around. Mothers understand more about them than any other people in the world, and fathers understand the next best. So if you ever get to wondering about such things and want to ask questions, will you ask one of us? If you ask us anything we do not know, we will find it out for you, and whatever we tell you will be absolutely true. Do not ask the other children, for they will not be able to tell you so well as we, and some of them would have some very wrong ideas about it. Besides, such things are too sacred for common talk. They are to be talked about quietly between parents and children, more like a secret between them. You will remember this, won't you, dear? It is just for us, for the present. And the Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of Living with Our Children by Clara D. Pearson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Gentle Art of Managing There was once a young girl, now a grandmother and writer of books, who had the mumps. When she was at the very acme of discomfort and disfigurement, an especially selected dress pattern was sent up for her approval, and she flouted it. She disliked the texture and the design, and the coloring struck her as simply impossible. It was returned to the shop when she was quite recovered, and she went to that shop to make a selection, saw one dress pattern which seemed ideally suited to her needs and purchased it on the spot. It proved to be that same one which she had so disliked when ill. The most reasonable of us are unreasonable at times, and the sweetest of us unamiable. We may as well concede that, and, having conceded it, we might better remember, with Captain Cuddle, that the bearings of this remark lays in the application of it. To be called a managing momma is invidious. To be spoken of as a tactful mother is complementary. But oh, how skillfully the tactful mother has to manage. And the gentle art of managing is exemplified in the family circle, when the end to be gained is unselfish and wholesome, and a fine combination of consideration and common sense. What a pity that we do not think it more worthwhile to study it. What a pity that we so often reserve our finest tact and our social gifts for those who really mean comparatively little to us, and allow the precious home circle to suffer from our hasty speech, our blunt criticisms, and our thoughtlessness. We know how it feels to be cold, tired, hungry, and cross. Why can we not stop to remember that other people have the same handicaps at times? Why can we not be as quick to remember this, when the other person is a child, as when he is an adult? For instance, as quickly as when he is a tired businessman, who might, if the matter were properly presented to him after dinner, be inclined to take his wife to the theatre? When we are unreasonably, we generally know it, although we may not concede the knowledge, and we do appreciate an extra degree of consideration until we are restored to normal good nature. Children do not comprehend their own unreasonableness and have to learn to control it as they grow older. We adults are aided in our efforts at self-control far more than we realize by the silent forces of intelligence, habit, and conventionality, none of which yet dominate the child. It may be profitable to summarize some of the most obvious ways in which we can utilize tact in the training of our children. Incidentally we often train ourselves quite as much, for there is no education like parenthood. 1. It is worse than foolish to raise issues needlessly. Once raised they must of course be settled and settled right. There are, however, always so many controversies bound to arise that those which can justly and safely be avoided might better be. 2. If there is a difficult matter to be settled, one regarding which a conflict of opinion is inevitable, it should be deferred if possible until a time when both participants are at their best, most amenable to reason. 3. If it is necessary to criticize a child for some naughtiness or stupidity, he will be much more likely to take it in good part if a word of appreciation can truthfully be made to proceed mention of what is wrong. He then gives the one criticizing credit for being fair, for being able to see both sides of a matter. You were very careful to put away your coat and cat promptly when you came in from school, I liked it. And now you should put away your rubbers also. Tomorrow please put them all away before beginning your games. 4. Recognize an attempt to do the right thing, even if it is not immediately successful. Remember a certain little boy who at the end of a long spell of naughtiness said, I guess, mother, that you didn't think that I was trying to be good, but I was. I was trying just as hard as I could. The only trouble was that I didn't succeed. Instant obedience is the ideal of course, but it has to be achieved by slow degrees, by more and more. One sometimes doubts whether adults answer as quickly to the call of conscience as they do, for instance, to their telephones. 5. Learn by praise rather than by condemnation when you can. Flourishing virtues will conquer the corresponding faults quite as effectively as a close and sturdy growth of shrubs will deter the weeds from growing rampantly in their shade. Wait a bit, if you can, to find a tiny virtue to praise rather than hastily to condemn its corresponding fault. 6. Try to supply a satisfying motive for distasteful tasks. In one household it has always been the custom for children to have a semi-annual stock-taking of their toys and playthings, when everything must be handled over, put in good condition for keeping or giving away or else destroyed. These events are thought of as preparations for Christmas and for going to their summer home in the North Woods. The mother always sits by with her sewing, ready to drop a suggestion now and then, or to give advice if appealed to. The litter of old playthings is no problem in that household. 7. If it appears necessary to deny some pleading request, be sure that it really is so. One diplomatic mother was want to say, I should like to say yes, but if I have to decide in a hurry I shall have to say no to be safe. Let me have a little while, in which to think. I'll have my mind made up by the time dinner is over. This plan had several advantages. She sometimes found an unforeseen reason for consenting. After she did not, she at least devised some alternative, which might be consolatory. Meanwhile, her children knowing that the decision once made would be final, generally evolved some plan of their own, which they could put into effect happily if the request were denied. It was not an uncommon thing to hear those children say, We are being very quiet, so as not to disturb mother, she is thinking hard and trying to say yes. 8. Chapter 9 of living with our children by Clarity Pearson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Root of Evil. Not money itself, you know, but the love of money was said to be the root of all evil, a fact too frequently forgotten by the one who attempts to quote. As the centuries have passed, some of us have from time to time suspected that other qualities might indeed be roots of evil also, yet that is no reason for relaxing our vigilance in regard to the Root first named. From the moment when the kindergarten child first clutches a penny in his soft and rosy fist, he moves more or less constantly in the world of finance and has to consider questions of relative values, generosity versus selfishness, thrift and honor, as well as those of dependence and independence. It will not do for us to belittle the importance of these matters at his age. If you have ever watched a group of four or five very small children in front of a candy counter interviewing a portly and amused dealer behind it with a view to discovering how best to invest the penny of the eldest, you know that it is indeed a weighty matter. Some of the brightest and most alluring candies are known to melt so quickly in the mouth, while the more durable kinds have a less delectable flavor. And then there is the question of even apportionment to be considered, and that can hardly be solved without having the dealer weigh out a penny's worth and count the pieces. It is a source of amusement to the spectator, an inspiration to the cartoonist, but it is in precisely such situations that our little people get their first training in solving certain problems with which they will be confronted through life. Sometimes, when one thinks about money matters, it seems as though the man who lives up to the right ideals in his methods of getting, spending, and saving money must be nearly perfect and his ideals begin to shape while he is yet a child. Therefore, it is extremely important early to acquire the right ideals and to have the opportunities to work them out in a small way. Perhaps the best start is made with a modest and regularly paid allowance, which should not be dependent on behavior or anything else, and from which the recipient is required to furnish his own pencils and school tablets during term time, and fish hooks and other minor play expenses during the long vacation. They should leave a small margin for luxuries and small means pennies, not nickels, at the outset. As the child grows older, the allowance should be increased. This ensures plenty of experience in the weighing of values and learning the lesson of life that for everything gained something must be relinquished. There must be chances given for the earning of other money. Certain regular work must be expected as a matter of course, as a child's contribution to the upkeep of the home. But there should also be other work provided as a possible means of revenue and which should furnish a basis for a rudimentary understanding of the problems of capital and labor, capital as represented by the parent, ensuring prompt pay and safe and helpful working conditions, and labor giving value received in work of as good quality as the laborer's strength and experience warrant capitals requiring of him. If profit sharing enterprises are undertaken, it is well to beware of any in which the outcome is uncertain. Children do not stand such reverses as loss of capital so well as adults do, so they should not be encouraged to invest their little all in the way of possible savings. It is better for them to invest their labor only in partnerships and to lend the odd dollar out at interest somewhere. There will always be a temptation for the tenderhearted parent to come to the rescue of a youthful spend thrift by lending him money. Harden your hearts, O ye parents, for such stepping in between cause and effect has serious results. It is far better that a child should face the fact that there are penalties to improvidence, while yet his financial problems are those of pennies rather than of dollars. This does not mean that an unforeseeable and wonderful opportunity must be lost for the lack of a small loan. When such occasions come, they should be considered most seriously, and if the funds are lent there should be the formality of a note made and signed, and that note should be paid. No other should be accepted until it is. There may be found chances for extra earnings and small payments may be gravely accepted and endorsed on the note, but it should be paid. No teaching by precept will ever so impress the meaning of debt on a child as precisely that experience of having to pay a note, and right there is the opportunity to show the inexpediency of borrowing for a luxury, which is altogether a different thing from borrowing for necessities or for a business investment, as for instance, five cents worth of popcorn to resell at a profit. There are circumstances, you know, when even such borrowing as that might be a justifiable venture into the realm of finance. It is very difficult to interest a child in saving money which she has earned and banking it for some vague use and some equally vague future. Long plans mean very little to one of tender years, and the result and satisfaction seems so trivial as compared with the toil involved. However, where a child receives gifts of money, it is most satisfactory to establish the custom of spending only a certain portion of the gift for immediate pleasures or possessions and banking the remainder to grow until he is ready to enter college to marry or to make a modest start in business after he is prepared to do so. A very successful elderly man was once asked to give, in a single sentence, his best maxim for preparing a child for business success, and he replied, teach your child what interest means. A small savings account or a few certificates of deposit are great educators in this respect and most acceptable ones as well. Postal savings are also fine and the provision in regard to their withdrawal, the requirements of ten days notice, is of a special value in checking a prodical impulse. The long plan should remain a long plan, for once dropped it is difficult to resume it. And so we have to think and contrive and to interrupt our own work often to inspect that of small employees or to counsel with small investors when we should prefer to advance the whole sum from our own none-too-fat purses. In moments of weakness we envy the careless and open-handed methods of a neighbor and reflect that her children, indolent and candy-besmeared, would probably consider us stingy. Nevertheless, all this effort is very well worthwhile. If we, but succeed in helping our young people to the right attitude towards money, to respect it for the labor which it represents, to enjoy it for its power to enrich our own lives and those of others whom we love, or who are less fortunate, and to value it for the security which it bestows on those who having it know how to invest and care for it, but never, never to love it for itself alone. CHAPTER X There is a general and pernicious tendency to consider certain kinds of necessary work as beneath our dignity. Most of us outgrow this tendency more or less completely as we increase in years, and presumably in wisdom, but as a rule we do not outgrow it until it has cost us much inconvenience, expense, and unhappiness. How desirable a thing it would be if our children could start in where we leave off in this matter. We may not be able to accomplish this, but we can at least make a beginning in the right direction. We are all influenced more than we commonly think by the ideals of those whom we love, even when those ideals have been imperfectly attained. If the striving to realize them is recognized as genuine, it carries conviction to the beholder. This is one reason why it is wise to share our aspirations with our children. Another is that it increases the sense of fellowship between the immature, who are so obviously being chiseled into shape, and the mature, who frequently pass as finished products. The confession of a deplored imperfection does not weaken our influence with those whom we are training, rather does it enhance that influence. So in this matter, of the work to which we give our time and strength, our attitude of mind toward it has a far-reaching effect on the feeling which our children have towards their various tasks. If we permit ourselves to rebel against that which we must do, our children will also rebel. If we slight a task, they will consider themselves justified in slighting theirs. It is true that circumstances often force all of us to do work for which we are not fitted, for which we have not the muscle perhaps or the needed preparation, and that is our misfortune, to be born as best may be. The work may be beyond our ability, or it may involve a stepping aside from the path which we had marked out for ourselves and hoped to follow, but that does not mean that it is beneath us. In these days of specialization and mass production of all sorts of articles, which were formerly made in the houses, many of us are losing our dexterity and the all-round ability which was the characteristic of our sturdy forebears. This is sometimes necessary, not always, and it is often expedient as the truest economy under certain circumstances, but it is always deplorable, and if, with the manual loss, there is also a losing of respect for all-round ability, our impoverishment is increased tenfold, and in ways which hurt our children more than they do us. To be able, capably, to do all the things needed for the successful upkeep of a home should be the aim of every little girl. To be handy with tools, able to get simple meals in an emergency, to mend his own garments in a pinch, to know how to plant and care for a vegetable garden, these are most desirable accomplishments for a boy and are a preparation for life which even the wealthy should not despise. Those who can do things well themselves will be better served. The wise and prosperous hotel-man, who intends his sons to follow the same interesting and lucrative business, does not despise the day of small things, but starts them in, university graduates, though they may be, in the back of the house, in overalls and aprons, to master practical details, and to have born in on them the fact that the profits of many a hotel go into the garbage can. A capable youth from a small town returned from war service in the navy chuckling over the fact that he had suddenly found himself popular, and sought out by the sons of millionaires, and when the general curiosity had reached an interesting pitch, he explained it by saying, You see, we fellows all had to wash our own clothing, and they didn't know how to go about it, but I did. The truth is that the more of the essential processes of life we learn to do, and to do well, the better equipped we are, and there is no foretelling when we may be called on for some of our homeliest accomplishments. The Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls recognize this, and most of their work is based on this fact. Unfortunately, although this lovin' is good, it is a very small amount to lovin' the whole mass, and there is no general substitute for the companionship of kitchen and backyard. The French are wiser than we in the matter of finding happiness in their work, whatever that work may be. To many of us think over much of the dollars to be earned or saved by the labor of our hands, and too little of the happiness to be found in the task itself. Then we find ourselves hungry for recreation at the end of the working day, instead of being tranquilly content at home. And the good old group around the reading lamp in the living room is scattered in a restless pursuit of pleasure. How is the servant keeping mother to manage this training in the homely accomplishments? Is she to discharge her maid and assume all the work herself? It is much easier for the one who has no maid to rear her children as capable and happy workers, yet there is always some way of managing when one is in earnest. When the cook has her afternoon out, permit the children to help in the kitchen, and do not be content to have a meal which is largely prepared by the absentee, and needs but to be warmed and served. Allow them to prepare special dishes with which to surprise father, and others of which they are especially fond. These occasions, coming but once a week, make possible all the reviewing required without too frequent duplication of menu. One busy and resourceful mother early divided her work into two classifications, the interruptible and the uninterruptible, and it was very rarely that her children saw her engaged in the latter. When they were about, she was always approachable and busy, engaged as a rule in work at which they could lend a hand while they chatted together. This gave a chance for the operation of unconscious influence. It was easy, if they were making a bed together, to dignify the task with running comments. Now let us fix the sheet with envelope corners, as the nurses do when they make hospital beds. I will fix one first, and then you see if you can copy it. There, yours looks very well indeed. This tomorrow morning, yours will look quite as well as mine. And the next day, why? The next day, it may look better. I always like to think when I am making a bed how good it will feel at night, when a tired, tired person lies down in it to rest and sleep and grow strong for the work and play of the morrow, then too, if we do a neat job, it looks so pretty during the day. You remember the old verse by George Herbert, A servant with this claws makes drudgery divine, Who sweeps a room as by God's laws makes that and the action fine. Most of us have discovered this by the time our children are old enough to be useful in the home, but we may not take enough pains to help them discover it. Thus the years have increased our means and our longing for personal ease, and it seems too much exertion to revert to the old ways of household work, the simple life in which all took part as a matter of course. One must be reasonable about this, and admit that it is not always practical to revert in this fashion, but let us keep our ideals untarnished and honor useful accomplishment of whatever sort in ourselves and in others, and let us, at least during the years when our children's habits of thought and action are forming, work with them about the home and grounds for part of each day, finding with them what Americans need more than any other people, since in worked unsquarely and unwasted days. Pegasus, the winged steed of fable, was most wonderful of course, and there is much pity aroused by the thought of Pegasus at the plough. But there must ever be plough horses in this world, and their life is not unmitigated drudgery. They labor shoulder to shoulder with their fellows in doing their master's will, and their food is eaten with the workers' zest. They do not soar as Pegasus does, yet the rich brown earth is wholesome and sustaining, and there are many sweet and refreshing nibbles of grass to be seized at the end of the furrow. Suppose while we are supposing that Pegasus should lose some feathers from his wonderful wings and come tumbling to earth, might he not find comfort among his fellows at the plough, and why should he not occasionally trudge beside them between flights, even though his pinions be intact, if only for the sake of the companionship and the deepening of his sympathies. Think what an incentive it would be to the coals. CHAPTER 11 What a boon it would be to the orthodox households where there are children if there could be a return to the old-time custom of keeping Sabbath from sundown of Saturday until that of Sunday. To go from one night's sleep to the next without any chance to romp and make unlimited noise, in short to blow off steam, is rather hard on active boys and girls. Incidentally it is hard on the adults of the family. The automobile solves the problem for many unpleasant days, as long walks in the country solve the problem on those same days for families who have no car, but the indoor Sundays. There really should be special provision for such times, certain privileges granted then, and never else unless during illness. The Sunday school book, where that has not become obsolete and the Sunday school paper do their part very well for a while, but one cannot read too long. Why not have a Sunday cupboard stocked for emergencies, the key of which is handed over after dinner and which is locked again for the week at bedtime. In such a cupboard there might well be a transparent slate with a couple of sharp pencils, a box of watercolors with brushes, paper and a small water pan, a bottle of library paste, pictures that are suitable for coloring saved from magazines, a few favorite books in which the illustrations are the chief attraction, a postcard album with the necessary art corners for keeping it up to date, sheets of printed paper dolls from current magazines, together with Bristol board on which to mount them, a simple microscope or a small reading glass, a prism or bits of colored glass, and perhaps an especially attractive Sunday dolly. And do you remember the delight of a surprise when you were little, do you not? When some new toy or trifle is acquired for the children during the week, why not hold it back, if possible a few days, to be discovered on Sunday when the cupboard is opened? These things are more than mere provision for shut-in Sabbaths time killers, they are soon converted into the memories of adult years. It means a great deal afterward whether these adults look back with happiness or with resentment to Sabbath afternoons in the old home. In one case they will be saying, how I used to hate Sunday, we couldn't romp out of doors for fear of disturbing the neighbors and there never seemed to be anything special to do inside. Father didn't want to be interrupted when he was reading and mother liked to take a nap after dinner and that was no fun for us at all. In the other case it will be, our Sunday afternoons were the best of all when we were small, our dinners, I know now, were really quite simple and easily prepared, but there was always some little extra, like pretty fruit jelly or cracked nuts which we could carry in to eat by the living room fireplace. Once we had oranges and bananas served whole and mother had drawn a funny face on each with a brush and black watercolour or ink. And then after dinner we were given the key to the cupboard if we had to stay indoors and while mother slept and father read his latest magazine or book in the library, we youngsters used to amuse ourselves with the play things which we had not had during the week. Sometimes we had a tray supper by the fire and toasted our bread over the coals or popped corn there. I'll never forget those happy afternoons when we were all together and Sundays now always seem to carry me back there for a while when the twilight settles down. Remember what a wise person said long ago, make a child happy now and he will be happy twenty years from now in recalling it. It is an interesting experiment to recall the pleasant incidents of our own childhood which linger vividly in our own memories. After making allowances for the intoxicating delight of our first circus, our first railroad journey, and a few other thrillers of youth, it will be found that the greater part of the pictures on memory's wall are those of very simple and homely household joys. That will not be true of so large a proportion of today's over-sophisticated young people, but it may be true for those whose parents have the vision and the consecration to provide home pleasures and fireside comforts worth treasuring. Somehow it seems natural for us to forget how inevitably and swiftly our children mature and how short a time is vouch saved us in which to provide the habits and traditions which are to be a real comfort and safeguard for their later years. We are apt to be forever trying to catch up with them instead of leading them. We begin to comprehend our six-year-old when he is seven and our seven-year-old when he is eight, and the results are not good. It is not so when mothers make dresses for their little girls. Dresses have provisions for letting down and letting out. If the fabric is fine, we may even make it with a definite idea how it can later be made over in combination with other material. It would be better if, in the intellectual and spiritual worlds, we were to keep more constantly in mind the idea that, although we are working with little children, our real aim is the raising of fine men and women. Men and women whose lives shall be the perfect flowering of a healthy, happy scene in wholesome childhood. For such there must be tender and enriching memories of happiness within the four walls of home, and of respect for the customs and the days held sacred by our nation. CHAPTER XII. A frequent guest in an American household wandered into the kitchen and expressed her pleasure when she found the Japanese cook preparing her favorite dish for dinner. She said, I am so glad you are making that, Yama, I am very fond of it. After his courteous response, she noticed a queer little smile on his inscrutable oriental face, and pressed him for the reason of it. The reply was worth remembering. You American people are so funny. You eat things because you like the taste of them. In Nippon we eat things because they are good for us. Evidently, in Japan, there is not to be seen the all-too-familiar spectacle of a mother vainly imploring her child to eat vegetables before beginning his dessert, or dividing two boiled eggs in such a way that her daughter may eat both whites while her son eats both yolks. Now, when did all these dietary vagaries begin to creep into the life of young America, and how can they be overcome? Can you imagine the small puritans turning up their English descended noses at the brown bread and the parched corn, and then being permitted to fill their youthful stomachs with sweets in order that they might not start off hungry to their school? Indeed you cannot. Or can you imagine the children of mid-western pioneers being coaxed with maple sugar, the only sweet they had ever seen, when they disdained bread and milk? Again no. As for that, there would have been much more excuse for such trickling on the part of those early-day parents than there is for us. For in those days balanced rations were unheard of. Rations, fats, and carbohydrates had apparently not been discovered and calories and vitamins had no recognized existence. If they sinned in these respects, they did so without knowledge, whereas we have only to dispatch postcards to the state health commissioners and the United States Department of Agriculture to receive enough gratuitous instruction on all these subjects for the correct feeding of the whole family. When we received them what then? One mother of three, who ranged in age from sixth grade to college freshman, submitted her problem to a nutrition expert, and then remarked quite pathetically, yes, I can provide the vegetables, but how can I induce the children to eat them? The first step naturally is to instill in the mind of the yet unspoiled child an understanding of the functions of food, or to bring back the mind of the spoiled child to an appreciation of that function. Every bit of our bodies has to be built out of what we eat and drink. No amount of money or work will give us the right sort of strong, comfortable, good-looking bodies unless we send just the right sort of material down our throats into our stomach. It is there, you know, that the change from food into bones, muscles, and so forth begins. You cannot build a brick house out of wood, and you cannot build a wooden house out of brick, although you might have wooden doors in your brick house and brick chimneys in your wooden one. For any kind of building you need the right materials and just enough of each, and you need to have it delivered at the time when it is to be used. When men are building a house they have to have some stone and some mortar and some wood and some nails and some glass and some building paper and some hinges and some door knobs. When you are building your body from a baby's body into a fine, great strong man's or woman's body, you need meats, eggs, milk, starchy food like bread, potatoes, and cake, and plenty of vegetables and fruits. You need just enough of each, and you need some of each every day. It is father's business to earn the money with which to buy food, mother's to see that it is well prepared and ready on time, and yours to eat it in the right quantity and in the right way, slowly and carefully. If parents themselves understand the different classes of food stuff as they should, there's no reason why quite small children should not learn these broad classifications if they absorb the information casually and happily. Most children feel rather important when they master a fine mouth-filling word like carbohydrates, together with its meaning. The geographical distribution of food stuff is interesting, and the way in which our ships and freight trains are kept busy in carrying the different kinds of food to places where they are needed, so are the habits of the early Indians, the way in which they had to migrate with the seasons in order to secure the varied supplies that they required for health, and the way in which the early white settlers learned of them. So much of the creation of an intelligent interest. What if when the pony is led to the brink, he will not drink? Find out the reason as quickly as possible with the aid of your doctor, the school nurse, or by consulting some of the many excellent publications on nutrition. Then, when you are sure that no physical cause remains uncured, it resolves itself simply into a question as to whether the parents mature, experienced, and intelligent are to decide the diet of their small and willful child, or whether he in his ignorance is to say what he will and what he will not eat of the food which they have labored to buy and prepare, whether they will stand spinelessly by and be accessory to his crime. Of course, we do not wish to arouse needless antagonisms, even though we wisely resolve not to coax. If we can carry our point pleasantly, so much the better, although excellent authorities assure us that rather than let a child persist in perfectly unreasonable and injurious habits of diet, it is justifiable to allow him to refuse all food for several days, that it will not undermine his health in the least. One simple expedient is the refusal of dessert or its equivalent dainty until the wholesome but unpopular food, which is on the menu, for that meal has been eaten. Another plan which has worked extremely well is the ruling that the child shall eat at least two mouthfuls of each article of food which is given to him, the most distasteful first. This ensures the aid of an unspoiled appetite for the difficult part of the meal and keeps the way open for cultivating a real liking for it. If you try this method, you will find that the first one and then another article will become popular and can be put on the full portion list. For we are all creatures of habit. It is a bit of diplomacy also to have the least popular dishes as a major part of the menu when the child is likely to be ravenous from a fishing trip or any prolonged exercise in the open air. These expedients are tried and good and are suggested for the benefit of those households where the children have been allowed to regulate their own diet to their own hurt, which they should never have been allowed to do. In this matter, as in many others, prevention is much easier and better than cure. Never let a child who enjoys publicity feel that being peculiar or delicate is a pleasant distinction. Many children have a pride in this and enjoy being publicly discussed. If it is necessary to speak of such a trait in the presence of the child, do it as briefly as possible and speak of it as silly. If a child will not eat, what he has been pleasantly and reasonably asked to eat excuse him from the table and consider the incident closed until the next meal hour. He probably will not care to consider it so, but a little quiet determination just at this juncture, combined if needful with the locking of the pantry, accomplishes much. Make the special treats of popcorn, nuts, or fruits rather than of candy and have the household candy at the end of the meals rather than in between them. In these ways you are not only keeping the child's diet right now, but you are forming the intelligent habits which will stand by him when he is out in the world, far from parental admonitions and obliged to select from the cafeteria or hotel bill those dishes which he is to eat. As a matter of fact, the young person's health for the first two years after he leaves the old home is usually inferior to what it was before. And this because supervision is gone and the right habits based on understanding have not been formed during the years of opportunity. Happy then is the young person who early learns to eat things because they are good for him. Happy, good-natured and more likely to be virtuous for as someone, was it Beecher, has said, two-thirds of a man's religion is a good disposition and two-thirds of a good disposition is a good digestion. Behold how much may hang on the vexed question of diet. End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of Living with Our Children by Clara D. Pearson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Primogeniture. All good Americans are thankful that the law of primogeniture, exclusive inheritance by the first born, did not cross the ocean with our English ancestors. Although there is no denying that it settles once for all a great many things concerning which American relatives wrangle and on which our legal profession fattens quite legitimately. Many times the settlement by the law seemed most deplorable, but it was a settlement. In our nurseries where the family is happily larger than the proverbial American family of one, the lack of some such established law in the matter of small privileges and responsibilities is unfortunate. Think how many times parents have to listen to a clamor of, my turn first, no mine. I don't care, I'm the girl, and you know it ought to be ladies first. How are such controversies to be fairly decided? Do these replies sound at all familiar to you? Let the baby have the first turn, children. He is so little that you ought to give up to him. Let Alice take it first and be a little gentleman about it. Here, Freddie, stop your howling this minute and mother will give you the first turn. Can you not see the squabble in progress and the scowls of dissatisfaction with which the rulings are received? Can you not hear the muttered comments while the lucky one is enjoying his coveted first turn? Ah, baby always has his way. Well, I don't think Alice acted very much like a lady when she teased so. You'll do anything for Freddie when he makes a fuss. The truth of the matter is that unless there is some well-established and respected rule for settling such controversies in a household, they are forever recurring and the settlements are sure to be more or less unjust. Time is short, the telephone bell is ringing, or the parents' nerves are on edge, and so the one who protests the most loudly carries his point or an unconscious partiality sways the decision of one who truly intends to be just, or the baby, the dimple darling of the household, is awarded the privilege and so helped a little farther along towards that utter selfishness which so often characterizes the youngest members of the otherwise unselfish families. Perhaps this is the most common and the most unfortunate result of all the many possible unfortunate ones. Since woman, once man's superior and now his equal, has come into her own as a voter, she is little by little relinquishing those charming attentions which were bestowed upon her as a matter of course in the days of old. The girl child of today will not be the petted and pampered woman of tomorrow, and it is probably much better for her that she should not be. There are reasons quite apart from the mere accident of sex, why in emergencies like shipwreck, the rule should continue to be women and children first. There are graceful social customs which will abide but the time is fortunately past when an old and feeble man feels obligated to offer his seat in a crowded car to a robust young woman who is quite obviously not of the working class. Under these circumstances, it is an open question whether it is expedient to perpetuate in the nursery on failing deference to sex. Reverting to the custom of letting the baby have consideration because he is the youngest, it may be enough to supplement what has been said with the passing remark that youth has already been deferred to quite enough in this country so that an occasional individual is found who longs for something akin to Chinese respect for age. And as for letting the one who is most assertive carry the day, none of us believe in that even when we become accessory to it. Sometimes there is a weakling in the family, a one who has a permanent handicap of some sort. If we could only be sure that such a one could all his life be guarded and indulged as we would guard and indulge him, we might more safely grant him such special privileges but we cannot. So the truest kindness is to teach him to take his turn with his fellows and let our yearning tenderness show itself in a few larger ways like the provision of a special room most suited to his needs or in the special education to develop some talent which will enable him to take and hold his place among men. Otherwise we might better let him become accustomed early to the give and take of ordinary life. There are so many things that we should not do. What shall we do? There should be some way of linking a privilege and duty, some system which should render impossible the putting of responsibilities and little burdens on the patient first born and handing the privileges over to the youngest. So why not set up in our households a system of first turns for the oldest and let it be all first turns? First turns for castor oil as well as for coasting. It is a fair working out of the old theory of no bless oblige and it forestalls many controversies. Also it gives a good working rule for the children when there is no grown person present to settle claims. There is another reason why this is a good plan. The eldest may be but six and hardly entitled to what we call the difference due to age and yet it is a beginning towards inculcating that difference when the little end of that problem has a bearing on his own small affairs. If it is talked over with the children in a direct and clear fashion, it will strike them as fair and there are no ideals set up which clash with the ideals of life outside the nursery which is most desirable. Respect for age and experience. The combining of duties and privileges, the having a law to rely on, a nursery law but in accord with laws of life itself and the avoidance of controversies. All these make it well worth our while to appropriate the good from the old customs which we still rejoice to have abrogated in our national life. End of chapter 13. Chapter 14 of living with our children by Clara D. Pearson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Being charming. A certain little boy long since grown to man's estate was wont to seek his mother now and then with a shy request. Could you take the time to be charming for a little while? Until the phrase was adopted by the rest of the family. Its origin was traced back to a Saturday when she had been obliged to work against time at her desk. In the child, accustomed to a mother who did desk work only during school hours, or after he was tucked in bed, had felt himself exiled from her beloved companionship. He had wistfully hung about until she, realizing his feeling of injury, had said, I love you, just as much as ever, dear, and I wish that I did not have to work so hard. If you will amuse yourself or play with the other children until five o'clock, trying not to interrupt me and keeping away from this side of the door yard, I shall be quite through, and then I will be perfectly charming until dinner time. Evidently she succeeded in keeping her agreement and the adjective so glibly used came to have a permanent place in his vocabulary. In time it came to cover a wide range of activities, the drawing of pictures, playing marbles, reading aloud, or just talking. But always it meant giving herself exclusively to her child for the time being. That, in the last analysis, was what charmed him. He did not have to content himself, as children so often have to, with the crumbs that fall from another's table, the mere matter of what they did seemed to impress him as of secondary importance. But you think that few mothers would have time for that. This was an extremely busy woman, one who made every hour count, but whose son's companionship was rated high in her sense of values, and it did not take so much time as you might think. The period given was more often fifteen minutes than sixty, and sometimes when he chose storytelling or simple conversation she said, Do you mind if I sew while talking? And he did not. The mending basket always stood ready, and it was the investment of precisely such scraps of time which kept it from overflowing. Everything is not of necessity in all engrossing occupation. Patches are more so, it is true, but then her patches were often cut and basted when she was alone, and the finer stitches took less attention, were better pick-up work. It was largely a question of management after all. The time was never given with the air of granting a favour, it was planned for and set apart with the implication that it was a treat for both of them, part of the jam on their daily bread. It was not always granted at the moment when it was asked for, it had to be fitted in with the duties of the day. Sometimes it was combined with them, and the two went marketing together, swinging the basket between them and discussing with all earnestness what they should buy for father's dinner. Sometimes when the desk work had been unusually steady and monotonous, they tramped into the country for watercress or mushrooms, and she had the combination of fresh air and exercise needed to keep her fit for work. Sometimes they put on big aprons and got a meal together in the big old kitchen, where distances were so magnificent and a companionable cat dozed beside the range. The work of the household was not always halted, yet as it proceeded it was invested with something of peculiar interest to the child. Little jokes were made, the conversation was on his plane. There was much laughter and an occasional kiss, and he had her to himself. Once after he had been watching her clean some fish, he said, Didn't we have a sweet visit about that fish? The gills and the swim bladder and the silvery scales had seemed to him most fascinating subjects of conversation. Why not? Fathers are busy people too. It is not easy for them to give themselves exclusively to their children, yet the time actually consumed in establishing and maintaining a confidential intimacy with a child is not great. And it is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. The physician, whose small daughter always makes his Sunday morning rounds with him before going to Sunday's school, in setting apart that time for her makes it one of privilege for them both. And certain old ladies in the suburbs, chronic cases who received only occasional calls, have discovered that the doctor makes his longest drives on Sunday morning. Again it is largely a question of management. And what a pity it would be if, when we successfully manage so many other things, we should not try to manage this. What a pity if, when we dress for and are charming to our society friends, we should do neither for our children. A woman in her fifties, who had nursed her mother through her long and painful last illness, said, I think she was the most charming woman I have ever known. Even through her illness she was charming to us all. What a priceless heritage, such a memory is. And with what a tender combination of filial deferents and lover-like attention do grown children seek the companionship of those parents who were charming to them when they were small. The remind of the twelve-year-old brother of the lad first quoted, who said to his mother at the end of one of their peculiarly happy visits, Of course I know that you are very, very old, but you never seem so to me. End of Chapter 14