Pushing to the Front Part 73

There are mult.i.tudes of poor people in this country who are _half satisfied to remain in poverty_, and who have ceased to make a desperate struggle to rise out of it. They may work hard, but they have lost the hope, the expectation of getting an independence.

Many people keep themselves poor by fear of poverty, allowing themselves to dwell upon the possibility of coming to want, of not having enough to live upon, by allowing themselves to dwell upon conditions of poverty.

When you make up your mind that you are done with poverty forever; that you will have nothing more to do with it; that you are going to erase every trace of it from your dress, your personal appearance, your manner, your talk, your actions, your home; that you are going to show the world your real mettle; that you are no longer going to pa.s.s for a failure; that you have set your face persistently toward better things--a competence, an independence--and that nothing on earth can turn you from your resolution, you will be amazed to find what a reenforcing power will come to you, what an increase of confidence, rea.s.surance, and self-respect.

Resolve with all the vigor you can muster that, since there are plenty of good things in the world for everybody, you are going to have your share, without injuring anybody else or keeping others back. It was intended that you should have a competence, an abundance. It is your birthright. You are success organized, and constructed for happiness, and you should resolve to reach your divine destiny.

CHAPTER LVII

A NEW WAY OF BRINGING UP CHILDREN

"Only a thought, but the work it wrought Could never by tongue or pen be taught, But it ran through a life like a thread of gold, And the life bore fruit a hundredfold."

Not long ago there was on exhibition in New York a young horse which can do most marvelous things; and yet his trainer says that only five years ago he had a very bad disposition. He was fractious, and would kick and bite, but now instead of displaying his former viciousness, he is obedient, tractable, and affectionate. He can readily count and reckon up figures, can spell many words, and knows what they mean.

In fact this horse seems to be capable of learning almost anything.

Five years of kindness have completely transformed the vicious yearling colt. He is very responsive to kindness, but one can do nothing with him by whipping or scolding him. His trainer says that in all the five years he has never touched him with a whip but once.

I know a mother of a large family of children who has never whipped but one of them, and that one only once.

When her first child was born people said she was too good-natured to bring up children, that she would spoil them, as she would not correct or discipline them, and would do nothing but love them. But this love has proved the great magnet which has held the family together in a marvelous way. Not one of those children has gone astray. They have all grown up manly and womanly, and love has been wonderfully developed in their natures. Their own affection responded to the mother's love and has become their strongest motive. To-day all her children look upon "Mother" as the grandest figure in the world. She has brought out the best in them because she saw the best in them. The worst did not need correcting or repressing, because the expulsive power of a stronger affection drove out of the nature or discouraged the development of vicious tendencies which, in the absence of a great love, might have become dominant and ruined the life.

Love is a healer, a life-giver, a balm for our hurts. All through the Bible are pa.s.sages which show the power of love as a healer and life-lengthener. "With long life will I satisfy him," said the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me."

When shall we learn that the great curative principle is love, that love heals because it is harmony? There can be no discord where it reigns. Love is serenity, is peace and happiness.

Love is the great disciplinarian, the supreme harmonizer, the true peacemaker. It is the great balm for all that blights happiness or breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all the brutal propensities. As cruelty melts before kindness, so the evil pa.s.sions and their antidote in sweet charity and loving sympathy.

The mother is the supreme shaper of life and destiny.

Many a mother's love for her children has undoubtedly stayed the ravages of some fatal disease. Her conviction that she was necessary to them and her great love for them have braced her, and have enabled her to successfully cope with the enemies of her life for a long time.

One mother I know seems to have the magical art of curing nearly all the ills of her children by love. If any member of the family has any disagreeable experience, is injured or pained, hurt or unhappy, he immediately goes to the mother for the universal balm, which heals all troubles.

This mother has a way of drawing the troubled child out of discord into the zone of perpetual harmony. If he is swayed by jealousy, hatred, or anger, she applies the love solvent, the natural antidote for these pa.s.sion poisons. She knows that scolding a child when he is already suffering more than he can bear is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.

Our orphan asylums give pathetic ill.u.s.tration of how quickly the child mind matures and ages prematurely without the uplift and enrichment of the mother love, the mother sympathy,--parental protection and home influence.

It is well known that children who lose their parents and are adopted by their grandparents and live in the country, where they do not have an opportunity to mingle much with other children, adopt the manners and mature vocabulary of their elders, for they are very imitative, and become little men and women before they are out of their youth.

Think of a child reared in the contaminating atmosphere of the slums, where everything is dripping with suggestions of vulgarity and wickedness of every description! Think of his little mind being filled with profanity, obscenity, and filth of all kinds! Is it any wonder that he becomes so filled with vicious, criminal suggestions that he tends to become like his environment?

Contrast such a child with one that is brought up in an atmosphere of purity, refinement, and culture, and whose mind is always filled with n.o.ble, uplifting suggestions of the true, the beautiful, and the lovely. What a difference in the chances of these two children, and without any special effort or choice of their own! One mind is trained upward, towards the light, the other downward, towards darkness.

What chance has a child to lead a n.o.ble life when all his first impressionable years are saturated with the suggestion of evil, when jealousy and hatred, revenge, quarreling and bickering, all that is low and degrading, fill his ears and eyes?

How important it is that the child should only hear and see and be taught that which will make for beauty and for truth, for loveliness and grandeur of character!

We ought to have a great deal of charity for those whose early lives have been soaked in evil, criminal, impurity thoughts.

The minds of children are like the sensitive plates of a photographer, recording every thought or suggestion to which they are exposed. These early impressions make up the character and determine the future possibility.

If you would encourage your child and help him to make the most of himself, inject bright, hopeful, optimistic, unselfish pictures into his atmosphere. To stimulate and inspire his confidence and unselfishness means growth, success, and happiness for him in his future years, while the opposite practice may mean failure and misery.

It is of infinitely more importance to hold the right thought towards a child, the confident, successful, happy, optimistic thought, than to leave him a fortune without this. With his mind properly trained he could not fail, could not be unhappy, without reversing the whole formative process of his early life.

Keep the child's mind full of harmony, of truth, and there will be no room for discord, for error.

It is cruel constantly to remind children of their deficiencies or peculiarities. Sensitive children are often seriously injured by the suggestion of inferiority and the exaggeration of defects which might have been entirely overcome. This everlasting harping against the bad does not help the child half as much as keeping his little mind full of the good, the beautiful, and the true. The constant love suggestion, purity suggestion, n.o.bility suggestion will so permeate the life after a while that there will be nothing to attract the opposite. It will be so full of suns.h.i.+ne, so full of beauty and love, that there will be little or no place for their opposites.

The child's self-confidence should be b.u.t.tressed, braced, and encouraged in every possible way; not that he should be taught to overestimate his ability and his possibilities, but the idea that he is G.o.d's child, that he is heir to an Infinite inheritance, magnificent possibilities, should be instilled into the very marrow of his being.

A great many boys, especially those who are naturally sensitive, shy, and timid, are apt to suspect that they lack the ability which others have. It is characteristic of such youths that they distrust their own ability and are very easily discouraged or encouraged. It is a sin to shake or destroy a child's self-confidence, to reflect upon his ability or to suggest that he will never amount to much. These discouraging words, like initials cut in the sapling, grow wider and wider with the years, until they become great ugly scars in the man.

Most parents do not half realize how impressionable children are, and how easily they may be injured or ruined by discouragement or ridicule.

Children require a great deal of appreciation, praise, and encouragement. They live upon it. It is a great tonic to them. On the other hand, they wither very quickly under criticism, blame, or depreciation. Their sensitive natures can not stand it. It is the worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and dull, and that they will probably never amount to anything in the world.

How easy it is for a parent or teacher to ruin a child's constructive ability, to change a naturally, positive creative mind to a negative, non-producing one, by chilling the child's enthusiasm, by projecting into his plastic mind the idea that he is stupid, dull, lazy, a "blockhead" and good-for-nothing; that he will never amount to anything; that it is foolish for him to try to be much, because he has not the ability or physical stamina to enable him to accomplish what many others do. Such teaching would undermine the brightest intellect.

I have known of an extremely sensitive, timid boy who had a great deal of natural ability, but who developed very slowly, whose whole future was nearly ruined by his teacher and parents constantly telling him that he was stupid and dull, and that he probably never would amount to anything. A little praise, a little encouragement, would have made a superb man of this youth, because he had the material for the making of one. But he actually believed that he was not up to the ordinary mental standard; he was thoroughly convinced that he was mentally deficient, and this conviction never entirely left him.

We are beginning to discover that it is much easier to attract than to coerce. Praise and encouragement will do infinitely more for children than threats and punishment. The warm suns.h.i.+ne is more than a match for the cold, has infinitely more influence in developing the bud, the blossom, and the fruit than the wind and the tempest, which suppress what responds voluntarily to the genial influence of the sun's rays.

We all know how boys will work like troopers under the stimulus of encouragement and praise. Many parents and teachers know this, and how fatal the opposite policy is. But unfortunately a great majority do not appreciate the magic of praise and appreciation.

Pupils will do anything for a teacher who is always kind, considerate, and interested in them; but a cross, fractious, nagging one so arouses their antagonism that it often proves a fatal bar to their progress.

There must be no obstruction, no ill-feeling between the teacher and the pupil, if the best results are to be obtained.

Many parents are very much distressed by the waywardness of their children; but this waywardness is often more imaginary than real. A large part of children's pranks and mischief is merely the outcome of exuberant youthful spirits, which must have an outlet, and if they are suppressed, their growth is fatally stunted. They are so full of life, energy, and so buoyant that they can not keep still. They _must_ do _something_. Give them an outlet for their animal spirits. Love is the only power that can regulate and control them.

Do not try to make men of your boys or women of your girls. It is not natural. Love them. Make home just as happy a place as possible, and give them rein, freedom. Encourage them in their play, for they are now in their fun age. Many parents ruin the larger, completer, fuller development of their children by repressing them, destroying their childhood, their play days, by trying to make them adults. There is nothing sadder in American life than the child who has been robbed of its childhood.

Children are little animals, sometimes selfish, often cruel, due to the fact that some parts of their brain develop faster than others, so that their minds are temporarily thrown out of balance, sometimes even to cruel or criminal tendencies, but later the mind becomes more symmetrical and the vicious tendencies usually disappear. Their moral faculties and sense of responsibility unfold more slowly than other traits, and of course, they will do mischievous things; but it is a fatal mistake to be always suppressing them. They must give out their surplus energy in some way. Encourage them to romp. Play with them.

It will keep you young, and will link them to you with hooks of steel.

Do not be afraid of losing your dignity. If you make home the happiest, most cheerful place on earth for your children, if you love them enough, there is little danger of their becoming bad.

Thousands of parents by being so severe with their children, scolding and criticizing them and crus.h.i.+ng their childhood, make them secretive and deceitful instead of open and transparent, and estrange them and drive them away from home.

A man ought to look back upon the home of his childhood as the Eden of his life, where love reigned, instead of as a place where a long-faced severity and harshness ruled, where he was suppressed and his fun-loving spirits snuffed out.

Every mother, whether she realizes it or not, is constantly using the power of suggestion in rearing her children, healing all their little hurts. She kisses the b.u.mps and bruises and tells the child all is well again, and he is not only comforted, but really believes that the kiss and caress have magic to cure the injury. The mother is constantly antidoting and neutralizing the child's little troubles and discords by giving the opposite thought and applying the love-elixir.

It is possible, through the power of suggestion, to develop in children faculties upon which health, success, and happiness depend. Most of us know how dependent our efficiency is upon our moods, our courage, hope.

If the cheerful, optimistic faculties were brought out and largely developed in childhood, it would change our whole outlook upon life, and we would not drag through years of half-heartedness, discouragement, and mental anguish, our steps dogged by fear, apprehension, anxiety, and disappointment.