THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
HENRY FREDERICK COPE HENRY FREDERICK COPE 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
THE WEEK-DAY CHURCH-SCHOOL 
THE SCHOOL IN THE MODERN 
CHURCH 
EFFICIENCY IN THE SUNDAY 
SCHOOL 
NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY THE PARENT AND 
THE CHILD 
Case-Studies in the 
Problems of Parenthood 
BY 
HENRY FREDERICK COPE 
-4 I 
GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 
Author of “The School in the Modern Church,” 
“Efficiency in the Sunday School,” “The 
Week-Day Church-School,” etc. 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
NEW 
YORK COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
I. The Point of View 9 
II. Criticism 16 
III. Sunday Afternoon 22 
IV. Disobedience . 30 
V. The Problem of Leisure 37 
VI. Outside Competition 44 
VII. Amusements 51 
VIII. The Daily Newspaper 61 
IX. Social Standards 68 
X. Street Manners 75 
XI. The Problem of Bad Language 82 
XII. Bickering 90 
XIII. When Is a Lie Not a Lie? ...... 96 
XIV. Nerves 102 
XV. Boy Mischief 109 
XVI. The Sophomore Stage 117 
XVII. Fathers and Sons 124 
XVIII. Lost Confidences 131 
XIX. The Problem of Current Standards . . . .138 
XX. Slackers 143 
XXL The Problem of Money 149 CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
XXII. Reading 154 
XXIII. Children’s Religious Difficulties . . . .160 
XXIV. The Problem of Religious Instruction . . .166 
XXV. Direct Religious Teaching 171 
XXVI. Can We Have Family Worship? . . w . 176 THE PARENT AND THE CHILD THE PARENT AND 
THE CHILD 
CHAPTER I 
THE POINT OF VIEW 
This book seeks to apply the “case method” to the field 
of moral and religious training in the family; that is, every 
chapter is not only a problem study, but it involves the study 
of a real case, one that has been definitely presented to the 
author and one that involves actual situations. Also, cases 
in which the problems have been met are specifically stated. 
There are no fixed prescriptions for the problems of par- 
enthood, and yet it may be worth while to offer to a wider 
and more general audience some of the answers to parents’ 
questions which were prepared for specific individual cases. 
Some of the problems were stated in correspondence and 
others in conferences and meetings of parent organizations. 
Whatever defects the discussions may have they, at least, 
possess this merit, that they deal with real situations and 
that the methods suggested have a background of reality. 
Every chapter deals with a problem as it was presented 
by a parent or a group of parents. 
On this basis of practical reality, what are the motives 
and purposes which determine the methods suggested ? One 
purpose controls all: that through the experience of life in 
the family children may learn the life of a society of love 
and good will* The family and the immediate problem, 
in each case, are regarded from the educational point of 
* The author has developed this thesis in a chapter on The Family and 
Democracy in his book “Education for Democracy,” Macmillan, 1920. THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
view, while education is regarded as the process of direct- 
ing experience, especially the everyday experience of chil- 
dren, so that they form'the purposes of social love and 
good will. 
“Little children should be seen and not heard,” and at 
that we were to be seen only when and where our parents 
willed. The ideal child of the last generation was seen 
only when in best bib and tucker and heard only when he 
said his little prayers or recited milk-and-water verse. The 
child of to-day is seen everywhere and heard all the time. 
Probably one-half of the problems of so-called “family 
discipline” arise from the difference between yesterday and 
to-day; they are due to the attempt to make to-day’s child 
follow yesterday’s rule. And much of our current pes- 
simism about the young is due to lack of imagination; 
since they are not what we have been accustomed to think- 
ing they ought to be we cannot imagine that they can be 
anything worth while. 
In discussing the problems of child-training in the fam- 
ily we are not concerned with the purpose of making our 
children behave as we behaved—theoretically—we are not 
concerned with conformity to any fixed standard. This is 
the problem: how can the rich and varied life of the fam- 
ily best help children to develop rich, strong and high char- 
acter and fit them to become useful, forward-looking, loving 
cooperators in society? How can the broad purposes of 
religious education be accomplished in the home? 
Much will depend on the point of view already prevail- 
ing in our homes. Are we ready for the principle that 
the family life exists for the sake of children and for the 
purposes of their education? Or do we approach these 
studies, saying, “I hope the author will show me how to 
make my children less of a care and more of a comfort. 
I want them to do what I want them to”? If the latter, 
these chapters will be of little help, except as they may 
change the parents’ point of view. Children never can 
cease to be a care and to cause work any more than edu- 
cation is possible without social effort. No great or worthy THE POINT OF VIEW 
results can follow parental education except at the price 
of patient, sacrificing love. 
That is the point of view from which we may consider 
all the problems of the family and the care and training 
of children. The home exists for children. That prin- 
ciple is like a lodestone that must often true our course 
in all the strange and largely uncharted way of family or- 
ganization, management and direction, and especially in the 
consideration of those problems of conduct and character 
which daily arise. When nerves are strained by the activ- 
ity of child life, when patience is tried by their inexperi- 
ence, when the orderly conduct of this little social group 
seems to be disrupted by their seeming anarchy, still we 
must remember that they and not we are the controlling 
consideration. The question is not, What do we desire? 
but, What do they need? 
The problems of child behavior are problems, not be- 
cause their behavior disturbs us, not because it taxes our 
patience, not because it is different from our behavior, but 
because we have the single purpose of so guiding that 
behavior that they may find fullness of life, that they may 
become rich, strong, loving and wise. 
There are two ways of thinking of these problems; 
one is to regard family life as a fixed institution and to 
seek ways by which children may be fitted into the ways 
of that institution. This is a very simple way of think- 
ing; it is by no means uncommon, but it is totally wrong. 
The dominating concern is not that we may save the home; 
it is that we may use it in the best way possible. 
The other way, evidently, is to regard the family from 
the modern educational point of view, as a social insti- 
tution which determines its methods by its purpose. It 
has no particular processes to save, but it develops proc- 
esses wholly by its purpose and by the laws under which 
that purpose is realized. There is an important sense in 
which it is true that children rule both home and school 
since the laws of their growth must determine just how 
both are conducted. Many of our problems disappear when 12 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
we turn from the effort to save the home and fix our at- 
tention on the children. From that point of view, when 
means are subjected to ends, the conduct that distressed us 
because it deranged the means may be wholly justified by 
the results in child-happiness and character. 
It is important to hold the educational principle steadily 
in mind. Perhaps the best way to do this is to think of fam- 
ily life in terms of a modern school. A school exists to 
associate lives so that their experiences may be organized 
into habits and purposes of living. It develops lives by 
directing associated action, thinking, planning, willing and 
experiencing. A home exists that lives may be brought 
into the world and associated in an experience that will 
develop the powers of living, that will reveal the meaning 
of life, and will create worthy and sufficient purposes in 
living. 
The family is the child’s first school and his first society. 
It is so potent a school because it is such a rich society, 
first in time, close in personal contacts, free in action, 
varied in stimulus and action, and unconscious in its meth- 
ods. All the problems of family life are essentially edu- 
cational problems. They may concern health, but only for 
the sake of lives and from the point of view of these lives 
in the whole of society. They may concern conduct, but 
it is from the point of view of the active persons—rather 
than the point of view of parental wishes and custom— 
and, especially, active persons who must live in the total 
life of society. Whatever else the family may do this is 
its one, dominating purpose and this its one test: it must 
give to society men and women who have a rich, strong 
life and who are capable of living richly and helpfully 
with their fellows. Great as is the dependence of the na- 
tion on the schools yet more does it depend on the educa- 
tional vision and effectiveness of the family. 
Our concern, then, with the family is due to the fact 
that nothing in this world has as much to do with the de- 
termination of human character as the family. Inevitably, 
whenever social investigators work back through the causes THE POINT OF VIEW 
13 
of human delinquency, they come back to this social source. 
Inevitably, whenever we face the problems of religious 
training, we come to realize that school and church get 
children too late, after the most potent influences have long 
been at work, after habits are largely formed and life’s 
basic structure built. Nor is it alone a matter of priority 
in time; the constant, intimate, personal and unconscious 
tuition of the family group can count, and normally does 
count for more in every way than the sporadic, formal 
contacts and tuition of either church or school. So that 
we study the child in the home because here is at work 
the process that determines our future society. 
Note i. As to point of view in study of the problems. 
The author has endeavored so to arrange the material as 
to stimulate readers and students in classes to bring for- 
ward the results of their own experience and observation. 
He is conscious of the possibility that some might assume 
he is speaking principally from the immediate experience 
of his own family and stating those solutions of problems 
which that experience has demonstrated. But he has defi- 
nitely sought to avoid doing this and to bring together 
the wider and more varied experiences of other parents. 
Thus the book is, in a large measure a symposium, not 
alone in the statement of the difficulties to be met, but also 
in the suggestions on methods of solution. 
Note 2. As to method of study. Where the chapters 
are taken as lessons it will be well to make, parallel to each 
chapter, a series of case records, setting down the facts that 
one can gather which come under his observation in spe- 
cific families. Further, instead of discussing whether the 
proposed solutions are theoretically right, it will be well 
to observe them at work. We need to keep near to real 
cases, to definite experience. But at the same time it is 
well to remember that, unless our experience in attempted 
solutions is guided by sound educational principles the re- 
sults are not likely to be especially helpful. 
Note 3. As to class organisation. The book has been  THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
14 
prepared in the hope that it would prove useful to classes 
of parents, to groups anxious seriously to consider their 
duties in the training of children. Surely in every church 
there ought to be a class for parents, in order that the 
church might guide them in their work, the very first, most 
influential and critical of all work in religious training. 
Such a class should hold itself very close to the real and 
practical. At least at the beginning it may well content 
itself with the definite type of problems suggested in the 
text. Then from these, with interest quickened, and with 
consciousness of specific needs of knowledge, it can go on 
to the more general principles of education as applied to 
the life of the family. 
HELPFUL READING 
The following titles are taken from a bibliography pre- 
pared by Miss Mary Moxcey for The Religious Education 
Association, and this group of books bears the heading, 
“The Indispensable Books.” 
On the Training of Parents, Ernest H. Abbott (Houghton, Mif- 
flin, 1908). Parents’ tests of themselves. One of the best for 
textbook. 
Religious Education in the Family, Henry F. Cope (U. of C. 
Press, 1916).—“Idealism and common sense are harnessed to- 
gether. . . . Supplies exactly the text for classes” [of parents] 
G. a. c. 
(a) Beckonings from Little Hands (Dodd, Mead); (b) The 
Culture of Justice (Dodd, Mead) ; (c) Fireside Child Study 
(Dodd, Mead). Fundamental principles of education of both 
child and parent, concrete cases, inimitable style. (d) The 
Natural Way (Revell). Patterson DuBois. Larger and more 
comprehensive treatment of the entire scope of religious educa- 
tion ; thesis—“Child nature is the pivotal point of education.” 
Sons and Daughters, Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg (Holt, 1916). 
Brief, meaty sketches, considering most of the problems in the 
modern home and putting all their factors in due perspective. 
One of the best for intelligent parents. 
Child Nature and Child Nurture, E. P. St. John (Pilgrim Press, 
1911). Probably best available elementary textbook for parents’ 
classes. THE POINT OF VIEW 
15 
1. What is meant by the “case method”? 
2. What are the immediate purposes for which families exist? 
3. What are the ultimate social purposes of families? 
4. What one great lesson, or purpose, ought to come to children 
out of family life? 
5. What are the motives for seeking better behavior on the part 
of children? 
6. In what sense is it true that children govern the home? 
7. In what sense is the home a school? 
8. What are the principal ways in which children learn in the 
home? 
9. What qualifications ought they to have who teach children in 
the home? 
10. Reviewing your childhood what, in your conduct, gave your 
parents most trouble? Does the problem recur in your home? 
11. Is there any difference between problems of domestic organiza- 
tion and problems of education or character training? 
12. If you find a difference, make two lists, under those heads, 
including the problems indicated in the “Table of Contents.” 
STUDY QUESTIONS CHAPTER II 
CRITICISM 
Stating the problem: “Our home at times gets to be like 
a cage of monkeys and parrots because every one has fallen 
into the habit of criticism. Sometimes it is unbearable, as 
the older ones, especially, start the others to crying or 
quarreling by finding fault with them all the time.” 
TIIE GENERAL CONDITIONS 
Questions elicit these facts: the family has four children, 
ages from ten to twenty; criticism seems to produce most 
discord at meal times, but often occurs when only two may 
be together; it is directed at bodily attitudes, words, phrases, 
clothes, table manners, methods of work; it is often sharp 
and even cruel in form; it leads to tears, rejoinders, alter- 
cation, and even to general quarrels; it usually runs from 
an older to a younger child. 
Another series of questions leads to the judgment that 
criticism is becoming a settled habit with some, and that 
even the younger children tend to make themselves un- 
popular with their playmates by the exercise of this habit. 
Do the parents tend to either scolding or habitual criti- 
cism of one another or of the children? It appears that 
at least one of them is of a confirmed critical habit, finds 
fault with many things and does so in a way to be heard 
of all. This parent has high ideals, but makes the mis- 
take of seeking to have them realized by scolding at every 
failure. 
What steps have been taken to remedy the condition? 
Here it appears that the principal remedy tried has been 
that of reprimand, trying to cure scolding by more scold- CRITICISM 
17 
ing. It has not been particularly successful. Rather bet- 
ter success has followed quiet reasoning with older mem- 
bers. One, in particular, shows signs of being cured by 
having passed through a trying social experience in which 
criticism caused many a wound. 
Now we can turn, with these facts, to the case and 
consider the problem, aided by the fact that most people 
have some evidence to contribute from personal observation. 
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES? 
It is evident that criticism may fall into two classes: 
(i) that which is caused by a desire to wound, to shame 
and belittle another, and (2) that which is caused by a 
sincere belief that there is something which needs to be 
remedied or improved. The first is simply an exhibition 
of malice. The second may cause just as much pain but 
has less reprehensible motives. The second is the more 
common in the family, amongst its own members. 
Each time we need to examine the facts to see whether 
the act of criticism is caused by: (1) a desire to help an- 
other realize his faults; (2) a desire to exhibit another’s 
shortcomings, to show that he is not as good, as clever, 
as perfect as he would like to be thought; (3) a desire 
to compel others to conform to our ways; (4) the fear 
that parents may overlook another’s imperfections and thus 
favoritism be fostered; (5) a desire to assert authority; 
(6) an expression of the regulator’s habits, forcing others 
to do as we would have them do; or (7) a desire to show 
how keen we are, how highly our critical powers are de- 
veloped. 
Are any of these motives good? Which ones? How 
separate the good motives from the bad method? Are 
these motives always unmixed? Are the self-asserting mo- 
tives entirely bad? When children inflict mental pain on 
one another, are they conscious of the real consequences? 
Can they imagine this cruelty with anything like the vivid- 
ness with which physical cruelty is seen? On this point 18 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
we must remember the differences in children. Some real- 
ize keenly social pain while others seem to be armor-plated. 
Are there other causes of the habit of criticism? What 
of the general habits of parents? Do they criticize neigh- 
bors, preacher, teacher and children? Has the home any 
standards by which conduct can be judged other than the 
separate and individual opinions rising with each occa- 
sion? Has there been any training in the art of suggest- 
ing improvements, or any in the art of receiving criticism? 
SUGGESTIONS AS TO CURE 
1. Does criticism cure criticism? Will it help to upbraid ? 
Not as a rule; but sometimes it is well to turn the tables 
on the critic; sometimes he must be made to know the pain 
he is inflicting. The parent must, however, avoid the habit 
and example of fault-finding. It is one easily acquired, 
one of which we may be largely unconscious. Self-ex- 
amination ought to be the first step toward a cure. Then 
set an example of method of criticism, as to impartiality, 
gentleness and fairness, and let your criticism be given 
most often in private. 
2. Help every one to make motives clear. This will be 
attempted usually in private conversations. Sometimes it 
can be done in a quiet comment on some criticism. If 
we can help to establish the habit of considering what is 
to be accomplished by a criticism much of it will be silenced 
before it is uttered. The most effective method will be 
that of developing sympathy, helping each one to see the 
other’s point of view, his needs, his circumstances and his 
abilities. A helpful purpose may be developed, which may 
turn criticism into practical aid. Older ones may be aided 
to realize the pain that words can inflict. 
3. Substitute social standards for individual judgments. 
Establish family standards of doing things, of table man- 
ners, of dress, of speech, of duties. When there are cer- 
tain things that “are not done” and other things that are 
implied in the life of the family the child becomes his own CRITICISM 
19 
critic; he judges himself, unconsciously, by the accepted 
standards. 
4. Maintain the right of each one to be himself, to live 
his own life and to do things his own way, all subject to 
and within the limits of the social rights and duties of all. 
If John chooses to wear a green tie, that may be a subject 
for friendly jest and discussion, but big sister has no right 
to wound his feelings on the matter for fear some of her 
girl friends should think the family has poor taste as re- 
vealed in John’s tie. Here enters the problem of individ- 
ual freedom in the development of a common, social will. 
If the standards of the family are known and if they rise 
out of the will of all, and if the family has the habit of 
working together in large interests the lesser things take 
their right proportions. But criticism tends to recede as 
the critics endeavor to think things out together and to co- 
operate toward common ends. 
Some less important suggestions may be made: 
5. We should insist on a kind and gentle tone of voice; 
older folks can be very cruel in gentle tones, but the tone 
usually colors the content for younger ones. 
6. Let only one speak at a time. This will not only 
allow less time for criticism; it will cultivate courtesy, con- 
sideration for others, and patience; it will afford time to 
think over some harsh phrases ready to spring from the lips, 
and at least meliorate the noise at some family tables. 
7. Cultivate habits of praise and appreciation. Let par- 
ents try this themselves. Every one dreads blame and en- 
joys praise. Seldom are the critic’s good purposes so 
well effected as when praise tempers blame. Help every 
one to try substituting honest praise for honest criticism; 
that is, find the elements in the situation that we can com- 
mend and thus throw the unfavorable elements into relief 
so that their imperfections are realized at once. 
8. Beware of the habits of expressing all the criticism 
you feel toward all things. Some people will have a hard 
time when they die, if heaven is what it is pictured—and 
they are there. A pessimist is simply a man who thinks 20 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
that life is a business of finding how many worms there 
are in every bushel of apples. It ought to be a way of 
finding the worth and joy in all things. It is a common 
fallacy that we exalt ourselves by tearing down all we 
can see; we only choke ourselves in the dust of this de- 
struction. The most unhappy people in the world are the 
habitual regulators of others. 
While all these elements may enter in to help, the main 
reliance must be upon a change in the wills of the members 
of the family. The criticism that rises from a desire to 
help must be guided so that love will take away the sting; 
the criticism that is mere idle carping must be absorbed 
in useful, cooperative service in the home; the criticism 
that is merely an exhibition of smartness can only be cured 
by a will to love and help that is stronger than the will to 
display. Leading every member of the family into the 
happy experience of helpful service for others is one of the 
surest means of developing this will to love and help. 
CASES OF SOLUTION 
In one family this problem was met and largely solved 
by the children themselves. One of the older boys said, 
one day, to his father, “Dad, do you know that we young- 
sters have the habit of thinking everybody is wrong be- 
cause we hear our parents criticizing everybody?” Now 
if a parent cannot learn from his children he is totally 
incapable of teaching them. Probably that father felt in- 
dignant for a moment; but, instead of defending himself, 
he asked for proof, for instances. They were not lacking; 
and he began to see himself as his children saw him. From 
that time on there was an unspoken compact in that family 
to deny themselves the pastime of picking their neighbors 
to pieces. Then they found that they had touched the 
cause of their own habits of criticizing one another. 
In another instance help came from an unexpected source. 
A “Good English” club was organized at the public school; 
the first effect was to make every child a vigilant critic of CRITICISM 
21 
the grammar of every other one. Then some one sug- 
gested that there were other bad forms in the use of lan- 
guage, such as indulgence in unkind remarks, in the use 
of words and phrases that hurt. The members of that 
family acquired a sense of the power of words; they stopped 
to think not only as to the correct form but also as to the 
kindly form, the right purpose, and the melee of criticism 
came to an end. 
HELPFUL READING 
Ethics, Dewey and Tufts (Holt). Suggested as a fundamental 
book for parents to read when puzzled by ethical and moral prob- 
lems in the family; helpful in getting the social point of view. 
See especially Chapter 17. 
Guide Book to Childhood, W. B. Forbush (American Institute 
Child Life). See the references to Bullying, Quarreling, etc., in 
Index, and answers to parents’ problems. 
Conduct Stories, F, /. Gould (Swan & Sonnenschein, London). 
Excellent stories to read to children to develop their social ideals 
and to cultivate kindly habits. 
The Parent’s Guide (The University Society). Vol. II, page 172 f. 
gives good, sensible advice on dealing with these problems. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Give any examples of the seven types mentioned under causes. 
2. Which predominates, as a motive? 
3. When and how do children learn to criticize? 
4. Under what circumstances would public criticism help? 
5. How would you try to develop right motives? 
6. To what extent does general criticism become a hindrance to 
initiative ? 
7. What is the difference between criticism and correction? 
8. Give any instances of this problem and its solution. CHAPTER III 
SUNDAY AFTERNOON 
Stating the problem: “What shall we do with Sunday 
afternoons? My oldest daughter said the other day that 
it seemed to her that was the dreariest period of all the 
week.” In this manner an earnest man put his difficulty 
before us. 
Here is a case that presents a problem which has to be 
met in some way in almost every home. Facing it, the 
first step was to discover the reasons why Sunday seemed 
to be so much of a bore, at least as to part of the day, 
with so many young people and children. And so we put 
the question, in various somewhat disguised forms, to a 
number of them. Here are a few of their answers: 
“The afternoon is the worst time; there is nothing doing; 
every one wants to sit around and do nothing.” 
“From the midday meal till night all I can find to do is 
to read or sleep.” 
“We cannot play.” 
“It’s all right for old folks; they can sleep, or take a 
little toddle around a few blocks, or sit around and visit; 
but if we have in some young folks it is almost sure to 
get so lively that we get called down.” 
“We can see lots of other kids having a good time, play- 
ing ball; but we have to stick around and do nothing.” 
“I suppose I could stand it better if I cared for reading; 
but I don’t care for it much, anyway, and I’m all fed up 
on it with my school work. There are some people who 
can’t read all the time.” 
“Dad is always busy on church committees; Mother is 
tired and takes a nap, and there we are, the rest of us SUNDAY AFTERNOON 
23 
sitting around waiting for the world to get going again; it 
sure is a dreary time.” 
Such answers once might have seemed to savor of a 
diabolical origin and might have been received as sufficient 
evidence of original sin. But we have to treat them with 
more careful consideration. As a matter of fact they are 
all alike; they describe one common condition, a period of 
time without a program for young lives. In the greater 
number of Christian homes Sunday afternoon is prac- 
tically an accident; it just happens that this piece of the 
day the church did not preempt and no one else, so far 
as these religious families are concerned, has made any 
provision for it. 
It may be worth while to turn to look at the parents’ 
analyses of the situation, as gleaned from their attempts 
to describe the situation. 
“I simply do not know what to do; they plague me all 
the afternoon; if I give them picture books they want 
something else in half an hour; if I try telling stories that 
does not last long, and I am glad when the day draws to 
a close.” 
“The trouble is that they see so much play going on all 
around them; they can’t see why they should not play, too. 
Even good people seem to set no restrictions on their chil- 
dren, and the result is that mine feel we are unjust and 
too rigid. 
“We have tried about all the plans we have ever heard 
of, and I think the trouble is that children do not want you 
to boss them around by telling them what to do and by 
working off programs on them.” 
“They can’t see any real difference between Sunday and 
any other day; when there are no church services or Sun- 
day school to attend they wonder why they can’t do just 
as they might do on Monday.” 
“Children to-day are different from what they used to 
be. Nowadays we never hear the strains of Christian 
hymns in the homes we pass.” 24 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
THE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM 
Does not this group of statements give us the right clew ? 
We have a Sunday problem because we have a day, or at 
least parts of a day, controlled by traditions which we hardly 
understand ourselves and which children, who feel the con- 
ditions most keenly, do not understand at all. The worst 
of it is that these traditions control us so absolutely that 
we seem to be unable to think clearly about the problem, 
and thus they prevent our being guided by any definite pur- 
pose in the use of the day. Outside of the purpose which 
the church with its services establishes for us we have no 
controlling plan with the day. 
Sunday is a day different from other days. There is al- 
most universal agreement that we need a day that is dif- 
ferent. That opinion rises not only from religious but also 
from economic, scientific and other reasons. If these ade- 
quate reasons are perfectly clear and convincing to us they 
will lead to the principle which will provide a program for 
that day. Then, when the principle is understood, all we 
have to do is to adapt its application to the highest good 
of the children, to adapt it in such a way that this good 
may be achieved most efficiently, without unnecessary waste, 
friction or loss, and to help children to base their acts and 
to play the day on a similar comprehension of the basic 
principle. 
What is the reason for this different day? The older 
statement is that it is to be a day of worship, rest, change, 
relaxation and refreshment from daily toil. Jesus said 
that the day was designed for the good of man; its pur- 
pose lies in human good. Man is not to adapt himself to 
some fixed character which the day may have assumed; 
but it is to serve his good. As a day that is different its 
outstanding characteristic is change, change from daily 
work, daily interests, daily occupations of any kind, change 
of associations and habits. It may be a good thing that at 
least most of us have what we call Sunday clothes; they 
help to make the day seem different. It ought to be the SUNDAY AFTERNOON 
25 
day of freedom from the restraining toils of daily occupa- 
tion. It is the man’s work that takes him from his fam- 
ily; this day ought to bring and keep them together. For 
some it is the treadmill of occupation that keeps them from 
the open spaces and the glory of trees and fields; this day 
ought to afford opportunity for knowing that the world 
is beautiful, that it tells of love and lifts up the heart. So, 
for the child, also, it should be the day richer and happier 
than all others. 
SUGGESTIONS 
But how? Should it be by saying to them, “Now this 
is the way that Father and Mother get the most out of 
Sunday, therefore you must get the most out of it this 
way, too”? No. That will not work. The child’s way 
cannot be the adult’s way. They cannot enjoy or be espe- 
cially benefited by the sacrament of the Sunday afternoon 
nap. They are active beings. If we make piety in prac- 
tice mean repression of action they may easily become the 
kind of saints who never have more than a paralyzed 
piety, the kind that never gets over into business. 
In any case we cannot suppress their activity. But we 
can help them to direct it under principles and toward 
happy purposes. Perhaps the first step toward a solution 
of the problem of Sunday play and activity is that we adults 
shall forego our nap and be willing to spend a little time 
and thought on the problem. The child’s greatest need is 
just ourselves. This day may be absolutely and joyously 
different from all others to them if we will make up our 
minds that a large section of it belongs sacredly to the 
family; it is the one time when we should try to be together 
and to live a common life. Make it different by devoting 
it to family fellowship. 
Then, next, make it different and make it a day of high- 
level experience for yourself by devoting yourself to find- 
ing out what the child really wants to do and by helping 
him to discover things to do that distinguish this day from 
others. This works itself out in numerous ways. In some 26 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
families Sunday is the only day, save a very few other 
high-days, when certain spoons are used at the table, when 
certain dishes are served, when certain walks are taken to- 
gether, when certain games are played. This does not create 
a sense of taboo; it develops a sense of privilege and dis- 
tinction. In one family the father never plays ball with 
his children except on Sunday afternoon. True, that 
would be the depth of depravity in certain circles; but that 
father knows what he is doing, and he is doing a splendid 
thing with his boys; they are sticking with him clear into 
manhood. 
We may help to make the day different by directing the 
activity of children into new channels. They want to play 
simply because play is free, self-directed activity. We can 
help them to find new ways of free activity, and, as they 
grow up, these may be ways of expressing loving service 
for others. 
Perhaps we need a new attitude about the child’s play. 
So long as it does not interfere with the happiness of others 
can it be wrong for the child to carry on this ideal activity 
on this or any other day? Let us not mistake conventions 
for convictions. It is as natural and proper for the child 
to play as it is for us to have a good visit with the friend 
who calls on Sunday. Making that day which is marked 
as religious a day of gloom will not help a child to love God. 
Pain and piety are not synonymous. Nor will fitting the 
garments of our repose on their restlessness make them re- 
ligious. 
It will make the day different for us all if we try stretch- 
ing our imaginations to see it from the child’s point of znew. 
If we only could see, too, how different that point of view 
is from what ours was when we were children! Surely 
the modern city, on Sunday, would be nearer ideal if it 
were like the one which the prophet pictures, “full of chil- 
dren playing in the streets thereof,” instead of being that 
deadly, deserted thing that some still cherish in memory. 
Above all, take a positive attitude; instead of prohibi- 
tions be sure that there is opportunity and encouragement SUNDAY AFTERNOON 
to do worthwhile things. Redeem the hours from their 
dreadful emptiness. Help children to develop the tastes 
and the abilities that fill leisure with enriching occupations. 
The problem of commercialized amusements is due almost 
wholly to the inability of adults to entertain themselves. 
We can see to it that the next generation does not have to 
hire a circus every time it has an unoccupied hour. De- 
velop the abilities of self-entertainment. 
Make a list of the things you and your children could 
do together. Think out whether their ages are such that 
they need to form one group or more. Conserve the re- 
sources of this list. Draw from it suggestions and plans 
week after week. Avoid monotony and repetition. Yet 
you will discover some things that children like to do every 
Sunday; these become the acts that mark the day, setting 
it apart. 
A CASE IN POINT 
In one family the more serious elements of the Sunday 
problem appeared to be absent; inquiry revealed that in 
that family a single, guiding principle had been adopted, 
consciously by the parents and so persistently applied that 
it had become the unconscious rule for all members. They 
regard Sunday as the day sacred to the united life of the 
family. All its members will spend almost any effort to 
make sure of being at home. Guests are invited in, but 
members of the family seldom go out to stay. Before 
every other consideration this stands paramount, that it 
shall be a day of the joy of being together. The program 
of the day is planned so that it may make this togetherness 
possible; and the interests of the day seem to center about 
these things that all can enjoy together. 
If younger members desire play it is taken in forms that 
all may share, as, for example, in good walks, in visits to 
interesting places, or in flower-gathering in summer. In 
that family the day is distinctly sacred, and whatever in- 
terferes with family unity seems to profane it. 
No “blue laws” are necessary. The members have 28 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
learned what society will some day learn, that men cannot 
be regulated into ideal living; that conduct rests not on 
laws, but on love. Men will do the things they love to do. 
Laws are like fences, to keep trespassers in the highway. 
But no fences are or ever will be half so effective as love 
of the good broad highway of human love and freedom. 
The law of love that holds that family together is the one 
law under which our Sunday problem is likely to be solved. 
GENERAL QUESTIONS 
What new interests can you present to them? In what 
ways can we make the day mean opportunity rather than 
restriction? Is there not a difference between the restric- 
tions proper to be placed on business, on traffic, on mer- 
chandizing and the purpose that should guide our control 
of the actions of children? What joys and happy duties 
are crowded out of the week days that may find their op- 
portunity on this day? How may young people enjoy the 
social fellowship of their groups just as we enjoy our 
friends on this day? Ought not such groups of young peo- 
ple to have the privileges of our homes? What makes an 
act right or wrong on this day? Might it not be a greater 
wrong on our part to neglect the needs of our children on 
this day than it is for them to indulge in play? Might not 
many problems of play be settled on the basis of the rights 
of others? 
HELPFUL READING 
Religious Education in the Family (Ch. 13), Henry F. Cote 
(Univ. of Chicago Press). Contains chapters discussing the 
principles and describing methods and programs which have been 
tried. 
Training of Children in Religion, George Hodges (Appleton). 
The religious duties of parents and the needs of children dis- 
cussed in a charming, liberal spirit. 
Sunday in the Home (No. 24 in “The American Home Series,” 
Abingdon Press). A pamphlet on principles with certain spe- 
cific suggestions on the use of the day. 
A Year of Good Sundays (No. 25 in “The American Home Series,” SUNDAY AFTERNOON 
29 
Abingdon Press). Gives specific directions for programs of 
varied character. 
Love and Law in Child Training (Ch. 1-4), E. Poulsson (Bradley). 
A charming discussion of some of the religious and educational 
laws of children’s lives. 
With the Children on Sunday, S. Stall (Vir Pub. Co.). A book, 
principally, of practical plans of entertainment and instruction for 
children on Sundays. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Which of the several aspects, or explanations, seems to you to 
best state the situation? 
2. Why do we find different social customs, as to Sunday, from 
those of a generation ago? 
3. What is the fundamental religious purpose of Sunday? 
4. Does this differ from its economic and social purpose? If so, 
in what ways? 
5. What is the most common cause of family friction as to 
Sunday? 
6. State your opinion as to small children playing games on 
Sunday? 
7. Under what conditions, if any, might older children play 
games ? 
8. What of the play of adults? Is it contrary to the spirit of the 
day? 
9. What makes Sunday afternoon a peculiarly difficult period 
in many homes? 
10. Give any solutions you may know? CHAPTER IV 
DISOBEDIENCE 
The problem stated: This problem takes many forms. 
We can group together a number of cases, as they have 
been presented by different parents. One states: “We 
seem always to have trouble with some of our children in 
getting them to obey, while others make no serious oppo- 
sition to our wills.” Another: “What should I do when 
my little boy looks me square in the eye and says, ‘I won’t,’ 
in response to my request or command ?” Another: “Why 
do children to-day have so little respect for the commands 
of their parents so that they appear to think nothing of 
habitual disobedience? I can’t depend on any one of them 
doing as I ask.” 
Perhaps the problem can be stated simply in a single 
phrase: “Children often set their wills in opposition to 
the wills of their parents; what should parents do to bring 
the child to willingly exercise obedience?” 
I. When does disobedience first appearf Just as soon 
as any expression of will is possible. Disobedience becomes 
more conscious, apparently more deliberate, as the child 
grows up. We are dealing with a tendency which is as 
natural to a developing person as is the effort to extend 
knowledge. A child’s curiosity is not more normal to him 
than is his desire and effort to demonstrate that he can 
do as he wills. The exercise of his will is as natural as 
the exercise of his legs or his lungs. His will is certain 
to come into collision with other wills, including the par- 
ents’. 
THE PROBLEM ANALYZED 
30 DISOBEDIENCE 
31 
2. Is the exhibition of an opposing will an evidence of 
the child's iniquityf Is disobedience necessarily wrong? 
Ought we to demand blind obedience? Parents often an- 
swer these questions affirmatively. They bold, now that 
they have become parents, that they have a moral right to 
expect immediate, implicit, unhesitating obedience and that 
they rightly accuse the child of sin when he refuses to obey. 
Is not this the common parental attitude? Is it a right or 
just attitude? What right have we to assume that the 
rights are all on our side and the duties all on the side of 
the child? The simple fact is that, in the family, the will 
of the child is just as important as the will of the parents. 
This does not mean that it is more important that the child 
should have his way than that the course of action you 
know to be best should be followed, but it does mean that 
if the case is a mere conflict of wills the important con- 
sideration is that the child shall gain in power to will. 
For the purpose of the family, the will of the parents, 
as to any particular act or situation, must yield to, or con- 
form to a yet more inclusive willing, that of the dominat- 
ing purpose which is to grow these children into power to 
live the full and efficient Christian life. Probably this is 
the fundamental element in the whole question, for we have 
been accustomed to think the child must be wrong in as- 
serting his will. But that is precisely what we want him 
to do; the rub comes in when his assertion opposes our 
authority. Ought we not to recognize, in the child’s op- 
position, a power for which we have been watching, the 
power to determine for himself on a course of action and 
to stick to it. Instead of being a wrong or a sin his oppo- 
sition may be the expression of a power which is the 
backbone of virtue. It is ours to train and develop rather 
than to repress this power. 
The problem is not the one we usually state; it is not a 
question of how we can make the children obey our wills; 
but it is a quetsion of how we can help them to develop and 
control their wills in harmony with the wills of others 
in the family. 32 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
3. What then becomes of parental authority? Probably 
certain types of parental authority fade into the limbo of 
dead traditions; these are the types based on the concept 
of the parent as the possessor of the child and of the child 
as a chattel. This is the kind of authority which most 
often creates the problem we are discussing. But there is 
a parental authority which is strengthened by encouraging 
the child to his will; this is authority which is based on a 
dual sense of responsibility and sympathy, which expresses 
itself not by force but by fellowship and leadership. The 
very word “authority” has so many unfortunate meanings 
that in this connection we might as well cease to use it. 
It means the power to control others by force or fear. 
Control, force, and fear do not make for real obedience; 
they secure only compliance. 
But all this does not imply the loss of what many mean 
by parental authority, and that is the attitude of affectionate 
loyalty to the leadership of father and mother which makes 
their wishes weigh more with the child than any commands 
could do. We are likely to meet this problem of the oppo- 
sition of wills in increasing intensity until we transfer our 
bases of power from authority to loyalty. 
4. There is one form of disobedience that is peculiarly 
difficult to meet; it is exhibited by children who seem to 
have either stubborn minds or sullen dispositions. Col- 
lisions here are frequent in the family because stubborn 
children are likely to have stubborn parents. Of course 
the fault lies with the children—and they ought to make 
allowance for their parents’ weaknesses; but, being stub- 
born, they find it difficult to do so. 
5. The form of conflict of mill we most need to dread is 
not when they say, “I will not,” but when they profess com- 
pliance and then deceitfully disobey. This is likely to occur 
when fear prevents an honest avowal of their purpose and 
prompts them to pretend to obedience. 
6. The problem of the definite opposition of the mills of 
little children is not so very different, (a) In some cases 
they are only experimenting to see whether they can do DISOBEDIENCE 
33 
as they will, (b) In others they are yielding to the more 
immediate pressure of play or other interests or desires; 
the parent’s wish simply does not become effective in their 
area of interests. In a great many instances this is be- 
cause they have become habituated to meaningless com- 
mands and threats and are surprised at the exceptions when 
parents really look for obedience, (c) One other phase of 
the case with younger children must be recognized; they 
feel increasingly the pressure of the social group. There- 
fore they will disobey deliberately when the will of the par- 
ent runs counter to the apparent interest or will of the 
group. It is hardly fair, when one considers the whole 
situation, to expect a boy to break up a ball-game when 
mother calls: “Willie; time to take your music lesson!” 
SUGGESTIONS 
1. Accept the normality of the situation when the child 
opposes your will. It is just as normal as when some one 
opposes your motion in meeting. Only a martinet resents 
the diverging will or opinion. 
2. Rejoice in the evidence that the child has the power to 
will against opposition. Consider how much he will need 
this power. Imagine how you will rejoice if he opposes 
evil as he now opposes you. Whatever your course may 
be determine it shall strengthen and not weaken his power 
to will. Never allow yourself even to think of the utterly 
wicked purpose of “breaking his will.” You might as well 
plan to break his mind. 
3. Consider the situation with the utmost care. Do not 
state your determination with finality until you are sure of 
its wisdom, justice and love. It may be better to say to 
the opposing child, “We must take time to think this over.” 
Urge him, or her, to do this. Meanwhile you will con- 
sider: Am I insisting because this is the only right way, 
or simply to save my face, to assert my power? Did I 
put the request, or command, so that it did not affront my 
child’s sense of rights and his freedom of personality? 34 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
Did I help him to see my background of reason and mo- 
tive? Do I understand his background of reason and mo- 
tive? What are his reasons for refusal? How does the 
whole situation look to him? Are my reasons sufficiently 
reasonable and strong? 
4. Respect the will of those who oppose your will; re- 
spect their right to will their own conduct. Show that 
respect by treating compliance as an act of volition on their 
part and not simply as an inevitable reaction to our wish. 
Show that respect by an appeal to reason and judgment. 
Do not expect action in the dark. 
5. Discover the causes for opposition in younger chil- 
dren. (a) Is it the reaching out of a will, like the effort of 
baby fingers to do something new? If so, help him to use 
that will in choosing, in willing to do the thing that is right, 
(b) Is his opposition due to the fact that we have estab- 
lished in him habits of thinking our requests have no sig- 
nificance? If so, we must repair our own errors; we must 
take time to help him to see the importance of our requests, 
and we must refrain from meaningless commands, (c) Is 
opposition due to the desire for the approbation of his social 
group, playmates and friends? If so, play fair; do not 
shame him before them. Help him to make engagements 
for duties and to keep them. Help him to realize his social 
obligations to the family group as well as to the play group. 
6. Help younger children to discover the reasons for our 
requests and commands. We cannot give all the reasons, 
but we can help them to know that we are protecting them 
when we tell them not to play with matches, razors, etc. 
Mamma’s Angel Child would cease to appear in print if 
the parents were as active with their heads before events 
as they are with their hands in the final scene. 
7. Help children to act socially. We must transfer in- 
creasingly the problems of obedience from relations to us 
as individuals to relations to the family as a whole. The 
question must become not so much one of our wills as of 
the well-being of all. Children act in many families not so 
much because father and mother are enunciating rules as DISOBEDIENCE 
35 
because certain customs are established, because certain 
things are done and other things are not done, because of 
the feeling or idea that the whole group expects certain 
kinds of conduct. 
8. In the last step we are working out a common social 
will and this is the fundamental process that must always 
be operating. Always we must try to come together to 
the point where we both, or all, are saying to ourselves, 
“It is not a question whether you will yield to me or I to you 
but as to how we can agree together, as to how we can have 
a common will, and, particularly, as to how we can bring 
about certain residts together” Focus attention on ends 
to be achieved by cooperative action. In this the parent 
must lead. We can develop the wills of children and at 
the same time help them to definitely will what we are will- 
ing. Of course a common will means our willingness to 
find a common social ground as well as their willingness to 
come to our ways. 
The effecting of this common social will does not come 
by the single act of enlightening and persuading a child on 
some one question. It is a part of a total social experi- 
ence in which all members of the family are always using 
their judgments and wills in working out cooperative liv- 
ing. In the measure that children come into the full con- 
fidence of the family, share in its life, deliberate on its 
programs and feel the responsibility of determining with 
others its affairs the problems of obedience disappear in 
the very processes of cooperative action. 
9. Will-training includes the control of the will, the de- 
velopment of the power to change the will. This children 
must learn. Under the total social good they must will to 
give up their wills, and, for the good of all to do the things 
they had announced they would not do. 
HELPFUL READING 
Religious Education in the Family, H. F. Cope (Univ. of 
Chicago Press). Especially chapters XIX-XXI, dealing with 
problem in detail. 36 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
Moral Education, E. H. Griggs (Huebsch). Good for general 
principles. 
The Government of Young Children (No. 14, “American Home 
Series,” Abingdon Press). A pamphlet on this particular prob- 
lem. 
When Children Err, Elizabeth Harrison (National Kindergarten, 
Chicago). The conditions that tend to prevent many will con- 
flicts. 
The Training of Parents, E. Abbott (Houghton, Mifflin). A 
sensible help to a better point of view. 
Child Nature and Child Nurture, E. P. St. John (Pilgrim 
Press). An excellent series of discussions of this and other like 
problems and aspects of child-training. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What are commonly the earliest manifestations of disobe- 
dience? 
2. What are the peculiar difficulties of early forms? 
3. What is the essential significance of children’s opposition to 
our wills? 
4. What are the dangers of some of our ideas about parental 
authority? 
5. Give instances of unfair commands. 
6. What should any parent think of first when the problem arises? 
7. What are the dangers when we force a conflict? 
8. What is the fundamental social process which solves the 
problem? 
9. Give instances of will-breaking. CHAPTER V 
THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE 
Stating the problem: “I feel we have a large opportu- 
nity that is being neglected; it is becoming a lost oppor- 
tunity. What has become of the leisure hours, the evening 
family life? And how can we hold and use this time?” 
For the religious purposes of the family the most im- 
portant hours are those which are commonly regarded as 
of least importance, the hours of freedom and leisure. If 
we accept the duties of parenthood we cannot think that 
our duty is done when the day’s work is ended. The hours 
have all been under a program until the evening; we have 
been fully occupied with our work and the children not 
less with theirs. And now, perhaps, we feel we can drop 
all care. But the question, What shall we do with the rest 
of the day? is one of utmost importance for the character 
of all concerned. 
Any hour without a program is an hour of danger. Many 
homes are designed for every exigency except that of 
leisure. They are well arranged as dormitories, restaurants 
and places of social entertainment; but they make no pro- 
vision for the free hours of youth. They provide for the 
bodies of children but overlook and neglect their higher 
life. No one thinks of the fact that the search for recrea- 
tion, for social activity, indicates as real a need, as definite 
a hunger, as that for which we provide three times a day. 
Meals are programmed for digestive needs; do we arrange 
programs for social needs? 
ANALYZING THE PROBLEM 
We would realize that something must be wrong with the 
domestic machinery if no one save the old folks ever ap- 
37 38 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
peared at a meal; is not something wrong when every eve- 
ning the house is empty save for those old folks—and prob- 
ably they are at the movies ? 
There is a maiked tendency to-day to let the home “shut 
up shop” as soon as the evening meal is ended. Of course, 
it is part of the trend that has taken everything—education, 
industry, meals, books—out of the home and thrown them 
into community enterprises. But unless we can somewhere 
call a halt the home life will be nothing more than a mem- 
ory. Indeed, in our tendency to find all recreation outside 
the home we are letting the choicest part of its life go and 
thus losing the largest opportunity for character-training 
that remains anywhere, either in the home or without. 
There is a definite moral crisis upon us at this point of 
the family and the leisure hours; it will determine whether 
the home is to continue to have any personal and spiritual 
functions or to become merely an economic convenience. 
THE DANGER 
The danger is that our children shall be altogether taken 
from us. The school, playground, gymnasium, music, etc., 
hold them until the evening meal; the movies, parties, thea- 
ter and other forms of popular amusement demand them for 
the hours remaining before bedtime. Now if we are their 
religious educators we must have some time to be with 
them. Character training cannot he done by absent treat- 
ment. The greatest need of childhood is the chance to 
grow by contacts with personality. There must be time 
and program for the needs of personal growth, and the 
evening hour is the best of all times. 
We have given up too readily, surrendering to the streets 
and the amusement craze, and assuming that young peo- 
ple would never be content to be at home. That means we 
have largely ceased to be more than physiological parents; 
we have lost the opportunity of spiritual parenthood as we 
have abandoned the effort to maintain contacts with our 
children in the hours when the soul is free. Does it ever THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE 
39 
occur to us that they would prefer a cheerful, companion- 
able home to the street, that they would rather have friends 
and definite interests at home than be forced to find these 
outside ? 
These are hours of high and sacred opportunity. Be- 
tween work and sleep come the hours, too few and short, 
that should belong sacredly to the family, the time when 
we may be together, when all that home has meant and may 
mean should appear, when there should be forming in 
childhood’s memory the pictures that will make precious 
the thought of home in coming years, when we cease to be 
either school-children, house-managers, or world-workers 
and become just ourselves to one another. This should be 
the sacred period of personality, the hour of the firelight 
and the evening lamp, of conversation, merry jest, memo- 
ries, music and all that opens the heart and lifts our eyes. 
At such a time the great impressions are being made. In 
such hours the spirit is unconsciously storing strength for 
later days. How rich are the memories of the home eve- 
nings ! How much they have missed who cannot look back 
on such hours! 
But the evening that is so rich, so fragrant, so happy and 
helpful does not come by accident. It has to be reserved, 
to be guarded, to be planned and guided. To the child 
who lives in such a home it all seems perfectly natural; but 
to parents it means persistent struggle and planning. It 
seems as though this world, too much with us, envied us 
this place of retreat and had definitely set siege to possess 
it. The fashion of the hour scorns quieter joys and would 
force us to take its way of pleasure and call it our own. 
It establishes customs and sets up social obligations whose 
imperious demands make impossible any quiet family inter- 
course. We need all our strength to oppose these assaults. 
MEETING THE PROBLEM 
Definite plans. How shall we combat the disintegrating 
influences of outside amusements? Not by denouncing 40 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
them; not by summary rules of any kind, but simply by 
providing for the evening at home a program more at- 
tractive than anything beside. There rests on parents a 
religious obligation—not less than any other spiritual duty 
in the world—to provide definitely, thoughtfully and thor- 
oughly for the spiritual needs of their children, and this 
they may do best of all by a wise use of the evening hours. 
Somehow we must come to see this period standing out as 
distinctly and having purposes as definite as the hours set 
for meals. It is the meal-time of the soul, the opportunity 
to meet the longing and appetites of the higher nature. It 
is as religious an opportunity as the home will ever find. 
When we see the thousands of young people wandering 
the streets in the evening we ask, Why is a hard pavement 
more attractive than a sitting-room and a mob more at- 
tractive than the family group? One answer is that there 
are enough young people on the streets to give a group 
atmosphere of their own kind, while at home there is no 
adaptation to young life. It is folly to lay the blame on 
youthful tendencies as though the gregariousness of youth 
were a crime. The tendencies are not necessarily bad 
simply because they are different from our own tendencies; 
in any case we will have to accommodate ourselves to them. 
The cheerless home drives youth on to the street. Not less 
does the home that is selfishly conducted, designed and con- 
trolled for the social ambitions or the personal habits of 
the parents alone. Nor less the home that is simply a back- 
ground for the display of furniture. Make it an instru- 
ment of service. Let the young people bring their friends 
there. They will enjoy a home of freedom much more 
than the streets. Let them rearrange the furniture; it is 
made to be used; it cannot be better used than in ministry 
to youth. Sometimes they will enjoy quiet reading; some- 
times they will want music and sometimes, often, they will 
naturally demand activity. Books and music and freedom 
for happy exercise we owe them as much as food and 
clothes. 
Whether we shall find a menace or a means of help in THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE 
41 
these leisure hours depends on whether we have the cour- 
age to apply the home-life to ministry to the needs of chil- 
dren. Think of it as a means, an instrument, its effective- 
ness to be judged by whether it has given happiness to 
other lives, by whether it has revealed to them the joys of 
social living and helped them to find the satisfying and 
enduring joys of life. Therefore plan your programs of 
leisure hours and make provision in the home itself that 
these may be the times when youth learns what home really 
means. 
There is no complete solution of our problem; it will 
often baffle us. But this we may know: in trying to min- 
ister to the needs of the spirit in the leisure hours we are 
facing very directly one of the great religious problems 
of the family. 
It is a waste of words to talk about family altars until 
we can make the home itself a sacred place, more like a 
church in the sense that here we open our hearts to the 
best, here we find freedom for all that is of goodness and 
joy; least like a church in the sense of being dry, stilted, 
conventional, repressed or gloomy. It is an idle waste of 
breath to boast of our anxiety and our prayers for our chil- 
dren unless we will give up the evening planned for our ends 
and convert it to their good. And it is not less a waste 
of words to preach to them about religion while we let this 
opportunity of practicing go unused. Here is the only 
way we can successfully combat the dangers of idle and 
wasted hours, by offering through the home that which 
is always more attractive than either loafing or empty amuse- 
ment, and that is fellowship, freedom, joyous activity and 
social life. 
IN ONE FAMILY 
Of one family the neighbors usually say, “All you peo- 
ple seem to be busy all the time, either working hard or 
playing hard.” An inquiry, pursued at some length, re- 
vealed a number of interesting facts. Perhaps the most 
illuminating was the statement that when the parents began 42 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
home life they determined to always have on hand some 
hobby. At first they studied a new language and trans- 
lated together. Then they took up a definite accomplish- 
ment. Later, and for several years, they followed rather 
stiff courses of reading, designed by an educational insti- 
tution. Now, when you go into that home, you find that 
every one is occupied with some definite interest. Leisure 
is not idle; it is opportunity to turn from one kind of work 
to another, to one that has a special fascination, one that 
is taken up in freedom of choice and not under necessity. 
The parents found that it was not necessary to require 
that children should take up these interests, all that was 
necessary was to have on hand the conveniences and facili- 
ties. Given wood-working tools one boy soon found that 
occupation leading into many lines of investigation. Given 
plenty of books, books on special subjects as well as general 
literature, children of their own accord were found start- 
ing out on tours of intellectual and social discovery. 
Let no one think that this is simply a family of high- 
brows. For one thing, there is the keenest interest in and 
participation in physical sports and play by all members. 
For another, there is an unwritten law that even hobbies 
are laid aside and studies cease so that the members may 
enjoy one another in social intercourse. But that family 
has never had to meet the problem of street-loafing; the 
leisure hours have been preempted in happy, stimulating 
occupations. Perhaps because the parents have never 
learned that they were too old to grow, the children have 
always been engrossed in the means of growth. 
HELPFUL READING 
The Dramatic Instinct in Children (No. 21 in “American Home 
Series,” Abingdon Press). 
Dramatics in the Home (No. 22, “American Home Series,” Abing- 
don Press). (See also the references in Chapter on Reading.) 
The Morality of Social Pleasures, M. Fowler (Longmans). An 
English essay especially valuable in its discussion of the meaning 
of the life of human intercourse. THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE 
43 
What Men Live By, R. C. Cabot (Houghton, Mifflin). Espe- 
cially important to get a point of view. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Is this problem peculiar to our modern times? 
2. How does the problem vary in different types of communities? 
3. What dangers does it present to the educational work of the 
family? 
4. What does home life afford that no other agency can give? 
5. Why do children prefer to be outside the family in the 
evening? 
6. Usually what are the dominant factors in determining the 
program of the family in its leisure? 
7. What do parents owe children during the leisure hours? 
8. What special forms of training should prepare for better 
use of leisure? 
9. What special physical provision should be made? 
10. Describe any cases in which the problem has been solved. CHAPTER VI 
OUTSIDE COMPETITION 
Stating the problem: “What chance have we parents to 
train our children unless we can be with them once in a 
while? Why, most of my children might as well be away 
in boarding school for all we see of them. The high- 
school, their clubs and the church make a complete pro- 
gram for all their spare time. They eat with us occasion- 
ally and sleep with us fairly regularly; but that gives very 
little opportunity for systematic training.” 
There were a good number of emphatic, assenting nod- 
ding heads when this problem was being stated. Appar- 
ently we had started a general experience meeting when 
another person said, “It seems to me that a good deal of 
the advice given for parents has been held in storage too 
long; it was prepared for a day that is past, a day when 
all the family had long periods of leisure, when life was 
so simple that we could count on spending together most of 
the time left over from work and school. I can remember 
how we used to sit around in the evenings when the supper 
work was done. We cannot do that now; the evening 
meal must be hurried up because Mary has her club meet- 
ing, or John and Jane both have a date or a social en- 
gagement, or it may be that every one, including Father 
and Mother, will be out this evening.” 
THE SITUATION 
Undoubtedly a great change has taken place, one that 
seems to seriously complicate and intensify the problem of 
family training. The situation stated by the first speaker 
is not peculiar to any one family; it is common at least to 
44 OUTSIDE COMPETITION 
45 
all dwelling in cities and villages and, to a large extent, to 
those in rural districts. We face the fact 'hat family life 
has been socialized. Once this socialization was confined 
to schooling and daily work, and then, the day’s work done, 
we passed back into the smaller group organization of the 
family, and the later part of each day we spent together. 
We depended upon and developed our own resources for 
entertainment and improvement; we made our own music, 
read books, told stories, passed conundrums, simply visited 
or watched and helped the children in their home studies. 
Friends came in or we went out and called informally on 
neighbors; but, on the whole, the evenings and the after- 
school hours were our own; they were the larger, free 
opportunities for family education, for the training that 
such a social life affords. 
But, just as we have syndicated the chatty news-letters 
that our grandmothers used to write into the daily papers, 
so we have effected a combination of all the family cottage 
organs into the community orchestra and combined the 
remnants of the old group-plays and games in the social 
occasions of the community. Then, just as the restaurants 
and caterers and delicatessen shops have encroached on 
home cooking, so have commercial amusements encroached 
on home programs until we are a people who are too busy 
following prescribed routines of diversion to have any 
spontaneous enjoyments and too much occupied with the 
attentions of hired entertainers to develop any powers of 
self-entertainment. 
IS THERE ANY WAY OUT? 
Is the situation hopeless? Does it follow that we will 
have no home life left except that which discharges the 
functions of a hotel or a restaurant and a dormitory? 
No. First of all, there are still a great many homes 
where the competition of outside attractions seems to have 
had little effect, where most of the members spend their 
time together, and these are often homes with young peo- 46 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
pie and children. What is their secret? They refuse to 
assume that the dominance of the outside program is in- 
evitable. It is true that the tendency of community life is 
to do together as many things as possible; but there are 
some things that are not as well done under a syndicate, 
or under community direction; there are some phases of 
personal character that need the nurture and the special 
social experience of the smaller and more personally di- 
rected group. Do not let any one taunt you with the sneer 
that you are an old fogy, fighting against modern progress 
and tryihg to halt the tide with your pleas for the good 
old days. There are some things about those days that 
no day can dispense with. Just as the schools have begun 
to discover that the essential thing about education is that 
it shall furnish definite social experience, so we must real- 
ize that no child can grow up strong and right-minded with- 
out the social experience of the family group; he needs 
the home, and no schools, social-centers, movies, clubs, 
churches or anything else can take its place. 
But the case is not yet desperate; there are many un- 
realized possibilities in most families. If the school and 
the social-center steal our children with their programs we 
must reclaim them with our programs. There lies the 
trouble with the home: as a rule it has no program, nor 
has it ever dreamed of one. It is often a drifting, pur- 
poseless institution, except that, normally, meals are pro- 
grammed. Why not stop long enough to realize that chil- 
dren have organs, other than their stomachs, needs just 
as important, appetites just as imperative. Why not plan 
meals for their minds and for their social natures? If 
we do not is it strange that they go to the public caterers 
to the mind and the social nature ? 
SUGGESTIONS ON SOLUTIONS 
Programing is possible, and it is neither so formal nor as 
formidable as it sounds; it simply means a little forethought 
and a good deal of sympathetic imagination. It may mean OUTSIDE COMPETITION 
47 
rearranging our personal schedules. It may mean that 
the house will be less perpetually reposeful, and that the 
furniture may be occasionally used, and the glacier forma- 
tion of feminine precisions thrown into violent eruption. 
But, in time, we get to see that all these things, even Ori- 
ental rugs and the sacred what-not in the corner, are but 
tools to one great purpose, that the family may grow fine 
and strong men and women. The one great purpose is 
to make the home stronger than the outside attraction, to 
make it the place where the young would rather be than 
anywhere else and where they would rather have their 
friends come than to go where those friends are. 
Next, it is highly important to preempt the coming op- 
portunities of the home. Within the next few years, the 
greater part of humanity is likely to have much more leis- 
ure. Hours of labor will end earlier; the entire family 
will have greater margins of free time, time which may be 
exploited by the commercial amusement agencies, or taken 
from the home and given wholly to the community, or made 
the great opportunity to redeem home life. All who have 
at heart the welfare of society must face the problem and 
opportunity of this wider margin of leisure. If it is to be 
lost in dissipation it will do the worker little good; it will 
do society much harm. We all need to learn the arts of 
leisure, to cultivate the powers of self-entertainment, to 
acquire independence of the professional entertainer. Edu- 
cation must be planned for leisure as well as for work. 
And the way to preempt the larger areas of leisure is to 
claim and use those we now have. 
THE RIGHTS OF THE HOME 
It is high time to claim the rights of the home. It is 
a social institution. It has rights at least equal to the 
school. But society has shown a tendency to regard it as 
negligible and the schools have often ruthlessly disregarded 
its rights. Many a child does not reach home before the 
time for the evening meal, and immediately after it he must 48 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
settle down to three hours of home-study. One might 
suppose he existed only for knowledge-packing industry. 
School-people and parents need to get together and to real- 
ize that they are cooperators. Parents may settle this mat- 
ter by converting the teachers to see the family as an edu- 
cational agency with responsibilities for the child’s whole 
life. Between school and home cooperation is impossible 
so long as they are at loggerheads, and there we will 
remain until we confer together. In the affairs of the 
school and in the affairs of the church and every other 
community institution the home should be represented. 
And the simplest way to get that representation is to take 
a hand in the affairs of these institutions as consciously 
representing the home and the family. 
CASES THAT SUGGEST SOLUTIONS 
There are families that do not seem to feel outside com- 
petition; what can we learn from them. One of the first 
general impressions is a corrective of the apparent attitude 
of the last paragraph; we must claim the rights of the home 
in society, but it has no rights it can claim over children; 
so far as children are concerned home-life does not win 
precedence by assertion of its rights nor by any kinds of 
compulsion or regulation. The testimony of parents is 
fairly uniform here, that no matter what rules you may 
make or what principles you may assert children wiU be 
drawn where life is richest to them. The problem is two- 
fold : to make life in the family so rich and attractive that 
it will have greater holding power than all outside, and, at 
the same time, to develop in children tastes and appetites 
for the better life that the family has to offer as compared 
with the designed attractions of the street and of com- 
mercial amusement. We may as well save breath spent 
in lamenting the indifference of children and begin to make 
family life so different from other life that they will feel 
they cannot afford to be long absent from it. OUTSIDE COMPETITION 
49 
Visit the homes where children spend their evenings and 
you will find two reasons for the fact: the homes minis- 
ter to the instinctive needs of children, and the parents 
have tried to cultivate in those children some needs that 
may not be instinctive, appetites for good music, reading, 
quietness and the joys of sharing life together. 
Another feature of those homes—one that is sometimes 
distressing to people who think that the home exists, first 
of all, for the adults, is that the friends of the children are 
always welcome. No matter how great the love between 
parents and children, the latter will crave also young lives 
about them. They attend the school functions because 
their crowd is there. The most successful home, in rela- 
tion to this problem, was one where there were always a 
number of boys working at something; for a season it 
was making aeroplanes; at another period they were build- 
ing miniature theater stages, with marionettes; then they 
were book-binding; then they had a very formal club which 
met in that home. True, sometimes things were cluttered 
up; but the boys were there. 
But having done all that may be done to resist the en- 
croachments of the outside, competing institutions, and to 
meet their competition, ought we not to ask ourselves what 
every merchant will ask himself when competition makes 
him nervous: Is my business really competent? Here are 
a few questions to thrash over before we decide to settle 
this matter with a vote of censure on either society or the 
schools: Is it really outside competition that keeps these 
children out of my homg. evenings ? Are they there when 
that competition is removed? If they are there, what is 
there for them to do? Why, at bottom, do we want them 
there? If they were having a good time there, with their 
friends, what would we do about it? Would we not chide, 
restrain and dampen their ardor? How much planning do 
we do for their spare time? 
And here are a few subjects for general discussion: 
Why do children prefer to be out? Which are the really 
determining factors in the home: parents, guests or chil- 50 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
dren? If ever we do plan an evening, whose tastes and 
needs determine the plan? 
HELPFUL READING 
Religious Education in the Family (Chs. 4, 15, 16), Cope (Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press). Especially the introduction. 
The Coming Generation (pages 60-68, 271, 272), Forbush (Apple- 
tons). Deals with the many problems of training children and 
youth in the social and religious life. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. In what sense is the word “competition” used here? 
2. What are the agencies that compete? 
3. What needs do they meet that often are not met by families? 
4. Describe the “socialization process” as it works in your com- 
munity. 
5. What is meant by “programming” home-life? 
6. What provision ought to be made for probable changes as to 
increased leisure? 
7. Why should the home take precedence of other institutions? 
Is this true of all homes? 
8. What is the basis of the home’s right over the child? 
9. What needs are most commonly neglected in homes? 
10. Describe any solutions of the problems you may have ob- 
served. CHAPTER VII 
AMUSEMENTS 
Stating the problem: “I am worried over my children’s 
amusements. I want them to have a good time but there 
is the question of the moral healthfulness of the things 
they seem to like best and the things that their friends 
enjoy.” 
One might describe this as a universal problem in mod- 
ern life. It presents peculiar difficulties to thoughtful par- 
ents. They covet all possible happiness for their children; 
social custom and commercial enterprise persistently offer 
happiness in forms that are foreign to our older moral 
ideals. Some are simply means of nerve dissipation; others 
frankly stimulate fundamental appetites for which they 
offer no control; others tend to form habits of slothful, 
passive pleasure-seeking, and of emotional subjectivity. 
Parents realize that the young live in a new day. Does 
this mean that new moral standards prevail? Are they, 
forgetting youth’s needs, seeking to set on their children 
the stiff harness of adult life? Is it safe to leave youth 
to instinct? We know they must have free activity; have 
we the wisdom to determine what its character should be? 
THE ANALYSIS 
The problem of modern amusement is perplexing be- 
cause it is so difficult to distinguish between good and bad. 
To a large degree our current craze for amusement is sim- 
ply a disease, a manifestation of nervous abnormality. It 
is compounded of the perfectly natural and healthy de- 
sires for change, relaxation and physical exercise, on one 
51 52 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
side, and, on the other, of nervous restlessness, habitual 
physical twitchings, the high-tension vibrations due to pres- 
ent-day social pressure and strain. It is not easy here to 
distinguish between healthy tissue and diseased, between 
the normal and the vicious and unhealthy. 
The amusement that consists in an entire change of in- 
terest and purposes is not bad in itself; it is, at intervals, 
necessary, normal and good. Every human being ought 
to play; every one ought to enjoy his play, and it ought 
to be that form of play which his life needs at its stage of 
development. Play is simply our effort to find freedom 
of action, to give ideals reality in experience. Here we 
drop living under necessity and turn from the parts we 
play under the mechanism of a working world to assume 
such parts as we choose: warriors, artists, competitors in 
struggles that have no aim beyond experience. Every life 
constantly craves such freedom of action. But all nor- 
mal appetites have possibilities of abnormality. Here is 
a normal tendency which has been neglected by those who 
ought to have seen its high potentialities and has been ex- 
ploited by those who were quick to realize its commercial 
possibilities. 
Now there seem to stand two opposing parties on the 
so-called amusement question; on one side those who, hav- 
ing failed to make amusement and recreation count for 
good, declare that it is wholly evil; on the other, those who 
are determined to develop, control and exploit its possi- 
bilities for their profit. Not universally, but too largely, 
the church says “Amusements are evil”; commerce says 
they are rich in possibilities of revenue. But youth, stand- 
ing between, finds them in his range of indispensable de- 
sires, and the professional amusement caterers care not 
whether they are evil or good so long as they bring in 
good financial returns. But one must not forget the many 
earnest and intelligent groups who are endeavoring to 
guide the play and recreative instincts and to make wise 
provision for them. 
The more vehemently the church denounces amusements AMUSEMENTS 
53 
in toto the more effectively does she drive young people, 
and that means nearly every one to-day, into the waiting 
arms of the commercial exploiter. 
The first step is to recognize that we are dealing with an 
entirely normal appetite, one that must be satisfied. Life 
does press hard on nearly all to-day; relief there must 
be; the strain must be lessened at times. Every life must 
have opportunity to enter into some ideal experiences. 
Somewhere the life must have freedom of action. Some- 
where there must be social mingling with our fellows on 
levels other than those of everyday work. Every day the 
vital current of interest ought to be switched over into 
new channels. It cannot rest entirely, but it can be di- 
verted and saved from overstrain. Play and amusement 
are normal and necessary. 
But we are dealing with a normal appetite under abnor- 
mal conditions. They are: first, the condition of general 
overstrain of life. The higher the civilization the higher 
the tension. In part, it is the high tension of unusual in- 
terests, of great anxieties. But it is also the tension due 
to the great complexity of life; we are crowding on one 
another; we depend on one another; we react from one 
another; the mechanism of ordinary living has become 
highly complicated; simple living has gone. Much of the 
complexity may be unnecessary and artificial; but it is 
here, and it is difficult to escape from it. Its pressure 
is continuously on all. Children find their days full; young 
people work through high-pressure schedules of social en- 
gagements. Foolish, factitious and faddish our programs 
may be, no more than surface eruptions of the fever of the 
age, but each one makes the tension greater, each one 
brings the nervous system nearer to the breaking point. 
The second condition is that of our newly realized social 
integration; the separate life has passed. We live in mobs 
and we are ministered to in mobs. Amusement is no longer 
found in quiet individual occupations or in the family group 
but in the great crowd. 
The third condition, producing the problem, is that of THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
54 
the cultivation of the crowd instinct, and the deliberate ex- 
ploitation of nerve-strain by a class newly conscious of 
power and opportunity, the amusement caterers. We are 
in a condition of mind and nerves when normal appetites 
cannot be trusted. Just as in some diseases the stomach 
seems to call for precisely the types of food it ought not 
to have so we, with jaded nerves, call for high-speed, high- 
spice forms of relaxation, all making yet larger demands 
on the nerves. Then the pace is speeded up by those who 
seek to develop the abnormalities of the appetite. It is 
a good deal like the saloon business all over again, only 
on a plane and by methods that seem more consonant with 
the taste of the age. Very skillfully have the amusement 
caterers thrown a glamour of romance over their business. 
Some of it runs so close to the aesthetic that they have made 
us believe that the musical comedy was a piece of histri- 
onic art. Then they have thrown the mist of the un- 
known, the weird and strange over it; Broadway is a 
disease in New York, but it is a word to conjure with 
amongst the ignorant, the young and those who are thirst- 
ing for strange experiences. 
MEETING THE PROBLEM 
What can we do about it? Everything depends on our 
attitude. If it is simply that of denunciation, the case is 
hopeless; we are beaten before we begin. We never will 
be able to strip life of the features of play and amusement. 
Nor are we likely to achieve very much if our attitude is 
simply that of capitulation, saying, “Oh, well, since young 
people must have their fling, we’ll make the best of it and 
give them only so much as we can’t help giving.” A be- 
grudging attitude simply means that the satisfaction of this 
normal appetite is taken out of our hands and placed in 
those of others having other motives. 
Our concern in the whole question of amusements is not 
that of making our children do the things we like to do; 
it is not that of saving them from doing things other than AMUSEMENTS 
55 
we used to do; it is not that of fighting changing social 
customs. We have, or ought to have, a very different pur- 
pose, and a very simple one, no other than this, to help 
them to get the most out of life, the largest, most lasting 
and satisfying values. 
We can see in the amusement problem not so much an 
enemy to be wiped out as an opportunity to be developed. 
Instincts cannot be eradicated, and the appetites that grow 
out of them cannot be suppressed. What is more, every 
instinct offers a channel through which the life may be 
reached, a means of modulating and guiding conduct. The 
activity of play is our opportunity to guide conduct, to 
form habits and develop powers. It is a wonderful op- 
portunity to direct the expression of ideals. Play may 
become as truly a part of the educative process as anything 
beside. Not only the play that is directed in gymnasiums 
and classes; but the opportunity may be even larger in the 
free play that groups determine for themselves. Every 
one knows this who has thought about it. In play the 
powers are released for ideal purposes. In play lives go 
out into continually changing forms of activity. In play 
lives learn control and cooperation. Play is full of disci- 
plines; but they are covered and beautified by pleasurable 
emotion and appealing purposes. 
We admit the opportunity that play affords, but we make 
no adequate provision for it. The family accepts it as an 
inevitable accident or an incident of childhood, as some- 
thing they will outgrow, just as they pass beyond measles 
and mumps. Play often is discouraged as youth comes 
on. Failing to see its educational advantages, we allow 
this instinct to be diverted from its free expression in 
group plays into the passive amusement stage. 
There is no reason why the family should not provide as 
deliberately for play as for food; the whole nature needs 
one as much as the body needs the other. So long as 
fathers play with their boys there is little danger in the 
amusement problem. Youth would always rather act than 
be acted to or for. 56 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
Much of the so-called amusement of youth is simply 
more highly-organized play. This is evident when we con- 
sider the forms of amusement in which they are physically 
active. Dancing is play. But so also is much of the social 
life of young people, their parties and social affairs; they 
are experimentations with life under free conditions, or 
under ideal rules. 
It is not difficult to draw the line between play and amuse- 
ment; play is free, direct social activity, commonly largely 
physical, under conditions and for ends which are largely 
ideal. Amusement is passive; the action is not our own; 
it is the relief or diversion of interest by setting in its 
focus the real or imaginary experiences of others. 
THE DANGERS IN AMUSEMENT 
The passive attitude constitutes the danger of amuse- 
ment. Its object is sensation. Its purpose is satisfied to 
the degree that the spectator gains emotion without real 
experience. It is likely to have serious effects on the 
will; the experience of an emotion—often of the most 
sweeping, compelling character—to which we make no re- 
sponse in will and action, paralyzes the power to respond 
to emotion and largely inhibits the activity of the will. 
The forms of amusement in which the emotional elements 
are definitely organized, as in the drama and the movies, 
have also elements of danger in the inevitable tendency to 
meet the demands of drugged emotional natures. A spe- 
cies of intoxication ensues on long continued amusement 
so that the inner palate loathes common food and demands 
only that which will be sufficiently stimulating to act as a 
spur to the jaded appetite. 
Another danger lies in the abnormality of the conditions 
of popular amusements. They are tricked out in garish 
lights, lurid colors and nightmarish forms. In their very 
setting, as well as in their content, they distort life and 
present it in false forms. AMUSEMENTS 
57 
CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS 
Yet amusement has its place. We cannot enter into all 
life by direct and immediate experience. The man who 
laughs at the recital of a good story or joke is being 
amused. The reading of fiction is a form of amusement 
—and so is going to church, for some people. The ele- 
ments of instruction are often mixed with the forms of 
amusement. 
What then shall we do? Use both play and amusement; 
meet the normal appetites of people; develop the fine pos- 
sibilities in both; make them our allies. Recognize how 
they meet essential needs. Base our decisions and action 
on knowledge and not on prejudice or arbitrary rules. Live 
closer to our children so that we may know not only what 
they want but why they want this or the other particular 
form of amusement. How can we help them to discrimi- 
nate unless we really know both the basis of desire and the 
exact form of its satisfaction? For example, to say that 
the “movies” are wholly bad or that they are wholly good 
is the part of ignorant sloth. 
A SUMMARY OF CASE RESULTS* 
Help them to solve the problems for themselves. At all 
times we need to remember that, for growing young peo- 
ple, moral problems are not solved by prohibitions; we 
should look toward developing in youth the power to will 
what they know to be right, rather than hope for youth 
that submits to our regulations. Every problem of amuse- 
ment is an opportunity for their training through the exer- 
cise of the powers of discrimination and will. The best 
thing we can do for them is to help them discover the guid- 
ing principles in regard to every moral question. Few 
things help more, in this direction, than the free discussion 
of forms of amusement as they arise. Such discussions 
* It has seemed best, in this chapter, to bring together the best suggestions 
that have come from individual cases rather than to state each case separately. 58 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
must not degenerate into mere debates; we must not per- 
mit ourselves to make hasty judgments, to pronounce harsh 
verdicts, not even though we are sure we are right. For 
our children will need, not our verdicts, but their own 
purposes, determined by their own judgments, carried out 
by their own wills. 
But we can help them to form their purposes; we can 
help them to see the principles that will guide action. They 
can be shown that, while amusements must entertain, we 
never have the right to allow them to weaken or destroy 
our life powers. They must contribute to health, they 
must contribute, in some way, to enriching our lives. And 
we can help them to see that they must not make for our 
happiness, or our pleasure, at the cost of the happiness or 
well-being of others. 
Discussion is good; but experience is always better. The 
best way to meet a vicious amusement is with a healthy 
one. Some parents have little or no problem here simply 
because they pay the price, in time and thought, of seeing 
that their children find within the home itself, and in the 
circle of youth that the home attracts, the satisfaction of 
every normal desire for pleasure and entertainment, for 
social mingling and activity. The best way to cultivate an 
appetite for the things that are good is to feed the life with 
good things. Many young people are eating, for their 
social appetites, out of the hog’s trough of the commercial 
amusement promoters simply because when they have asked 
for bread their parents have offered a stone or a bare 
board. 
Above all we should provide directly and in the family 
life and our- own social groups for the satisfaction of the 
normal desires for play and amusement. If no food is on 
our tables our children must still eat, and we will find them 
at strange tables or searching in the gutters and the gar- 
bage cans. When the home cares more for chairs than for 
children, when it lives under the fear of furniture, the 
starved instincts of its young lives will drive them into 
pool-rooms and dance-halls, amusement-parks and carni- AMUSEMENTS 
59 
vals. There is no solution in restriction; it lies in pro- 
vision. When one looks into many homes to find them 
destitute of books, limited in music to tattered sheets de- 
termined only by the vogue of the street, and repellant to 
youth by a policy that is based on adult selfishness, it is 
not strange that we have an amusement problem. 
The parents who meet this problem must first ask 
whether and to what degree they are offering their children 
normal satisfaction of their play life and their social ideal- 
izing tendencies. And the church that denounces popular 
amusements must first tell us why all her doors are shut 
six nights of the week while youth tramps the streets and 
turns into the only places that afford opportunity for social 
mingling. 
HELPFUL READING 
Christianity and Amusements, R. H. Edwards (Association 
Press). A frank discussion, in a modern spirit, which leads back 
to fundamental principles. 
The Play Movement and Its Significance, H. S. Curtis (Mac- 
millan). A valuable survey of the place of play and a guide to 
its use. 
Social Activities for Men and Boys, A. M. Chesley (Association 
Press). Especially for institutional workers with boys, but will 
help parents who are puzzled as to forms of play and amuse- 
ment. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. How would you distinguish between play and amusement? 
2. What are the special uses of amusement? 
3. What current conditions intensify the dangers in amusements? 
4. What may be the effect of amusement on the will? 
5. Why do older people so commonly condemn amusements 
usually approved by young people? 
6. Consider carefully what the verdict of young people would be 
on the forms of amusement current forty years ago. What 
would they think of many of the outdoor round games, es- 
pecially the kissing games? 
7. In what ways may the family use the desire for amusement as 
a social opportunity? 
8. What opportunities are there in your community for healthy 
amusement? THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
9. In what ways may churches aid families in this problem? 
10. What considerations of health should enter in? 
11. What principles should young people be guided to form for 
themselves ? 
12. How may they be aided to form their own principles? CHAPTER VIII 
THE DAILY NEWSPAPER 
Stating the problem: We were riding down on the 
morning train together, exchanging fugitive comments 
across the pages of our papers, when he turned his sheet 
toward me and said, “What do you think of children read- 
ing that sort of stuff?” 
He pointed to the kind of sex-sensation to which our 
daily papers have thoroughly hardened us. It was the 
usual tawdry mess, garbage-can material treated in alley- 
scavenger taste, the type of news that once was confined to 
a few notorious sheets. And yet this is served up almost 
every morning, in one form or another, in millions of homes 
where it is eagerly read by children from seven years of 
age up. While there are a few exceptions, apparently a 
decreasing number, it is evident that the average morning 
paper is not prepared for children, nor is it designed for 
persons of refined tastes. It may be described as cheap, 
coarse and nasty, specializing in crime, lust and scandal, 
and usually dependable only to the extent of following some 
policy of its management. The morning paper is a habit; 
we do not read it to get the news, because usually we do 
not seriously believe what it tells us; we read it because 
we have always read something behind the coffee and on 
the morning train or car. 
THE PROBLEM ANALYZED 
But we are not the only ones who read these mental 
meals tricked out with salacious salad to sell commercial 
propagandist sheets; the pages are lying around and every 
child is likely to read anything printed thereon. Is this 62 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
a wise procedure? What is the effect of the daily paper 
on the mind and characters of children? We have passing 
misgivings on the subject; but it is strange that parents 
who would exercise great care in purging their library 
shelves show little interest in the material that appears on 
the pages of the daily. It is hardly necessary to urge the 
danger. We are not dealing with the newspaper of our 
youthful days, conducted by men who were not ashamed 
of the word “literature,” often prepared and edited by 
men who aspired to write good English and to tell the 
news. Now it is likely to have no interest in either; it 
exists to sell a commodity called publicity, and it must 
spice that commodity up to what its promoters imagine to 
be the popular taste, a matter upon which they are guided, 
doubtless, by the familiarity with the half-world and the 
underworld which appears on every page. 
But the young child has none of our cynical familiarity 
with the mode of the modern newspaper. Print has its 
charm and authority to him; the paper is, at least for some 
time, a faithful mirror of life. True, the life it reveals is 
quite different from the life he knows at first hand, as in 
the home. But that does not surprise him because he has 
already settled it that the life he knows intimately is totally 
different from the big world life. The newspaper succeeds 
in shaping his concept of what the real world life is actually 
like. It is, thus, in a very potent manner a teacher of the 
meaning of life. And it becomes a teacher of the value 
or worth of life, as it pictures a world of men mad for 
gain, as it reveals base motives operating, and as it seems 
by its publicity to at least condone, if not reward, the 
base and selfish; it covertly teaches that life is a base, 
mean, selfish and sordid affair both as to method and 
motive. 
Do we realize what effective and evil teaching is going 
on as children day after day learn life through this dis- 
torted, lust-clouded mirror? 
But the newspaper is more than a mirror; it is a teacher. 
Adults may regard it with cynical disdain, but children THE DAILY NEWSPAPER 
63 
learn life out of it. In many cities the yellow press is the 
only available means of constant contact with the outside 
world. And to every family it comes like the morning 
milk and the mail. We know it is usually corrupting; 
we know it distorts life and that to judge humanity through 
it is worse than studying sociology in a slum or estimating 
a city by its criminal courts or its appearance from the 
railroad. The newspaper puts the seamy side out—and 
yet we cannot do without it. What can parents do about it? 
THE NEED 
Yet the problem my friend presented is not answered by 
denouncing the morning scandal-monger. Our children 
have a right to know what is going on in the world, just 
as we have. They are being defrauded, just as we are, 
only in their case it is worse because they do not apply 
our mature discounts to the news. Shall we, because of 
the evil of the papers, banish them from our homes? That 
would be the sensible thing to do. If only some one would 
start a paper that would condense the news, the real news, 
into a few columns we could get along very well. We need 
a daily news digest; at least most people have sense enough 
to make for themselves the filling that the space-writers 
pad into the press dispatches, and none of us would be 
the poorer if we never heard that the famed movie actress 
had another divorce and another infamous marriage, nor 
even would we be the poorer if we never knew that Slick 
Ike had robbed Mrs. Fitzgreen of $50,000 worth—news- 
paper valuation—of paste and pinchbeck. But we cannot 
yet get real news in the present-day papers save as it 
floats, here and there, an island of important fact in an 
ocean of silly gossip, wave after wave of weak-minded 
fads and the drifting scum that a beer-hall taste calls “hu- 
man interest.” If the American newspaper, save for a few 
notable exceptions, really reflects American interests and 
taste, then, God help us all! 64 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
SOME SUGGESTIONS 
1. Taking thought of the situation. In many families 
the situation is much worse than is necessary; the daily 
paper is taken as a matter of course, without thought as 
to its character and effect on children’s minds. It is taken 
because it is the organ of our political party, or because 
Father subscribed. Or it may be the one that the children 
demand because they have become attached to its “Fun- 
nies.” The simple step would be to discover whether there 
is a better paper available. Father may have to choose be- 
tween blind loyalty to his party organ and the good of his 
children. It may do him good to read the other side. 
2. Frequently the evening papers are less objectionable 
than the morning ones; the opposite is sometipies the case, 
notably in England. But in the larger cities in the United 
States there is a greater probability of finding at least one 
clean afternoon paper than of finding a morning paper fit 
for children to see. If both are taken the better one can 
be used as the family paper. 
3. Choosing the food for children’s minds. It is worth 
while considering whether the editor was right who, when 
confronted with the objections to our dailies replied, “But 
papers are not printed for children.” The answer, “Then 
why do you run the funnies and the colored supplements ?” 
seemed to stagger him for a moment; then he said, “I no- 
tice that the older folks go for those funnies just as fast 
as children do.” But it is well to carry in mind the prin- 
ciple that there are differences between adults and chil- 
dren. Is it necessary for Jane and Mary to have the 
social page and the sporting page, respectively, propped 
up before their breakfast plates? Yet it will be difficult 
to draw a line if Dad finds the paper indispensable to his 
breakfast. 
Children do not need the daily newspaper. It is not 
essential to their lives until they get to adult years or at 
least to an age when they can resist its harmful tendencies. 
All the information needed by childhood and early youth THE DAILY NEWSPAPER 
65 
will be found in much better form, more easily understood, 
more balanced and comprehensive, in the weekly journals 
which make it their business to summarize the news.* It 
is true that these journals omit all reference to local hap- 
penings, to scandal, to crime—unless the events are of na- 
tional importance; in other words they make very much 
the eliminations we would like to make for the sake of 
our children. 
QUESTIONS OF NECESSITY 
If the daily paper is not a necessity for children why 
do they seek its pages so eagerly. First, because, perverted 
tastes are easily acquired whenever the material is readily 
accessible. Second, because the modern editor has capi- 
talized children’s interests; by inserting a column prepared 
for them he ties the paper to the home through their de- 
mands. Third, the reading of the daily paper appeals to 
the imitative tendency of children; it is an adult act which 
they can easily copy. 
Guarding moral health. If the daily paper is not a ne- 
cessity for children, but, on the contrary, usually a source 
of danger, how can it be kept from them? To suggest 
that it should be kept out of the home will seem to be a 
counsel of perfection. And yet there are many papers 
that ought never to be permitted in any home having 
regard for moral health. And it surely ought to be quite 
clear that, if our first concern is for the moral well-being 
of children, we would accept the principle that, if the daily 
paper “causes one of these little ones to stumble,” we will 
have no daily paper at all. There would seem to be no 
other course where, as is now the case in some of our 
largest American cities, there is no respectable morning 
paper. Why admit daily poison and leave it available to 
all simply because there is a small percentage of food con- 
* Such as “The Literary Digest,” “The Outlook,” “Current Events,” and, 
for more mature persons, especially good as to foreign news and points of view, 
“The Living Age.” 66 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
tained in each portion? There are many cases in which 
the only thing that conscientious parents can do is to go 
without the local daily and to get their news away from 
home. 
Guiding moral appetite. Even where the paper is less 
objectionable it is advisable to cultivate the habit of mind 
in children which will regard the daily paper as an adult 
affair. This is not possible by prohibitions. It can be ac- 
complished when, first, there is ample provision of suit- 
able, satisfying, journalistic reading for children.* Give 
them that which is sensibly prepared for them and they 
will have little appetite for the highly-seasoned adult prints. 
Second, use reasonable measures to keep the paper in adult 
hands. It need not be scattered all over the house. One 
family solved the problem when Mother read the front 
section at breakfast and Father took it to the office with 
him; that left the comparatively innocuous second section 
—advertising, fashions and sports—at home. 
The circumstances of the characters of papers and 
the customs of families are so diverse that no exact di- 
rections are possible. But the principal need, and the most 
helpful step toward solution, lies in the matter of careful 
parental thought and planning, in an attitude of mind that 
freely gives at least as much attention to the food for the 
children’s minds as to that for their bodies, and in bounti- 
ful provision of good, current reading, easily accessible, 
for children. 
The Children’s Reading, F. J. Olcott (Houghton, Mifflin). The 
discussion of the general principles of reading in the child’s 
education is useful; the list of books is one of the best. 
HELPFUL READING 
1. What are the special dangers of daily newspapers for children? 
2. Why should children know the news? 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
* Many high schools publish daily papers. It has been found feasible to 
condense all the news of any day into two short columns and to publish, 
early every week-day morning, a digest not only satisfactory to youth but 
welcomed by adults. THE DAILY NEWSPAPER 
67 
3. What is the effect of giving them every variety of news? 
4. Does the newspaper reading give children the true idea of 
current life? 
5. If no good newspapers are obtainable what would you do to 
give children information? 
6. What changes of parental habits would help? 
7. What substitutes are possible for children? 
8. What home conditions are necessary to make substitutions suc- 
cessful ? CHAPTER IX 
SOCIAL STANDARDS 
Stating the problem: “We got along very well until we 
moved into the city and the children began to go to high 
school; but now our home has to fight against all the stand- 
ards and ideals that the children see and hear all about 
them. All that we can say and do seems so little and so 
powerless against the constant social pressure of their 
friends.” 
Many of us feel that our problems would be simple if 
we could live like Rudolph Wyss’ “Swiss Family Robin- 
son” on a desert island where in the making of standards 
and forming of habits we had no competitors. But, as 
it is, school and social life subject our children to the 
constant tutelage of a world whose ideals and practices 
may be different from our own. This common melting- 
pot of our American life may throw them with youth from 
homes where money flows like water and they come back 
to us discontented, or they struggle to hold the pace with the 
swift in the spending race. It may make them boon com- 
panions of the coarse and degraded whose normal en- 
vironment is vicious; they may frequently see lives in ac- 
tion apparently devoid of moral principles. 
Here is a condition from which, on the whole, there is 
no escape. This is the world in which we live. We will 
work to make it a better world; but it is the world as our 
children must live in it. Their present experience is only 
a part of their total experience which should be that of 
a constant struggle to realize the higher ideals held within 
THE SITUATION 
68 SOCIAL STANDARDS 
69 
against the force of the lower standards accepted with- 
out. We cannot withdraw our children from the world; 
we can fortify them against it. We may help them to se- 
lect social environment; we may train their tastes so that 
they will not walk in the gutter when there is a sidewalk 
running close by. 
It is a cause for encouragement when this situation is 
recognized, for there is a problem that lies much deeper, 
and that is, how can we arouse parents to realize that the 
characters of children are being determined by the social 
environment outside the family? Most parents are anx- 
ious to shield their children from the contagion of the 
grossly depraved, especially if the depravity is accompa- 
nied by destitution and poverty; they warn Algernon against 
associating with Mike and Chimmie; but they see no dan- 
ger from the company of those to whom money, extrava- 
gance, display and decorated dissipation are the chief ends 
of life. We are all concerned about formal schooling; but 
what about the effective informal schooling of social life? 
What is the real concern back of this question of con- 
tamination? Is it the fear of what the world terms “vul- 
gar,” of rough manners and crude speech? Or is it dread 
of the corruption of riches, of the deadly paralysis of 
selfish luxury, of the corroding fever of sensual indul- 
gence? Is it anxiety lest children should acquire the hab- 
its that would raise a blush for their ignorance of good 
form, or is it fear lest they should believe what the great 
world is ever saying, that life does consist in an abundance 
of things, that nothing matters so long as you can get away 
with it, and that only antique fools worry over moral ideals 
or spiritual purposes? 
There lies the real danger. And, in the anxiety that chil- 
dren may succeed they are often forced into social groups 
where only a thin veneer of “good form” hides the dis- 
eased minds and wills; we often endorse the success that 
has cost the soul. Can we wonder if they are led to false 
standards of life when we have no better sense of its real 
values? God pity the heartless parents who are so blindly 70 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
eager for their children’s social promotion that they care 
not at all for the safety and happiness of their inner lives! 
SUGGESTIONS ON SOLUTIONS 
But, taken for granted that we realize these dangers, 
the problem, then, simmers down to this: in what ways may 
we [make the higher ideals held in the home effective against 
the lower standards prevailing outsidef And here one mis- 
take often occurs: it is not alone a choice between stand- 
ards within and those without; it is a choice between stand- 
ards and ideals that lead us up and those that drag us 
down. It may often be that we will find outside the home 
forces for the high ideals that must be called to our aid. 
Perhaps this is one of the first things to do, to help chil- 
dren find every stimulating, elevating influence in all life. 
There are good men and women; there are good homes; 
there are sources of inspiration and strength all about us. 
First, realise on all our allies. To make the best stand- 
ards effective discover them, discover those who hold them, 
where they are revealed, where they are most deeply felt 
and clearly seen. Know the life about you, the homes and 
scenes into which your youth are likely to go. Test and 
select their environment. Summon all possible tact and 
skill to see that they for themselves desire the places that 
are desirable. Fill their programs with the healthily happy, 
with all that is strong and attractive for goodness. Make 
plain paths for their feet so that they may readily walk 
where high standards are set up, where noble souls are and 
where the richest, lasting values of life may be found. 
This is the opposite to a program of negation. It has 
neither time nor need to say, “Do not go there”; it opens 
the doors to the better ways. It works fi> establish the 
friendships that enrich. It fills the free hours with occu- 
pations, social intercourse, mental and spiritual enjoyments 
that make their own high standards. It involves much 
thought; it means devoting ourselves largely to this pur- SOCIAL STANDARDS 
71 
pose. It requires forethought, definite planning and all 
the patience and tact we have. 
POSITIVE AIDS 
On the other side, there is not less need to carefully 
foster the highest ideals within the home. And this is 
not as simple as some parents seem to suppose. They 
come with their questions, hoping that one can recommend 
a book, a collection of wise precepts which they may pur- 
chase, put in the child’s hands and have done with worry- 
ing over the matter. But ideals are not taught; they are 
caught. They cannot be formally imparted; they are ac- 
quired through unconscious contagion and absorption. 
They become effective with our children only as they are 
constantly effective with us. 
The home can combat the world without only as it is a 
mightier world in itself. If it is an experience of living 
in a social group that is habitually and constantly controlled 
by high purposes then no preaching is needed to make those 
purposes the dominating ones for all who live in that home. 
One cannot state too often the principle that children 
learn most by what they experience. It is the very heart 
of the teaching power of home life. We are all looking 
for text-books when what we must develop is a social ex- 
perience of the way of goodness and truth, the religious 
way of life. The standards of the home are simply just 
what that home life really is. What children do about life 
is usually a revelation of what parents think about it. 
The healthy, vigorous life may often pass unscathed 
through the plague. It is wonderful how much evil chil- 
dren do not see simply because their hearts are fortified 
by the normality of the good. Do not talk about stand- 
ards; exhibit them in action and application. Your daily 
living will be the child's real text-book. 
Then it is possible to saturate their lives with the feel- 
ing of high purpose and ideals in many other ways. Create 
and maintain a rich environment for thought and feeling. 72 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
See that the tables on which the food for the soul is set 
are always filled. Good books, good pictures, fine music, 
helpful friends and happy occupations—these we owe them 
at least as evidently as we owe them bread. Fill the fod- 
der-racks with good food and there will be no need to 
teach them how to use it. 
Do not worry about their understanding of virtue; help 
them to find strength and joy in its ways. Too much of 
our teaching of the moral life is as though we were to in- 
sist on children learning all the facts of calories and vita- 
mines, of digestion and dietetics with every meal. It is 
not the analysis of virtue they need but its power and hab- 
its. Their ideals, their standards, the ideas by which they 
will live will come to them, as strength from food, if only 
they have, for the inner life, its strengthening daily food. 
The effective standards of life are formed within; they 
rise out of our own experiences. Therefore we must help 
these children to experience living for high ends. We can 
give them opportunities to taste the joys of the way of 
service, the happiness of sacrifice, the strength of self- 
denial, the thrill of self-control. Give them also, choice of 
action, the chance to take the highway for themselves. 
Do not be ashamed of ideals. Talk freely, as about 
other things, of the great issues of life. The social strug- 
gles of the hour have at their heart the question of the 
standards by which men live. What do we indicate, by 
our after-newspaper chat, as the controlling motives for 
life? How eager these youngsters are to know the inner 
meaning of the labor struggle, of the great political issues! 
This is life in action. What a chance it is for us to show 
its real meaning! 
The test of our ability to combat lower standards lies in 
the manner in which we meet such questions as these: 
By what standards do you advise them to choose an occu- 
pation? By what standards to choose friends? What are 
the standards of dress? Who determines these? How do 
you judge success in life when talking with them? Who SOCIAL STANDARDS 
are the most successful men and women in your circle 
of acquaintances? What are the best homes? 
Stimulate children to form their own standards. They 
are very conventional, and they must be helped toward in- 
dependent judgment, helped to escape from the slavery 
of current modes. They can learn to think for themselves; 
but they need our aid in discovering the principles and 
tests by which conduct must be judged. While they are 
young they are much more likely to be willing to accept 
ideal standards of values, more likely to see that it is worth 
while to live for higher purposes than those which govern 
the current age. This is the time to show them what the 
Christian way of life really means, that it is taking life in 
terms of its lasting, spiritual values, finding joy in life as 
the way of character, of helpful service, of loving good- 
will to all men, as living for and judging life, not by what 
we can gain from others, but by what we can become in 
ourselves and what we can help others to find of joy and 
strength in life. 
SUCCESSFUL CASES 
Perhaps the best way to study cases in which parents 
have successfully led their children to accept worthy stand- 
ards is by discovering instances for ourselves; do we know 
families where younger members, as they have grown up, 
have definitely committed themselves to life-purposes which 
show that they accept standards higher than the current 
ones of to-day? In such families we shall find many experi- 
ences in common; we shall find that they, the parents, had 
their many periods of profound discouragement; that at 
least one of them, often both, were fundamentally con- 
trolled by unselfish purposes; that success in that house' 
hold never was judged by property scales. We also find, 
in many such cases, that the parents enjoyed their ideal 
life, they found evident pleasure in choosing and follow- 
ing the standards of spiritual values, that they enjoyed 
ideal books and the biographies of those who despised the 74 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
passing rewards of things, and that their ideals and those 
in these books found their way into the minds of the chil- 
dren. 
One parent related the effect of a particular book on 
one of his boys; it was an account of men and women who 
had devoted themselves to toilsome public service. It came 
into the hands of that boy when he was about seventeen, 
and it led him to a fixed purpose of similar, unselfish devo- 
tion ; it changed all his standards by establishing a life- 
purpose by which he could judge the worth or value of 
everything beside. 
In other cases similar experiences have been discovered; 
parents have solved the entire problem of standards by 
helping children to find worthy, controlling purposes in life. 
HELPFUL READING 
What Men Live By, Richard C. Cabot (Houghton, Mifflin). The 
motives and sustaining, inspiring experiences that make the 
realities of life and make them worth while. 
The Corner-Stone of Education, Edward Lyttelton (Putnams). 
An excellent, interesting study of how parental attitudes deter- 
mine the social attitudes of children. 
The American Girl and Her Community, Margaret Slattery 
(Houghton, Mifflin). Good for both girls and mothers, showing 
types in their environment. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What are the serious social dangers to which children are 
exposed? 
2. What would you say as to the relative effects on character of 
the school and of social environment? 
3. What are the prevalent ideals of life which we most need 
to fear? 
4. How do children establish standards of life? 
5. How do children get ideals from parents? 
6. What is the most effective teaching method of the home? 
7. In what ways may we secure the help of other homes? 
8. What ought we to be able to secure from the churches? 
9. What is the relation of purpose in life to its standards? CHAPTER X 
STREET MANNERS 
Stating the problem: One could, perhaps, detect a 
covert sneer on some faces when a gentle little woman 
stated her problem: “In our home we like to have things 
neat and clean, and sometimes it becomes almost unbear- 
able to have to fight against dirt, disorder, noisy actions 
and loud speech. It seems as though the manners of the 
street were invading the home.” 
A stranger might have made a ridiculous picture from 
that pathetic appeal; he might have described the trim, 
doll-house type of home, where the chairs are always in 
the same place, mirrored in the polished floor, where the 
good man has to take off his shoes and put slippers on his 
feet when he gets home at night. He might pity the chil- 
dren and wonder why Providence permits them to enter 
such an old-maid’s paradise. But the stranger would have 
thought differently had he known the real home; the speaker 
was not lacking in sympathy for child-life and any 
youngster in her home might well count himself fortunate. 
THE SITUATION 
After a few moments of silence, as though others dreaded 
to take chances on this problem, questions were asked and 
it soon became evident that here is a real difficulty, that 
the home has a responsibility in the matter of manners, 
and that, if it is to train right-living children, it cannot 
permit the street to determine its standards. 
Manners and morals. It is a good thing to realize how 
close is the connection between morals and manners. We 
sneer at the word etiquette; our American pride of free- 
75 76 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
dom and our dislike of conventions may easily lead us to 
neglect an important element in a child’s training. Good 
manners are much more than the small change of our social 
currency; often they are the efficiencies of human inter- 
course; they are part of one’s training in exact, scientific 
living; they are the debt we owe in consideration of others; 
they are the evidences of social self-respect. 
Manners and religion. Religious training can never be 
separated from training in good manners, for religious train- 
ing is training to live a religious life, and that is a life of 
consideration for others, of gentleness, of love of the good, 
the true and the helpful; it is training to live the kind of 
life that others delight to know and live with. It is learn- 
ing how to live and how to be fit to live with. Gentle 
manners are no small part of that splendid art, the fine art 
of living with others. 
Chairs and children. The problem in the family is not 
that rough and careless manners mar its furniture, disturb 
its peace and annoy the parents. We have to learn that 
chairs exist for the sake of children primarily, that to 
conduct the home on the hush-hear-a-pin-drop plan is one 
of the quickest ways to drive children out on the streets. 
The problem is much more difficult: how can we give the 
activity, the spontaneity of childhood and the exuberance 
of youth its opportunity while still teaching, through the 
experience of family living, consideration for others and 
that gentle courtesy that distills pleasure on every side? 
CAUSES OF DIFFICULTY 
1. Some are unavoidable, such as the volcanic character- 
istics of childhood, the joy in noise, keen sense of rivalry, 
love of combat, and the tendency to resist any restraints. 
2. Other causes are remediable, but with difficulty, such 
as, undisciplined school-life establishing bad habits; over- 
disciplined school-life leading to the necessity for the ex- 
pression of repressed feelings; the rattle and confusion of 
city life; association with children from homes destitute STREET MANNERS 
77 
of all discipline; the social tone and precepts in public 
prints and pictures inciting children to pranks; the example 
of other homes; the immediate proximity of a noisy street; 
the presence of dirt and noise or lack of light about the 
building. 
3. There is a group of causes which we can immediately 
reach: our own manners; indifference as to the appearance 
of things; careless disposition of furniture and personal be- 
longings; failure to provide positive elements of beauty; 
numerous and meaningless rules; immediate or occasional 
chiding, scolding and reproof instead of the maintenance of 
standards. 
SUGGESTIONS TOWARD IMPROVEMENT 
1. Make full allowances for the necessities of childhood 
and youth. Distinguish between their exuberance and that 
indifference to the rights and happiness of others which lies 
at the base of all bad manners. Do not expect your chil- 
dren to keep time to the soft cadence of the old mantel 
clock; they are set to another tempo, and you may be thank- 
ful that they are not of the anemic type. There is a healthy 
meaning in their unwillingness to conform to desirable so- 
cial customs. Youth is almost sure to assert independence, 
and, often, they fear lest they should become like the pulse- 
less, pussy-footed, pharasaic peddlers of polite phrases 
whom they so naturally and heartily despise. 
Outside the family much may be done. Every child should 
have ample opportunity to open up his exhausts. Between 
school and the inner home life there should be the free 
period when vitality expresses itself in large and vigorous 
action. If you have no safety-valves you are sure to have 
explosions at inconvenient times. 
2. Discover a real basis for all training in manners. We 
will need something more fundamental than the purpose of 
getting our children to act according to prevailing fashions 
of conduct, and something that goes deeper than a desire for 
order and quietness in the home. Training in good man- 78 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
ners must be no other than training in the social life, in con- 
duct that is determined by the common good. A truly 
socially-motivated life is a well-mannered life. True, we 
have known some excellent social prophets who were not 
the most desirable companions; many are so consumed with 
the passion to get justice for others in large matters they 
forget to do justice to others in small matters. But one can- 
not forget the picture of Jesus; what a clear view most of 
us have of the gentleness and unfailing courtesy of that 
life of strength and love! In that life lies the great motive 
of good manners; they are but one way of giving ourselves, 
our best selves, to the world. Consideration for others, the 
purpose to cooperate with them and the recognition of the 
real worth of every other person lies at the root of all gen- 
tleness of action, of all true codes of conduct. 
3. Here, as elsewhere, the two great influences are ideals 
and examples. What are the manners of the people we 
praise? What sort of living ideals do we endorse? Do we 
recognize and approve the pleasures of the life of kindly 
courtesy? And what sort of ideals of conduct do we ex- 
hibit? Do we imagine children cannot note any difference 
between company manners and home manners? Do we 
reserve our “best for the stranger guest”? Are manners 
merely a social asset with us or are they the customary cur- 
rency of a kind life? 
4. Instruction. Children need definite instruction in the 
right courses of conduct. So simple a matter as table man- 
ners must be taught. Much of the teaching will be by actual 
experience. The only way we can be sure our children will 
not disgrace us, as mothers say, when they go out, is by 
seeing that they have the same experiences steadily at our 
table that they will have when they go out. 
5. What shall we do when breaches of good manners oc- 
cur in the family? (a) Treat bad manners with good man- 
ners; treat discourtesy, even from our children, with 
real courtesy? If it is commonly rude to reprove in public 
it is scarcely less so, and commonly ineffective, to reprove 
in the little group at home. Sometimes we must do so at STREET MANNERS 
79 
least to the extent of requiring immediate amendment of 
conduct; but that can be done with courtesy. 
(b) Even boisterous conduct does not call for volcanic 
censure. One loud noise, may drown another, but it also 
swells its volume. Irritating censures at every offence are 
likely to make manners seem to be a matter of petty pre- 
scriptions rather than one of great principles. 
(c) Courtesy, like charity, begins at home. If we would 
train gentlemen they will be gentle, first, to sisters and 
brothers, to mother and father. The only effective educa- 
tion in manners is a constant experience of good manners. 
6. Parents should know something about the moral con- 
ditions and the kind of social training that the life of the 
school affords. We are seriously handicapped if we must 
set our few hours of family intercourse against the hours 
of the school’s experience. Some, especially larger high 
schools, are simply gigantic human factories where, often, 
teachers assume no responsibilities except for formal in- 
struction and where youth runs wild. We must insist on 
the educational purpose of schools, as over against the 
merely instructional end; we must insist on the life product 
as the most important one. It is little profit to us if our 
children learn all about the life of the past and know not 
at all how to live the life of the present. If the school does 
not train in right social living it is not an educational insti- 
tution. 
7. If training in the right life comes through directed ex- 
perience in living we ought to know just what sort of 
experience our children are getting in other homes and in 
all their social experience outside their own homes. What 
do they learn amongst their friends? How strong is the 
influence of one boy over another! How easy it is to 
trace the transfer of forms of conduct! Back of all con- 
duct are social springs; in the hearts of all rise our actions. 
8. Keep the fundamental motives in mind. How do we 
make children feel about life? What motives do we help 
them to find? How do we test conduct when it is called 
into question; by rules or by purposes and ideals ? Do you 80 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
see any connection between prayer and good manners? 
Would an appreciation of the great poetic Psalms be likely 
to have any effect on social conduct? How can we get 
children to see the social implications of their actions? 
A STUDY OF CASES 
Again, it will be found helpful, instead of attempting here 
the analysis of a family situation in which this problem has 
been met and solved, if the student will consider any cases 
which come under his observation, cases in which the man- 
ners of children or of all the members of the family have 
shown improvement. Try to observe the following points: 
Was the problem due to congestion, to a crowded family 
life? 
Was the problem most acute when children were all 
young, when there were older and younger members mixed, 
or as all grew older? 
Did the parents set up rules, or fixed regulations of con- 
duct? If so, did these rules have any beneficial effect? 
Did any particular outside, personal influence enter in? 
If so, of what character and with what effects? 
What relations, if any, seem to exist between physical 
order in the home and manners in the family? 
Is there any noticeable connection between the health of 
members of a family and this problem? 
In families where gentle manners prevail do you find any 
marked pride of family, of its traditions, history and per- 
sonages ? 
Do they have “grace” at table? If so, does it have any 
relation to table manners ? 
Do the parents take any special interest in the study of 
child-nature and nurture? 
HELPFUL READING 
Good Morals and Gentle Manners, A. C. Gow (American Book 
Company). One of the older books, dealing with specific in- 
stances ; will help parents to some fundamental principles. STREET MANNERS 
Boys, Girls and Manners, Florence Hall (Dana, Estes). A good 
book for girls to read as an introduction to the customs of good 
society. 
Ethics for Children, E. L. Cabot (Houghton, Mifflin Co.). One 
of the best books for teachers and parents. Its method and 
the stories and material it uses will be found helpful. 
Essentials of Character, E. O. Sisson (Macmillan). Chapter 
VIII will be especially helpful. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Why are good manners important? 
2. State the differences between the good manners of children 
and the good manners of adults. 
3. What are the social bases of good manners? 
4. What are the dangers of insistence on forms and rules? 
5. What conditions of home life will work against good manners? 
6. How can you preserve children’s initiative and still secure 
social conformity? 
7. What is best to do in actual causes of ill-mannerly behavior? 
8. What aid have we the right to expect from schools? 
9. What do you think of the common theory that healthy children 
cannot be expected to be well-behaved? CHAPTER XI 
THE PROBLEM OF “BAD LANGUAGE” 
Stating the problem: “I find my children, even the 
younger ones, using words that we used to think were never 
used except by the profane and blasphemous; they seem 
to imagine that it is a mark of smartness. They not only 
throw in, with apparent delight, the expletives of a mule- 
driver ; but they apparently regard it as right and necessary 
to use religious words lightly and often to treat the name of 
God as a joke.” 
THE PROBLEM 
When that statement was made and set before a group as 
a problem in the religious training of children every one 
present seemed to be meeting the same difficulty; others told 
of well-trained children, children of good habits and dis- 
positions, who were apparently reverent in their general atti- 
tudes, who were acquiring the habit of profanity as a normal 
part of everyday conversation. All this accords with gen- 
eral observation. It is difficult to escape the conviction that 
we are in an epidemic of the saturation of our language with 
the terms of the frontier and the army camp. 
Even staid men and women take delight in asserting a 
reckless freedom in language; they roll a round oath with 
relish. They try to light up a tame joke with lurid words. 
Even preachers have not been free from this growing habit; 
is it strange, then, that the younger generation revel in it? 
Oaths abound; adjectives of biblical flavor and Elizabethan 
currency have their vogue in all circles. It is difficult to 
describe what is going on. One hesitates to speak of “oaths 
and cursing,” because there is nothing of barbarous passion 
in this current habit. One hesitates to call it profanity, be- 
82 THE PROBLEM OF “BAD LANGUAGE” 
83 
cause there is no purpose of irreverence and seldom any 
hostility to religion. It is only a new verbal vogue, or a 
recrudescent slang. It is somewhat difficult, too, because 
when we come to think about it, there is, at most, only a 
very vague line of difference between the modern habit 
and a tendency with which all have been familiar for a 
long time toward carelessness of speech and especially to- 
ward weird applications of strange or striking adjectives. 
We think it no wrong to say that a man is “a holy terror,” 
though what that precisely means it would be hard to say. 
And surely some parlor language is as reprehensible as many 
an expletive, for example, when a young woman declared 
that she had “a sacred passion for cold mutton.” 
If one attempts to get at the situation more exactly it is 
found that the tendency lies, in this wave of rude speech, 
largely toward the free use of words which have been re- 
garded as taboo in religious and cultured society. The lan- 
guage of the day is not less decent in the sense of care- 
lessness in regard to essentially moral ideals. It is not 
unchaste; it seems to be simply irreverent, and it sounds 
especially so to those who have always regarded certain ex- 
pletives as oaths and to those who have regarded the names 
of the Deity with reverence. 
THE POINT OF VIEW 
i. It would be unwise to label these words as profanity; 
that would be to assert that some words are in themselves 
sacred and others are profane. It would have the effect of 
attempting an arbitrary classification and of rendering a 
verdict on words solely on the ground of traditional asso- 
ciation. Discrimination is necessary. An act is profane 
as far as it robs of value that which is sacred to us, sacred 
because of associations and values. The youth who coarsely 
embroiders his phrases with oaths and words of cursing is 
not always consciously deriding anything sacred. Of course 
he is careless, or he is carefully imitating an unworthy 84 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
model. If -you tell him he is profane you must tell him 
what you mean by that. 
2. We must have some standard or moans of discrimina- 
tion. A word is bad when its associations, or its definite 
meanings, are indecent. A word is bad when it expresses 
a bad purpose. For example, either calmly or in heat, to 
tell another to go to hell is surely assuming too much; it is 
surely, if we mean it, more than we ought to mean. A 
word is bad when it is used so as to rob it of its rightful 
association; if you use “God” as a Parisian does you have 
lost a wonderful word and you will have to find another 
name for the God who is our great and loving Father. A 
word is bad when it is only the vocal explosion of a passion 
that should be controlled. 
3. Realise the present situation as abnormal. At least 
two tendencies seem to be at work. (1) A large amount 
of current profanity is being carried back into normal life 
from the abnormal life of the army. Large numbers of 
men associated under rough conditions, organized for es- 
sentially brutal purposes, idealizing the hardships, crudities 
and barbarity of their life, amongst whom the toughest, the 
one with the fighter’s qualities, is likely to be the hero, 
accepting army traditions as sacred, have come back to 
normal life feeling they must mark themselves with the 
social customs of that abnormal life. Besides any such con- 
scious tendency there is the fact that certain habits of speech 
are acquired in that school where they have been pupils. 
(2) The other element is that of our habit of slang. 
Some kind of slang is common to all complex languages; 
but our nervous age is so anxious to cut corners, to save 
time, that, since one slang phrase often tells as much as a 
paragraph, we tend to have a language not of flexible words 
built up to express ideas, but of phrase ideographs, in which 
conversation consists of a series of arbitrary catchwords. 
They are tongue-tied who do not use the fad terms. The 
generous use of expletives always follows, as these serve 
to express emotions just as slang expresses situations. THE PROBLEM OF “BAD LANGUAGE” 
85 
DEALING WITH THE PROBLEM 
There are some methods that do not deal with it. To as- 
sert that certain words are taboo carries no conviction to 
young people. It is a good deal better to speak of Hell, if 
you must, than to attempt to deroute yourself around by 
speaking “of a place that is never mentioned in good soci- 
ety.” It is better to give the devil his name than to talk 
about “his satanic majesty.” So far as this group of words 
is concerned the trouble lies not with them as words but with 
the waste of our good language in their wrong, foolish and 
usually pointless current use. 
1. Keep calm. It does shock those of us who are older 
to hear oaths on youthful lips; but slang is often just as 
shocking to those who associate words with ideas. But an 
exhibition of the shock will not help because youth rather 
expects to shock age by bizarre acts and unexpected utter- 
ances. Your shock may be accepted as a compliment. They 
like to do the unusual things, and they cultivate unusual lan- 
guage just as they affect unusual clothes. 
2. Be reasonable. Many may not agree, but good usage 
and high traditions lead us to believe that there is a proper 
use for certain bristling words. They are too strong for 
everyday use; they lose all significance under frequent 
careless and inappropriate use; may we not make young 
people see the good sense and decency of a conservation of 
language ? 
3. Count on reverence. But there are words which de- 
serve our reverent use. Home and Mother and Father 
and Love are such words. So also are God and Jesus and 
Lord. We reverence them for their associations. When 
young people carelessly use these words it is time to ask 
them what they would do if they heard some one using 
their Mother’s name in ridicule or lightly. Help them to 
see how they are thus slighting ideas and associations, how 
they are really deriding what is most sacred and valuable 
to others. Usually they have no desire to hurt the feelings 
of others; they speak without thought, for they have caught 86 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
a current verbal infection. Young people are sufficiently 
idealists to be willing to treat with reverence the values 
associated with words when once they see how close the 
association is. 
4. Appeal to pride. Most of the young people we have 
to train are quite anxious not to be considered fools. We 
can help them to see that the current profanity is the mark 
of a fool, of one whose ideas are so vague or whose com- 
mand of language is so limited that he is obliged to fall 
back on a series of catchwords, or word-symbols, of words 
that are expressive in sound rather than in sense. When, 
for example, every kind of game is described with one single 
word it shows that the boy who uses it either lacks sense 
to discriminate amongst the games he is trying to describe 
or he is too lazy to think out really descriptive phrases. 
The mind that cannot function falls back on street-record 
sounds. 
Profanity is evidence of an illy-furnished mind, lacking 
in vocabulary, of an untrained mind, lacking the ability to 
use the fine tools of a language. It is the promise of a 
torpid, depreciating mind, lacking the necessary exercise of 
thought that underlies good, discriminating conversation. 
5. Call on reason. Sometimes it will help if, when you 
hear profanity, without chiding, you will ask for a fuller 
explanation; insist on getting some more exact phrase; make 
the youngster exercise his vocabulary. Then, without lec- 
turing, it may be possible to help him to see that he is only 
imitating those who are weaker and inferior to himself. 
If a joke is so poor that it cannot raise a laugh unless it is 
aided by vulgar words it is too poor to retell. If a situa- 
tion is so indefinite that only an expletive can describe it 
we must exercise our minds to make it more definite. 
6. Reveal dangers. Help children to see that speaking is 
like every other act; it is a revelation of ourselves, of our 
powers, our qualities and our ideals, and it is also a pro- 
jection of ourselves on other lives. Perhaps by the first 
consideration we may make them ashamed of this current 
vogue, ashamed of being verbal paupers, indefinite thinkers, THE PROBLEM OF “BAD LANGUAGE” 
87 
mere parrot-repeaters of catch phrases. One young fellow 
was helped to break himself of this bad habit by being 
brought to realize that it was a bad habit, a mental rut, 
and then being faced by the picture of his mortification when 
the habit asserted itself in the hearing of good company. 
His self-esteem was touched. He really dreaded lest “a 
bad break” should utterly mar his reputation or become a 
menace to his business success. 
7. The social motive. None of us speaketh to himself. 
No words are without social relations. They teach others; 
they wound or feed others. One has a social obligation to 
watch words. One has no more right to throw out on the 
world unpleasant words, tainted words, foul words, than to 
spread disease or to throw filth into the highways. Words 
are wide responsibilities, and no one has a right to do just 
what he will with them. But he has a duty to use this 
power of speech both to give out the best that is in him and 
to make the thoughts of others pleasant and helpful. 
8. Shall we punish children for bad language? That all 
depends on what punishment means in the family. Cer- 
tainly they must learn that there is a difference between the 
good and the bad, and that it does make a difference to them 
as to which they choose. One might well refuse to listen to 
any statement until it was expressed in words fit to hear. 
One might—and this is usually very effective—gently ask 
to have the statement repeated until it has been properly 
expressed. Sometimes the particular offensive word or 
phrase can be taken and accepted literally, allowing the con- 
sequences to fall on the speaker. One father succeeded with 
the risky experiment of shocking his children with their 
own language. In every case one purpose must prevail, to 
help them realize the effect of words, how th%y work, how 
they reveal the speaker and his thoughts or lack of thoughts, 
and how long-lived and far-reaching they are. 
There are times to call a halt, to simply stop the mouth 
that is running away with itself. But at all times remember 
that what is needed with children and young people is not 
the establishment of certain laws which they are forced to 88 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
obey, but the establishment within themselves of certain 
purposes and ideals which they will follow. A list of taboo 
words may be observed scrupulously so long as our ears are 
within range; but the young person needs a monitor he 
carries within himself. He will not be willing to lose his 
powers, he will not be willing to be marked as a fool, and 
he will not, usually, do what he knows will wound and 
wrong others. We must try to put this matter on a sensible 
basis, to help them to understand the life-value of a good 
vocabulary and of the power to use it with discrimination 
and social responsibility. 
And, again, our own example is the first and greatest 
force. Do we carelessly follow the easy way of using our 
pet phrases instead of good sentences? If we lazily perpet- 
uate our own forms of slang we must not be surprised if 
they follow the habits of their day. Some of our adult, 
current words are no better than the ones that youth now 
uses. And, on a wider basis, what is our daily conversation ? 
Is it always the attempt to find the best words? Do we 
treat words of reverent associations with reverence? May 
not the careless use of high phrases and great names in re- 
ligious exercises rob them of the significance that is the 
basis of reverence? Many prayers abound in irreverent 
language. A careless grace at table may be profane. 
HELPFUL READING 
Boyology, H. W. Gibson (Association Press). On the problem 
of vulgar phrases Ch. IX is very helpful; also a brief treatment 
of slang on pages 46-51. 
Problems of Boyhood, F. W. Johnson (University of Chicago 
Press). Chapters VIII & IX deal with the problems discussed 
above. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. How would you discriminate between good and bad words? 
2. Is there any difference to-day in social custom in this respect? 
3. To what extent do children have meaning in bad words? 
4. Where do children learn bad language? 
5. Just what do we mean by “profanity”? THE PROBLEM OF “BAD LANGUAGE” 
89 
6. What authority or rights have parents as to children’s speech? 
7. What steps of procedure suggested in this chapter are likely 
to be helpful? 
8. What kinds of reading are likely to be most helpful? 
9. Would you punish a child for profanity? If so in what ways? 
10. In what ways is the social motive suggested as an aid? CHAPTER XII 
BICKERING 
Stating the problem: “I wonder whether any one else 
has our trouble; two of my younger girls seem to spend 
their entire time in bickering, backbiting, and unending 
testy arguments.” 
The speaker had at least one consolation, an assurance 
that her experience was by no means singular; few families 
could claim exemption. Why do children, especially those 
of from twelve to about sixteen years of age, delight in 
social conflict, in verbal spats and acid rejoinders? The 
habit, besides constantly irritating those who must listen, 
tends to become fixed or, at least, to color their dispositions. 
Carried to extremes bickering sets up attitudes of fixed op- 
position ; each child sees in the other an opponent; each one 
knows that the other will be set against whatever he, or she, 
may say, do, or propose. Sometimes the contest waxes ex- 
ceedingly bitter; cruel and biting phrases are flung vin- 
dictively; carried away with the passion for victory, hatred 
takes the place of natural affection for a time. 
CAUSES 
An Englishman, writing recently on Americans, sug- 
gested that adults are commonly courteous and affable in 
the United States because children are permitted to work 
out all their bad humors, their cross-grained pugnacity and 
their querulousness in their early years. Alas, bad habits 
do not work themselves out by expression; they tend to bore 
themselves in and become fixed. If a habit is bad it will 
not do to think that the child will get it out of his system by 
90 BICKERING 
letting it run its course. And yet we need something of the 
Englishman’s attitude toward certain of these problems; 
a sense of humor will help. Children’s outbreaks of com- 
bativeness are bad, but they are not fatal. 
There are at least three causes in the nature and expe- 
rience of a growing young person for what we call bicker- 
ing; any one or all of them may be operative in a particular 
experience. 
1. The imitative histinct. Children’s conflicts may only 
reflect parental attitudes. Or they may see other adults 
enjoying verbal and volitional battles. Adults often first 
realize how their own tones and phrases of conflict sound 
when they hear them on the lips of their children. 
2. The experience instinct. All growing animals tend to 
try out their powers. The child is experimenting to dis- 
cover his powers in the realms of consciousness, in thought, 
in power over the feelings and over the wills of others. 
The verbal battle that seems so bitter may mean no more 
than the wrestling of a pair of boys who would by no 
means do one another any harm but who are each seeking 
to measure his strength against the other. Boys can take 
this out in wrestling, while girls are often limited to words. 
There comes a time in a child’s life when she discovers 
that words are instruments. Ofter bickering battles are 
principally contests in the formation of forcible, sharpened 
phrases. 
3. The volitional struggle. Every normal child is devel- 
oping, by use, the powers of will. Where several wills de- 
velop side by side there are sure to be conflicts. The mush- 
rooms in the meadow never seem to quarrel. 
91 
REMEDIES 
Practically all remedies can be set in a single phrase: 
children must be taught to practice the life of social co- 
operation instead of that of social conflict. 
I. Teaching by example. This meets the first cause men- 
tioned above. Bickering parents do have bickering chil- 92 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
dren, through environment and not through heredity. Co- 
operating parents will have cooperating children. Where 
parents live harmoniously—with all the effort, considera- 
tion, sympathy and discipline that this involves—children 
are afforded more than examples to copy, they are given a 
social environment, a constant experience of living in a 
loving society. 
2. Training by experience. Often the attempt is made to 
cure bickering by separating children, forbidding them to 
speak together or to live a common life. This may be ef- 
fective in extreme cases simply to demonstrate to them the 
inevitable consequences of anti-social self-assertion. It 
may help them to realize how impossible life would be un- 
der the motives to which they have been yielding. But it 
does not furnish a cure. That can come only through the 
experience of the greater joys that come through co- 
operation, through agreement in harmonious action. It is 
necessary to plan forms of cooperation which these quer- 
ulous children can carry forward and to aid them in work- 
ing them out. Family life and the duties of the home are 
the natural field for this sort of action. But it is well to go 
beyond this small circle, to help them to cooperative ex- 
periences with larger groups. Often they forget their dif- 
ferences in the wider social life. 
When wordy differences arise think out working agree- 
ments. Do not always immediately institute them; wait 
your time. Sow the seed of a project; stimulate them to 
discuss and plan it together; sit in at the council informally 
so as to help steer through the verbal reefs of diverse 
opinions. Help them to keep the end in view, to hold to the 
project and purpose so that its attractiveness may draw 
them on when difficulties arise. Do not despair if the re- 
sults are not up to your expectations or if the old trouble 
breaks out. You are using the most effective method ; 
nothing teaches social agreement better than the experience 
of social cooperation. Keep on, remembering that these 
new habits establish themselves slowly. 
3. Help them to control their developing powers. This BICKERING 
93 
control will develop in the experience just suggested. But 
you can help by making it rational and conscious. A child 
can learn that it is just as much a victory of his will not to 
quarrel as it is to win against the will of another. This can 
be made clear to him in a quiet talk, never by scolding, sel- 
dom by reproving in the presence of others. But the ex- 
perience of self-conquest is the real teacher. 
An illustration of both the above points: Three children 
were engaged in a seemingly endless verbal guerrilla war- 
fare one evening. The mother suggested a game of ana- 
grams with her, arranging for a plan of score points. Here 
was a contest which soon grew exciting so that, before 
long, the entire family and some young guests were also 
drawn in. But it was a contest in which all discovered that 
social cooperation was necessary. When those who were 
formerly fighting began to argue over words other con- 
testants made it clear to them that it was impossible to 
play the game without social agreements; each one must 
take his turn; each one must be silent at times and each 
must yield his individual judgment to that of the group. 
The bickering three were swept on together in a social ex- 
perience, and they were conscious of the wisdom and neces- 
sity of agreement. 
4. Cultivate social insight, that is, a sympathetic under- 
standing of the experience of others and of the effects of 
our lives on others. This develops through experience. 
But it can be aided by quiet, kindly talks. One can help 
children to realize the effects of their stinging words. One 
can suggest courteous forms and the custom of showing the 
same deference to those of our own home circle as we 
show the stranger guest. Such direct teaching comes in- 
formally; but it must be given intentionally. Children look 
to us for guidance. They have a right to the benefit of 
such lessons as we have learned. Moral training does not 
come from lectures about moral conduct; yet we must be 
their instructors. It is much easier than we usually think 
to find the right mode, provided we are living naturally 
with them. With each one we can find opportunity for a 94 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
quiet conversation in which some recent quarrel is patiently, 
sympathetically reviewed. 
5. Seek to develop purposes that insure cooperative action. 
Children work together just as readily as they argue sep- 
arately. The way to a common point of view lies through 
the working at a common purpose. In one family where 
this problem seemed to be especially acute the parents 
testify that, after a while, they made it an unpublished rule 
always to suggest, as quietly as possible, some enterprise 
or activity when the trouble began to break out. When 
jangling voices arose and the young contestants were be- 
ginning to enjoy the fray they found their attention di- 
verted to some task, some pleasurable activity or some en- 
terprise, or even a new problem that called for practical 
consideration. Then, as they faced this new interest to- 
gether, and, as it called out their powers, they found that 
these other members of the family, with whom they had 
been disputing, became valuable cooperators. Unity came 
out of a common aim. 
This seems to be the usual rule; no amount of scolding 
will stop bickering; argument only adds another factor to 
the confusion. But, often suddenly, as soon as there ap- 
pears some particular object of interest, some purpose on 
which energy may be directed, the quiet of concentrated, 
united effort is likely to succeed. This is the experience of 
teachers of children. Where the project method of teaching 
is followed the problems of discipline disappear. Why 
should not the project method work equally well in the 
family? Of course there is a larger benefit in this than the 
cessation of conflict; there is the fact that in working 
together children learn how to do things; they learn to live 
together and they form controlling purposes, habits of 
purpose which dominate the life. 
HELPFUL READING 
The Problems of Temper (No. 12 in “American Home Series,” 
Abingdon). A brief discussion of the problem especially as to 
young children. BICKERING 
95 
Sons and Daughters, S. M. Gruenberg (Holt). Includes a sec- 
tion on “Children’s Pugnacity.” 
Childhood and Character, H. Hartshorne (Pilgrim Press). One 
of the best books on the development of Christian social motives 
in children. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What advantages are there in the difficulties discussed? 
2. Discuss the theory given by the Englishman. 
3. What instincts cause this difficulty, and how do they work? 
4. Show the difference between the tendency in children and 
the tendency in adults. 
5. What kinds of control ought to be developed to meet the 
situation? 
6. How many examples help? 
7. What special methods may be used with older children? 
8. What consequent forms of punishment will help? 
9. How can you organize diversions? 
10. What does the project method mean, and how does it work 
here? CHAPTER XIII 
WHEN IS A LIE NOT A LIE? 
Stating the problem: When a mother says that her child 
has never told a lie her hearers may know that they are 
either listening to fiction or they have found a mother who 
really knows what the difference is between lying and imag- 
ination. There was something sadly familiar about the 
words when a mother not long ago said, “My little fellow 
almost breaks my heart; he is very young and yet I have 
caught him in more than one barefaced lie.” 
There was agony on her face as she made the statement, 
as though she pictured that chubby, little, curly-headed 
youngster irrevocably consigned to perdition. Perhaps not 
all parents are so deeply concerned; but all who have con- 
scious moral standards are likely to be perplexed by their 
children’s treatment of the matter of veracity. One seldom 
meets a group of parents without meeting also this problem. 
If we take a number of these cases we may learn some- 
thing about the methods by which children, even those wrho 
seem to be most addicted to a free and careless handling 
of facts, may be brought to really love and defend the truth. 
TYPES OF LIES 
What are the common circumstances of this problem? 
They belong in several groups. 
I. There is the play type in which a child presents as fact 
that which is but fancy. Notice that when he does this 
with his own playmates he is not accused of lying; the only 
criticism they are likely to utter will be based on the limita- 
tions of his fancy; to them he may have been too restrained 
in his imagination; they may help him by adding details or 
96 WHEN IS A LIE NOT A LIE? 
97 
extra features. But the reaction of the adult is likely to 
be totally different. That is because his imagination is 
rusted; it will not work, on fancy’s road he lags far behind 
the child, and then he refuses to play the child’s game. But 
surely no active-minded adult should accuse the child of 
lying when he weaves his fairy tales or, bidding for a 
respite from the cold world of reality, recites his adven- 
tures in a world of his own making. The dramatic instinct 
often leads children to statements that adults fail to recog- 
nize as the free work of a power that will add much pleasure 
to the child’s life. 
2. There is the type that merges the free use of imagina- 
tive materials with an equally free use of realities. Children 
tell of weird conversations with actual neighbors. Some- 
times the details are so circumstantial that the peace of the 
neighborhood is threatened. At other times the combina- 
tion will be entirely different, as when children embellish 
the incidents of school-life with exciting adventures. It 
may help to watch how such activities of the imagination 
are treated by other children. They understand them; 
they know that the narrator is simply throwing in a few 
elements of reality to give a high coloring to his effort of 
fancy. 
3. There is the falsehood of excitement. In the high 
pressure of a conversation or of some trying circumstance 
an over-statement or a misrepresentation is made. Called 
into question the child is forced to stand between an ac- 
knowledgment of error or a re-affirmation of what he 
knows is wrong. With his as yet undeveloped sense of ex- 
actitudes he is likely to shrink more from acknowledging a 
mistake than from trying to prove that he was right by 
assertion. 
4. There is the camouflage lie. Just as the birds and many 
beasts and insects try to look like something else in order 
to escape notice so a boy will try to look like an angel when 
he is caught in an escapade, and he will, quite naturally, use 
his tongue to aid his disguise. Protective lying is not con- 
fined to childhood; you may have seen people moving their 98 
,THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
lips in order to appear as though they were singing in 
church. Perhaps you have even seen an occasional adult 
wearing social feathers that belonged to some other bird, 
and to many there is no wrong in a misrepresentation to 
save their reputations, provided they “can get away with 
it.” 
It would be easy to enumerate other lapses from veracity 
on the part of children; but it would be just as easy to 
compile a longer list of common varieties amongst even 
good adults. And there is this striking characteristic of 
children’s lapses, they may be short on veracity but they are 
all marked by sincerity. And, further, whether they are 
motivated by pride or greed or the desire to shield one- 
self they are seldom colored by malice. This is mentioned 
not to palliate any faults but simply to suggest an attitude 
of sympathy. When an adult mercilessly condemns children 
as little liars it is usually prudent to protect one’s dealings 
with that adult. 
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT ? 
1. Take time to discriminate whenever perplexed or 
pained by the impression of a falsehood. Before chiding 
try to determine whether the fault belongs in one of the 
classes enumerated above. To do so will help to distinguish 
between an act on the part of a child and the same act 
on the part of an adult. We have no right to apply to them 
the standards that are proper to us. Their training, their 
experience, their habits, aptitudes and standards are dif- 
ferent from our own. To expect a little child to be a full- 
grown saint indicates a meager conception of sainthood, 
one that wrould hardly seem to call for all life’s ripening 
experience. 
2. Respect the child’s imagination. Along with his will 
he is likely to need greatly this power and it is the one we 
disciplining parents are most likely to crush. Receive his 
works of imagination as works of art. Listen to them, 
enjoy them and cooperate with them. Do not analyze them. WHEN IS A LIE NOT A LIE? 
99 
When the child begins to spin his yarn he is doing, in one 
sphere of action, just what he would be doing if he and 
you were playing bear. Surely you would not then chide 
him when he takes his turn at growling, and say, “You 
ought not to growl because you are a boy and not a bear.” 
As they grow up encourage them to write down their ro- 
mantic inventions. In every way, without repression and 
without undue consciousness, they may be helped to ap- 
preciate the difference between statements of fact and 
creations of imagination. 
3. Our serious difficulty comes when the borderland is 
reached, in the second group above. Here the chi:d must 
be aided to see the social consequences of the free use of 
imagination. He must now realize that it is possible to 
trespass on the rights of others by using them as the ma- 
terials of his imagination. He will not always immediately 
understand that he might be hurting Mrs. Jones by creating 
an imaginary conversation on her lips; but he can see it in 
time. Do not chide; guide. Do not accuse him of in- 
tentional wrong. Suggest the situation that would be cre- 
ated if some one attributed a similar conversation to his 
mother! These situations are not difficult to meet if suf- 
ficient time is given, but a summary manner usually makes 
matters worse. Stop to consider that the child is learning 
the art of speech in its higher and more significant realms. 
4. With the lie that, uttered in excitement, is repeated to 
save the child’s pride the worst thing to do is to meet it 
with excitement. Sometimes it must be allowed to pass for 
a moment; then come back and seek a slow, careful re- 
construction of the child’s narrative. Help him to use his 
memory, to cultivate the powers of exact statement, to learn 
precision in description. He may be using simple hyperbole, 
but the occasion is a good one to make clear the danger that 
others might not recognize it, to show that a good deal of 
harm might be done and sorrow might be caused by failure 
to exactly represent facts in language. 
5. When a child has to lie to sarue his skin it is time to 
call the system or the circumstances to account as well as THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
the child. Family relations are not right with children when 
they lie about food or lessons or work. Set those relations 
right and there will be few occasions on which they can- 
not tell parents the truth even when they are in the wrong. 
But when the parents become only taskmasters they must 
expect a serf’s reaction; if they are domestic policemen they 
must expect the boys will play the game of dodging and even 
badgering the officer. Natural enemies will pit their wits 
against one another. Of course children do wrong even in 
protective lying. But the cure is to be found, not in bitter 
accusations., but rather, first, in the effort to remove the 
causes c*f fea*- and, second, in creating in the home a social 
situation in which there is a common will for the same ends 
so that the crisis of opposing interests is less likely to occur. 
The closer parents live with children the less they are likely 
to find fear looking for a covering in falsehood. 
6. But there remain many times in a growing life when 
it is likely to see more clearly the advantage of a lie than 
the social ills it may cause. Step by step they must be led to 
regard all actions under social relations, to think of the 
other-interest as well as the self-interest. The social mind 
might lie to shield another, but it will not lie to save itself. 
The heart of our hope for the young lies in guiding them 
to form purposes that will set self-interest—the pride and 
greed and fear that breed lies—in a secondary place, to 
lead them from the inward life to the outgoing life, from 
the motive of self to the motives of society. As this con- 
sciousness of the wider life in which and for which we live 
grows in the child there comes the opportunity to show, by 
precept, the terrible damage that a lie can do, the handicap 
of the habit of lying, the sorrow and wrong of it all. 
Remember we can guide no farther than we go. Truth- 
acting preaches truth-speaking. Children are likely to de- 
tect lies with their eyes more quickly than with their ears. 
Never label a child as a confirmed liar; once we get a label 
we are likely to try to like it. WHEN IS A LIE NOT A LIE? 
HELPFUL READING 
Ethics for Children, E. L. Cabot (Houghton, Mifflin Company). 
Your Child To-day and To-morrow, Y. M. Gruenberg (Lippin- 
cott). Ch. IV on “The Lies Children Tell” will be helpful. 
Educational Problems, G. S. Hall (Appleton). Ch. VI on chil- 
dren’s lying, its psychology and philosophy. 
Moral Education, E. H. Griggs (Huebsch). Under “Corrective 
Discipline” in Ch. XVI. 
Religious Education in the Family, H. F. Cope (Univ. of Chi- 
cago Press). Under “Moral Crises” in Chapters XIX to XXII 
this and kindred problems are treated. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Give the principal types of “lies” which give rise to the 
problem? 
2. Which seems the most common? 
3. Which seems the most dangerous? 
4. Do types vary with types of children? or with their ex- 
perience? 
5. How would you proceed to analyze the situation when a child 
seems to be telling a lie? 
6. What good elements are likely to be discoverable in the child’s 
action ? 
7. What is the peculiar problem of the borderland between free 
imagination and purposeful twisting of facts? 
8. How do we sometimes confirm the habit of lying? 
9. How may conditions make truth-telling easier and more 
natural ? 
10. Show the meaning and effect of the social motive. CHAPTER XIV 
NERVES 
Stating the problem: It was the description given, by the 
mother, of what we might call a hair-trigger child that led 
other parents to tell of similar problems, all due to various 
nerve derangements or maladjustments. The first case was 
stated something like this: “My youngest is our most 
serious problem; she is the sweetest child I ever knew; she 
is loved by all who know her casually or see her occasion- 
ally; she can be as pleasant as a day in June; but it often 
seems, in the family, as though the least little thing will 
irritate her so that she frets, fumes, fusses, cries and gener- 
ally makes life miserable for all the rest. She seems to be 
unusually sensitive so that every one must be always on the 
watch lest a thoughtless word or act hurt her feelings and 
start a domestic earthquake.” 
GENERAL CONDITIONS 
Some of us know that child; there are many of her, 
nearly all are at times most attractive, and people often gloss 
over their faults by describing them as temperamental. 
Who cannot recall surprising experiences with angels who 
carried active volcanoes of passion beneath childhood’s 
sunny exterior? Many homes have their “hair-trigger” 
children, liable to explode in tears of angry demonstrations 
at the slightest provocation; and there are not a few house- 
holds that walk softly as though they trod in a high-explo- 
sive factory. 
This type of child, seeming to vacillate between the angel 
and the demon, sunshine at this hour and a howling storm 
102 NERVES 
103 
in the next, needs all our patience and wisdom—our pa- 
tience lest we give way before the strain of dealing with 
them and make the case worse than it was before, and our 
wisdom to help them to ways of self-control. 
SOME OF THE CAUSES 
What are the causes for these types of behavior? Is it, 
as we often say, due to self-consciousness? And, if it is, 
what is self-consciousness in a child? Is it a form of self- 
ishness, as though the child grouped the whole universe 
about himself and counted all things as ministering to him? 
The self-consciousness in a child that leads him, or—more 
often—her, to lose all self-control in expressing anger, dis- 
appointment or chagrin is likely to be simply a sheer case 
of physical derangement. As a matter of fact, any sort of 
unusual self-consciousness is attributable to physical causes. 
The boy who blushes, stammers and wiggles does so be- 
cause, for the first time, he has realized the presence of feet 
and hands that he does not know how to dispose of; he 
thinks every one in the room is looking at these members. 
Further, the sexual awakening is a time of unusual self- 
consciousness and nervous sensibility with some young 
people. 
In extreme cases, where this self-consciousness is accom- 
panied by irritability we should look for nervous trouble. 
Too often we blame the moral character of a child where 
we ought to blame perhaps the mental character of the 
parents who have failed to recognize the child’s physical 
needs. Nervous irritability, susceptibility to disturbance, 
and hair-trigger reaction to external stimuli, all may be due 
to some chronic or organic nerve derangement. Without 
doubt the first thing to do is to consult a reputable physician. 
You can do little for the child’s spiritual nature until steps 
are taken to secure the right working of the physical. It 
may be that, in a highly nervous state, all our efforts to be 
kind, to guide into right action, to surround with helpful 
influences would constitute only so many more causes of 104 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
pain and irritation. Nor ought we to assume that the 
trouble is only a passing one, something that most children 
outgrow. The wonder is that they outgrow as much as they 
do; but our reflection ought to be as to how much stronger 
and happier they might be if we had given them every pos- 
sible advantage that modern science makes possible, if we 
especially had been constantly solicitous to remove every 
possible stumbling block and occasion of offense from their 
feet. We have no right to leave with them handicaps that 
we might remove. 
One cause of nervousness in children, even in small chil- 
dren, belongs to our modern social conditions; packed pro- 
grams of school-life for all the daylight hours and social 
entertainments for the evenings and nights. We will not 
see how our forcing process, whether in school or society, is 
fatal to these young lives. Many parents ignore the dif- 
ferences between themselves and children; no matter what 
they may do for diversion—movies, concerts, excursions, 
theater, social visiting—the poor little youngsters are car- 
ried or dragged through it all, to the disgust of other adults 
and the damage of the children. Or it may be they are de- 
nied all necessary play because the parents have outgrown 
that necessity. 
There is a field of nervous pathology that :s still but little 
understood, though cases are no longer rare, as the hospital 
records show. One form, hysteria, though apparently sim- 
ple, is likely to involve so many complex elements that the 
services of experts in psychology become indispensable. 
SUGGESTIONS AS TO MEETING THIS PROBLEM 
I. General conditions. The nervous troubles that form 
the basis of the moral problems may be due to a number of 
general causes: heredity, malnutrition, sickness, physical 
strain, social environment. First, direct attention to whether 
the child sleeps sufficiently long and under proper condi- 
tions, alone, and in a properly ventilated room. Then, as 
to food, whether it is really nourishing and is eaten with a NERVES 
105 
normal appetite. Even a child is likely to manifest any- 
thing but a saintly disposition under a steady diet of pie and 
church-social dinners. A course in domestic science may 
be a means of grace in many a home. Nourishing food 
eaten in a quiet, orderly manner, without distractions and 
under a sense of leisure will be found more than a matter 
of dietetics. 
2. Is there any unusual strain on the child’s life? Is 
school-work, in class or in home-study, so taxing that 
there is a sense of defeat and discouragement? Does the 
child come home from school worn out? Is this due to the 
confusion, noise and other irritations of class-work, or is 
it due to overstrain in gymnasium or on the field? Much 
trouble can arise from lack of proper attention here. If 
we try to make these active children into book-boring ani- 
mals, creatures who live only by working their eyes on 
minute objects, we must not be surprised if the nerves are 
overwrought. Rest, play, freedom from care, and gentle 
tasks that win approbation all help to restore balance here. 
3. Look for specific items in a group of physical mal- 
adjustments. Has the child adenoids? Is there a chronic 
condition of teeth trouble ? Have bad habits been formed in 
regard to digestion, especially as to evacuation? Does the 
child need glasses? Is there any physical disability that 
places this child in conscious and humiliating disadvantage 
to others? 
4. In every case the utmost care must be used to pre- 
vent the child from gaining the impression that she is ab- 
normal. Many so-called nerve patients are simply people 
who have acquired the fixed idea that they are different 
from others, that they have peculiar ailments, cannot live 
a normal life and have a right to expect constant care and 
unfailing sympathy. It is remarkable how early children 
acquire a morbid appetite for the sweets of sympathy. One 
cannot do them a greater unkindness than to condole with 
them, to seem overanxious about their health, or in any 
way to lead them to thinking of themselves as peculiar. 
5. Then there is another group of causes of irritability 106 
THE PARENT AND ?HE CHILD 
and hair-trigger situations, that of the personal environ- 
ment. Here trouble is caused either intentionally by teasing 
and general persecution, or unintentionally by thoughtless- 
ness, by placing the child with social misfits, with people 
who rub the wrong way. The first cause is the one most 
prolific of trouble. It is a characteristic of youth, one that 
lingers long into life with many, to delight in the sufferings 
of others. This seems to give a sense of power and of su- 
periority. As soon as children discover that any one of 
their number will be pained by teasing that one will become 
the focus of their attentions. Perhaps never in life will 
she suffer more than during those years at their hands. 
We older folks ought to know what this means, and we 
ought to know that it goes on and that some children are 
being given a permanent twist through the persecutions of 
these young psychological savages. 
Now, instead of scoffing at the weakness of the child who 
complains of being teased, or saying, “Just laugh at them,” 
suppose we try to think through the situation. Do we find 
it easy just to laugh at them when the gossips, the older 
malicious ones, try their hands on us ? The first thing to do 
is to help the child to realize that there is no just ground 
for criticism, that the teasing is not deserved. She must be 
helped to self-confidence, to assurance of ability to do 
things and to carry her part in her own world. Teasing is 
likely to create a morbid sense of inferiority, of inability to 
accomplish. One comes to believe that he is the butt of the 
gang simply because he is a dunce and a failure, while, 
often, the fact is that the gang-leader has turned the shafts 
of ridicule on him because he feared a rival. Whatever 
the situation, see to it that your child has every chance to 
talk it out with you, that there is not one ear, but two 
heads and two hearts where she, or he, can be sure that 
fairness and sympathy will be shown. 
6. One other suggestion on the spiritual side: do every- 
thing possible to remove causes of irritation. Without let- 
ting the child regard herself as unusual, try to hold in your 
own mind that she is a special case. Induce the other mem- NERVES 
107 
bers of the family to have patience and to exercise consider- 
ation. In a word, protect this child’s mental environment, 
as far as possible, without developing in her a consciousness 
of peculiarity. Keep her from trying activities, from ex- 
periences that are overstimulating. 
When the outburst occurs simply let it die down and, at 
a later time, help her to see that it has hurt others. Her 
self-control will grow best out of social considerations. If 
you take a definite course of action try to do so with her 
will cooperating with yours. 
But the larger range of helpful steps will lie in matters of 
physical care. She needs physical rest, quietness, steadying 
occupations. Often she needs a more careful regime all 
the way through, better food and better habits. When an 
organic trouble lies at the root only the skilled physician is 
able to advise properly. In a word, this case is to be 
treated with the same attention that you would give to a 
serious sickness, for that is what it usually is at root. 
And, always hope; never lose faith in life’s normal pro- 
cesses. Take the steps suggested, one by one; give condi- 
tions of health, surroundings of strength and calm happi- 
ness—and wait. 
HELPFUL READING 
Nervous Children, B. R. Tucker (Badger). A fairly sane review 
of current medical theory. 
Girlhood and Character, M. E. Moxcey (Abingdon). Especially 
good chapters on the physiological factors in training. 
Child Training as an Exact Science, G. W. •Jacoby (Funk & 
Wagnalls). Physical and consequent psychological treatment; 
good for well-read parents who can balance its emphasis. 
Sons and Daughters, S. M. Grucnberg, (Holt). The second sec- 
tion is a simple, helpful discussion of the physical basis of train- 
ing. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. In what ways does the nervous problem constitute a moral 
problem? 
2. What are the most common causes? 
3. What of the causes are most easily remedied? 108 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
4. How much is due to our forcing processes? 
5. What steps should be taken to prevent the physical causes? 
6. What of the housing problem as a factor? 
7. What psychological causes need attention? 
8. What forms of self-consciousness are dangerous? 
9. How would you deal with irritating conditions in the home life? CHAPTER XV 
BOY MISCHIEF 
Stating the problem: “I sometimes think I have the most 
mischievous boy that was ever bom. He is always in some 
scrape; I never know what is going to turn up next. The 
neighbors complain all the time and call him a neighborhood 
pest. I am afraid that he will get into some serious trouble 
and grow up a wild boy.” 
Questioning elicits further facts; that he is nearly twelve 
years of age, perfectly healthy, running over with energy, 
has no brothers near his own age but has a group of very 
close chums, his father—in his mother’s words—“is rather 
inclined to wink at the mischief he gets into”; he is honest, 
kind and always loving to his parents. 
Then came a most interesting answer to one question: 
“Does he have any serious trouble at school?” 
“No; there’s the singular part of it; he seems to like 
school, to get along well with his present teacher, though 
it was not always so, and he wants always to do more than 
the school demands.” 
The items of mischief include breaking windows with 
balls and stones, playing “ditch” or “leader” through the 
yards of objecting neighbors, chasing cats, bringing dogs 
home, setting string traps for unwary pedestrians, even 
stealing grapes from a neighbor’s arbor, and—well, it was 
evident from reminiscent smiles on masculine faces, that a 
good deal of their own boyhood was being recited. 
The father was not present; but sufficient material was 
given to form a picture of him, listening to the story of 
some prank and saying, “Of course he ought not to have 
done that; but, then, Mother, boys will be boys. I’d hate to 
109 THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
go on the witness stand while Tom was in Court and have 
to tell all I did when I was a boy.” 
This masculine attitude, not at all peculiar to this father, 
complicated the problem for the mother; she felt that she 
was opposed by an unexpressed but nevertheless potential 
approval on the part of the one who ought to have helped 
in keeping Tom straight. 
THE FATHER’S PART 
1. Was the father’s attitude right and wise? Not alto- 
gether. It was right so far as maintaining a sympathetic 
memory, so far as trying to see the boy’s side, so far as 
making many allowances for the bottled-up energy of boy- 
hood. But more than this was needed; one ought to see 
in the adventures of boyhood more than a page in the hu- 
man comedy; the father ought to see his boy in the process 
of forming manhood. We men need to get away from this 
side-line attitude, often one of slothful unwillingness to 
tackle a difficult problem. We know we cannot change the 
nature of boys, nor can we expect them to be subdued into 
a dull, gray, prim conformity to the quiet ways of most 
adults. But we ought to see to it that our boy is learning 
how to live, that he is guided through boyhood’s experiences 
into manhood’s power, that he is learning self-control and 
acquiring habits of regard for social rights and duties. 
2. Every hoy ought to have a father in the present tense. 
This boy, like every other boy, needs first of all a real 
father. No man is a “good provider” who does not pro- 
vide guidance, who does not give himself, as well as his 
working energies, to his family. Duties in this problem 
may be laid on the fathers first. What has the world a 
right to expect of the father of a mischievous boy? Some- 
thing more than a wielder of the rod in an occasional up- 
heaval of indignation, principally at the disturbance of his 
peace. It has a right to expect that the father will know 
where his boy spends his leisure, what his companions are, 
and what habits he is forming. It has a right to expect that BOY MISCHIEF 
he will furnish interesting, absorbing occupations for his 
boys, and that he will be guided by a consciousness that 
they are forming habits, developing ideals, that in this in- 
formal free life of leisure they are being educated. 
The trouble with some men is that they are too busy with 
business to take up this larger business, and others are too 
weary from work to discover the great joy and real recrea- 
tion of living with children and guiding their lives through 
comradeship and cooperation. 
3. Boy’s energies need direction. The cure for the boy- 
trouble lies not in the discovery of a series of restrictions 
and prohibitions which will keep him out of mischief, but in 
enlarging the range of his interests, directing the applica- 
tion of his energies and helping him to discover ideals of 
conduct that will furnish inner preventatives of wrong- 
doing. His is simply a case of misdirected energy; but 
who will direct his energies aright? Not his boyhood com- 
panions; the gang simply pools its energies and they flow 
out wherever the opening appears. Nor can those energies 
be directed by impersonal means; no text-book on boy- 
ethics is going to keep boys out of apple orchards. The 
only direction that is effective comes through constant per- 
sonal contact, by the medium of a genuine confidence and 
under the force of admiration for greater achievements and 
powers. 
4. There may be cooperation in direction of the hoy’s en- 
ergies. Personal leadership into new avenues of activities 
is the largest element toward a solution of the problem. 
And those who are nearest to the boy must furnish that 
leadership. He is fortunate if he has older brothers; their 
discipline does not always appear to be affectionate, but, 
commonly, they lay up stores of gratitude in the younger 
brother’s heart. Many younger men may find a wonderful 
field of opportunity in forming friendships with these boys 
and in guiding them to the better use of their leisure. But, 
in any case, it is the father who has the first duty and the 
greater influence. 112 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
THE MOTHER’S PART 
1. Motherly understanding. There are many mothers 
who understand the boy’s point of view at least as well as 
fathers do. One could imagine that they had once been 
boys. But, commonly, they tend to expect that Tom will 
be as sedate as a nun. They find it hard to understand 
that surging reservoir of energy which must find outlet 
somewhere. Still less do they understand the spirit of 
adventure and the active imagination that converts the 
neighbor’s back-yard into the wind-swept plain where Red- 
skins rove, that converts the private garage, or the haymow, 
into a bandit’s den. They cannot understand that high light 
in the boy’s eyes when he comes home from an evening spent 
in splendid conflict, in daring deeds with desperate pirates. 
And we all fail to take into account the natural opposition 
of this unsocialized animal to all forms of repression and 
regulation, as, for instance, to the policeman who forbids 
ball-playing on the street or the farmer who would keep 
the swimmers from the traditional hole in the creek. 
We must get into our focus something more than the 
fact that the boy’s mischief disturbs us, that it brings down 
on our heads neighborly indignation. We must get through 
the externalities of his acts and think of what is going on 
within him. It might be well for many mothers to take a 
course in reading the books of boy-life, Stevenson, Howells, 
Twain and Eggleston. We might then see +hat this boy is 
getting his training- in manhood through free adventure, 
that he cannot get along without some kinds of freedom of 
action, and we might begin to plan means by which this 
spirit of active adventure could be satisfied without involv- 
ing the police. • 
2. Cooperation. Do the mothers who are plagued take 
the problem itself or only their vexation to the father? Do 
both parents plan, with older members of the family, a 
definite course of helpful action? BOY MISCHIEF 
113 
THE PART OF THE HOME 
1. Learning from the school. There was one answer to 
our first question about Tom that furnishes an important 
clew; it was said that he got along very well in school and 
seemed to exhibit few of the dangerous symptoms there. 
Why was this? Simply because the school presented an 
organized and fairly complete program of activities. Per- 
haps it was not an ordinary school, but of a type that is 
happily growing in numbers. There they thought not alone 
of packing information into helpless human containers; they 
planned to organize and direct the powers of the many lives 
in all those school-rooms so that they might experience the 
best ways of living together. In that school activity, other 
than the purely mental, had at least as important a place as 
formal recitations, play was as much a part of the curricu- 
lum as literature or science. The home has something to 
learn from that kind of a school. 
2. Activity at home. Tom behaved at school because his 
activity had an outlet in doing the things that seemed de- 
sirable to do in cooperation w?ith others. The home may 
have limitations in this direction, but it also has advantages. 
It cannot formally mass large numbers; but it can afford 
opportunity for small groups. Has your home any real 
place for a boy? Has it any place for him with his chums? 
Does it provide any outlet for their activities? If Tom 
came in and said, “Mother, can we all play robber in the 
basement?” what would your answer be? And might it 
not be better if Tom and his gang first had been invited to 
use the facilities of the attic for his adventurous affairs ? 
3. The “No-Place-for-Boys>> home. The seriously mis- 
chievous boy is commonly the seriously neglected boy. He 
may be well-furnished with clothes and that sort of thing, 
but he is neglected as to his needs in free hours, as to the 
needs of his imaginative nature. Next to the guiding power 
of his father’s companionship comes the guiding power of 
a program for his energies in the home. That program 
should take two forms: the provision of opportunities for 114 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
the kind of play that is natural to him, and the provision 
of forms of useful work that will not only use his energies 
but will also give him the sense of doing something worth 
while. 
One must not expect that boys will be always poring over 
books or doing crocheting at home. But, when you hear of 
his deeds abroad, you ought to understand why he was not 
at home, or at the home of a friend, enjoying a boy’s ac- 
tivities. 
A workshop, a room where tools and shavings are not 
taboo, has saved many a boy from the streets and the 
Juvenile Courts. Sometimes this is difficult to provide in 
our modern congested system of living, but, usually, we 
can work it out somewhere, in a neighbor’s barn, in the 
garage, sometimes even in the boy’s bedroom. Shavings are 
an affliction to house-wifely pride; but are they any worse 
than powder-puffs, doll-rags and the clutter of paper flowers 
and feminine frippery? 
4. Food in the home. In the imaginative stage of the 
boy’s life we may help him to find better outlets for his en- 
ergy through the direction of his reading. He usually shows 
a marked taste for books of adventure. There are books 
that show high adventure under motives of human service. 
He may discover that it is just as spirited a thing to get into 
the Labrador country and minister there for years as it 
would be to go roving the South Seas. Not long ago a boy 
happened—one should always see that these things just hap- 
pen—to pick up a book telling of the service of men and 
women in bettering city conditions of living, in caring for 
children and the unfortunate. He sat doubled up in a chair 
with that book for an hour, and then he turned and said, 
“Dad, that’s the real life! Gee! it’d be fine to be doing 
things like that!” 
5. Indirect guidance. This unresting creature called a 
boy thinks more than we realize. It is often startling to 
find that some words we thought had slipped by him en- 
tirely have dropped in and found rootage. Do not too BOY MISCHIEF 
115 
readily pronounce the soil as rocky. Your everyday con- 
versation is determining what this boy thinks about life. 
You can never reach him by preachments about his mis- 
deeds. True, you must often define them, and clearly point 
out the social trouble they work and help him to see that 
they are unworthy. But the effective teaching is incidental. 
By what we say, casually, about social relations he deter- 
mines his own social relations. If you do not have an es- 
sentially social attitude toward your neighbor’s business 
you cannot expect the boy to take a social attitude toward 
the neighbor’s barn or other property. If we are playing 
the game of life on selfish principles, ignoring the rights of 
others when these rights restrict our programs of gain, what 
right have we to expect that the boy will do any better in 
his range of life? Many a boy is being punished by his 
father for the piracy that is but as a gnat to his father’s 
customary camel. 
THE PART OF THE COMMUNITY 
We need parental cooperation to deal with the boy-mis- 
chief problem, for it is not a problem of a boy but of boys. 
Parents should plan together, not in matters of regulation 
so much as in matters of providing a large program for the 
boys of the community. A vacant lot not only saves many 
back-yards from depredations but it saves many boys. Be- 
fore the vacant spaces are all gone let every community con- 
secrate some of them to the free, play-life of both boys 
and girls. 
Do you know where the boy spends his time? Do you 
know with whom ? Do you ever find out why he broke that 
window, or annoyed the neighbor? Do you plan for his 
outgoing energy as carefully as you plan to build it up with 
nourishment? Do you give reasons for action as well as 
restrictions on action ? Do you read anywhere near as 
much about making boy-life as you read either about mak- 
ing clothes and food, or about making money and civil 
affairs? Have you shown the boy ways of strengthening 116 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
the will to do right? Do prayer and the religious life 
mean anything in relation to daily conduct with him? 
HELPFUL READING 
Brothering the Boy, Edward IV. Raffety (Griffith & Rowland). 
Dr. Raffety deals with real boys and their problems, and with 
discussions of social means of help; a practical, pointed book. 
The Boy Problem in the Home, W. B. Forbush (Pilgrim Press). 
Although we sometimes wonder whether these boys ever got 
their faces real dirty there is much very helpful suggestion all 
through this book. 
The Minister and the Boy, Allan Hoben (Univ. of Chicago 
Press). Professor Hoben knows real boys and this book will 
help us to understand them. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Describe the difference between this problem in the city and 
in the country. 
2. Describe the difference between this problem with young boys 
and with youth. 
3. How may fathers help? 
4. What hinders fathers from helping? 
5. How may older brothers help? 
6. What has the school to teach us on this problem? 
7. What positive provision should the home make for the boy’s 
activity ? 
8. What have we a right to expect of the church? 
9. What have we a right to expect of the community? CHAPTER XVI 
THE SOPHOMORE STAGE 
Stating the problem: It was in a college town; a mother 
was urging her boy to go with her to the vesper service, 
somewhat to the embarrassment of the visiting preacher 
who was in the room. But the boy was not embarrassed. 
He answered, almost before her request was concluded, 
“Why, Mother, I never go to those things; no one believes 
in them any more; there isn’t one of the fellows in the col- 
lege who’d go if he didn’t have to.” 
On the way to chapel the mother presented her problem. 
John was a thoroughly good boy, always kind and generally 
well-mannered—with an apology for his persistence in 
setting convictions before courtesy—but he simply would 
not go to church, called it “all stuffy nonsense”; he talked 
a great deal about “modern science” as though he had re- 
cently invented it; he insisted that the Bible had been ex- 
ploded, and held that the “modern mind” took nothing for 
granted, and assumed an attitude of agnostic indifference 
to what he called popular superstitions. Of course he was 
in one of the later years of high school. 
“Now what shall I do about it?” she asked. “I thought 
perhaps you might suggest Some good books for him to 
read, or you might be able to have a talk with him.” But 
it developed that he was not in the habit of reading books 
beyond his required school work and, later, he developed a 
perfectly good alibi with respect to all attempts at informal 
interviews. 
THE SITUATION ANALYZED 
At least three elements entered in: (i) The boy was 
passing through a difficult period of readjustment to insti- 
117 118 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
tutional religion; (2) he was suffering from mental mi- 
graine, auto-intoxication from undigested scraps of in- 
formation; (3) he was feeling the new experience of being 
a person and was experimenting in independent action. 
Perhaps another element consisted in the fact that his 
mother allowed his mental aberrations to take a focal posi- 
tion in her attention. 
1. When a boy begins to feel the pangs of young manhood 
he usually seeks to drop the customs of childhood. Along 
with short trousers whatever belonged to the earlier period 
must be left behind. If the church was one of those things, 
one of the settled habits of childhood, it is likely to be 
counted among the childish things which no self-respecting 
young man would longer endure. Often the blame is 
largely with the church because it insists on his wearing the 
small child’s religious garments. So far as its organization 
for instruction is concerned it does not sufficiently recognize 
the difference not alone between elementary school and high 
school but, still more, between, say, fifteen and seventeen. 
We must not be surprised if, when all else changes, there 
is a change, a period of readjustments to religious life. It 
must not surprise us if there is an unwillingness to con- 
tinue perfunctory attendance on a church that has no real 
place for youth. 
This sophomoric attitude to religious customs is only 
indicative of similar attitudes and insurgencies toward all 
kinds of settled ways. One sort of insurgency means about 
the same as another. 
2. And then, Seventeen! Wonderful period! What a 
thing it is to come on a full grown world like Balboa sight- 
ing the Pacific! To imagine that you see all possible 
horizons, that in this all-comprehending brain the sum of 
knowledge is now grasped and understood in its relations! 
It is all so new, so wonderful, and it is all so different from 
what any one else has ever discovered! If you have never 
been through that you have never lived. Youth drinks it 
all in, demanding only that it shall be new, shall be labelled 
up-to-the-minute. Youth is intoxication. THE SOPHOMORE STAGE 
119 
3. The dawn of personality. If it is your boy who is go- 
ing through this experience, think what it means to him to 
feel that he is a person, he has a will of his own, he can 
choose what he will know and what he will believe and what 
he will do. When the harness drops the first thing to do is 
to leap out of the track. 
WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT IT? 
1. Take advantage of his vital and positive tendencies. 
As to the signs of dawning manhood, manifest in putting 
away childish things, expect manhood of him. Let it be 
the father who now calls on him for a man’s comradeship 
and who gives that comradeship. Let the mother count on 
him for manly traits, make him feel that manhood means 
reliability, that it has obligations, that it is not only putting 
off but also taking on, taking on duties, responsibilities. 
The best way to help a boy over fools’ hill is to give him 
something worth while to carry. 
2. In the same manner, take advantage of his intellectual 
tendencies. Is he proud of his little knowledge ? Then give 
him more. Help him to drink deeper. If you don’t know 
what he is talking about, and know that you really know, 
when he spouts on evolution you had better let that subject 
alone and find some other in a safer intellectual realm 
where you can walk with him and go before where he has 
not yet gone. Help him to see that his horizon is not the 
end of the world. Never refuse to talk of these things. 
When a boy airs his doubts give them air; they thrive in 
close quarters, but oxygen changes the color of some and 
dissolves others. 
3. There are few dangers greater at this period than that 
we shall even seem to make thinking a sin. In days gone 
by more young men were turned from a godly life by bigots 
who condemned the intellect than one cares to realize. See 
that your young man does not confound freedom of thought 
with freedom from thinking. Make him think and keep 
on thinking. For him just now it is his way out. Do not 120 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
worry over the fogs that are about his mind; help him to 
step forward as far as any light shows; that is the only way 
to freedom from fog. 
4. He needs friends slightly older who have but recently 
been this way, men who will neither laugh at him nor con- 
demn him, men who can help him with his problems. He 
needs those who will treat him with sincerity. His diffi- 
culties are not to be slighted; we dare not sneer at them, 
for they are very real. Even though we may smile to our- 
selves, knowing more of the uphill way than he does, we 
must not smile at him. 
If he seems to be merely spouting platitudes, do not sneer 
at them. They may all be new discoveries to him. Or it 
may be he has been captured by their pleasing sound. Help 
him to probe them and prove them. 
5. Under all circumstances deal honestly with the doubt- 
er’s mind. Do not try tricks of sophistry; do not expect 
to convince him where you are not fully convinced yourself. 
Do not mistake your convictions, and especially your men- 
tal customs and traditions, for demonstrable truths. If you 
present faith to this mind as a process of accepting that 
which you know cannot be so, or as a way of going ahead 
with the eyes shut, you are making any life of faith almost 
impossible to him. He may be inclined to overestimate the 
importance and reliability of his reasoning powers; but it 
will not help matters to present religion as essentially ir- 
rational. 
6. Take an encouraging attitude toward the doubter. 
Show him that you are pleased that he is so interested in 
these questions. Then see that he really does think about 
them. Many a doubter is simply sporting his doubts as a 
decoration; there is a period in some lives for wearing 
doubts just as surely as there is a period for wearing badges 
and buttons, and the one follows the other quite closely. 
Do not let him get away with any pretenses. If he will 
doubt see that he knows what he is doubting. Keep him out 
of the intellectual Nirvana of a slothful agnosticism, the THE SOPHOMORE STAGE 
121 
mental paralysis that refuses to think, saying, “Nothing 
matters; then why worry?” 
7. A sense of humor will help. Avoid the tragic attitude. 
There is no reason for thinking that the young fellow is 
headed straight for perdition simply because he cannot wear 
with ease your theological garments. The phase he is go- 
ing through has been and probably will be common to us 
all. Some day, if we do not spoil things for him, he will 
look back and smile at it, not in derision, but in wonder that 
it all seemed so dreadfully tragic to him. And perhaps, 
when we get a better perspective on the whole of life, we 
may smile, too, on the tragic seriousness with which we have 
treated some of these questions. 
8. Avoid the attempt to exercise authority in matters of 
thought. A dawning personality resents that most of all. 
You may be able to compel his body to go to church; but 
you can exercise no compulsion on his mind, and every at- 
tempted exercise of authority simply widens the breach be- 
tween you. It persuades him of nothing except that your 
faith cannot meet difficulties in the open, that it has to resort 
to force. 
1. But, on the other hand, it is not well to magnify un- 
duly the intellectual difficulties. They do stand out sharply; 
but they are not the whole of life. Nor is it in this intel- 
lectual area that the final solutions will come. This young 
man does need light but, still more, he needs experience. 
He needs to find a working way of living. The solution of 
this problem is largely a practical one. You cannot con- 
vince him by syllogism of the integrity of the religious life, 
but you can help him to discover it by experience. When he 
has found it that way no man can take it from him. 
2. The main thing to do is to help him experience what 
this religious life really is. Be patient with his sneers at 
the church; be patient with his impatience at your beliefs. 
But take hold of his tendency to act, his desires for some- 
thing worth while to do in the world. You will hardly ever 
PRACTICAL EMPHASIS 122 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
find a young man with sand enough to protest against the 
prevailing order who does not also have a burning desire 
to do something to make the world more after the fashion 
of the ideals he is cherishing. 
3. One can almost always count on idealism in youth and 
on a willingness to get ideals into action. Can we find 
opportunities for them? That is the practical question we 
need to face. He will go forward through his storm-and- 
stress period, through his doubts and difficulties, if he can 
find some place to take hold of life as a reality and as a 
way of service. There is an ancient endorsement of that 
mode of procedure: “If any man will do His will he shall 
know of the doctrine.” Do not preach about doing things, 
simply make it possible for him to do them. 
4. Help him to find a normal social life. There are many 
others passing through his experience; they should find 
somewhere hospitable welcome as a group. Get them in 
your home. Let them taste the social joys of life. Often 
in fellowship with its great riches we find our larger faith. 
Friendship is always a help. 
Believe in the good in him. Hold fast to that. Expect 
greater good. Take it for granted he is seriously seeking 
truth. Make the most of all his ideals. Never lose faith 
in his possibilities. Never scoff at his idealistic statements. 
Live your faith and you will find demonstrations more 
effective than definitions and example beating all argument. 
HELPFUL READING 
The Cornerstone of Education, Edw. Lyttelton (Putnam). The 
headmaster of a great school writing from long and intimate 
knowledge of older boys. 
Brothering the Boy, Edw. W. Raffety (Griffith & Rowland). Es- 
pecially Chs. VI, XVII and XIX. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1, What harm can come from taking too seriously the intellectual 
rebellion of young people? 
2. What are the hopeful features of the problem? THE SOPHOMORE STAGE 
123 
3. How should we help young people to think of their own doubts 
in religious matters? 
4. What kinds of friends are most likely to be helpful at this time? 
5. What forms of habits and work will help? 
6. What qualities are most helpful in parents? 
7. Describe any cases under your observation. CHAPTER XVII 
FATHERS AND SONS 
Stating the problem: Why should there be any problem 
as to the relations between a boy and his father ? Theoreti- 
cally, if ever two people ought to be able to agree these 
would be the ones; but, practically, every father who has 
given any thought at all to his boys as they have grown up 
has realized that there have been critical periods when re- 
lations were severely strained or tested. Every boy who 
looks back will recall, even in the happiest of relationships, 
at least difficulty in understanding his father’s point of 
view and, perhaps, often conflict of wills, while there will 
still stand the very large number of instances in which there 
has been distinct alienation and even hostility. 
ANALYZING THE SITUATION 
The problem is partly one of understanding. Fathers 
have very great difficulty in knowing boys and boys have 
still greater difficulty in knowing fathers. We may think 
we know, but there is no knowledge without sympathy. 
We do not know until we understand, and we do not un- 
derstand until we have stood, at least to some degree, in the 
other person’s place. Fathers find it hard to really recall 
boyhood. They remember some of its incidents, but its 
feelings, its point of view and its customs and standards 
of action they must recreate into reality. For the under- 
standing that leads to sympathy is something more than a 
matter of recalling your escapades when you were a lad; it 
involves an honest effort to get into the boy’s real present 
world, into his way of looking at things. Recalling your 
124 FATHERS AND SONS 
125 
misdeeds may only lead to a weak toleration toward the 
boy; reliving his life will help toward comradeship. 
Is there anything harder for the adult to realize than the 
reality of the boy’s world? We have so long ago aban- 
doned his standards, discounted his compulsions and out- 
grown some of his ideals that they have lost their sense of 
reality. But to him they are as potent as they once were to 
us; his sense of group-loyalty is as definite to him as any 
social obligations could be to us. Inevitably his own stand- 
ards must control his actions. He cannot reach forward to 
ours. When we look at his actions we must try to see them 
in the light of his entire world, for they can only be judged 
as parts of his complete social experience. 
HELPFUL STEPS 
I. Perhaps the longest step we can take into the boy’s 
world, so as to develop and maintain real sympathy will be 
through sharing his experiences. Of course there are many 
experiences into which we cannot enter, but there is one 
range into which practically all have access. We cannot 
go with him to his group gatherings, to his high-school soci- 
ety, and we cannot pass with him through the diary-writing 
period nor know all that goes on in his inner self when 
the choice of neckties first assumes importance, but into 
his play-world we can go quite freely. This is the world 
where you will know him best and he will find out most 
about you. It is the world where boys and men, both, are 
just what they are. Fathers often say, “I find it so hard 
to get near to my boy; he seems not to wish to sit down 
and talk with me, and I can’t get his confidence.” That 
is not strange—if you went after it. Confidence is one 
of the things that never comes by seeking. And quiet talks 
with our boys never come out right when they are planned 
ahead, when we say to ourselves, “Now it is my duty to 
have an earnest conversation with Frank.” 
Play and play interests afford a wonderful opportunity 
of sharing life. It’s hard to lecture; but how different it 126 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
is when you are walking home together from the game, 
or when you are talking it over together? Every man is 
just about as young as the people he can play with. If 
he cannot play he is sadly handicapped for getting near to 
any boy. Not only does the common play develop mutual 
understanding, it develops habits of mutual cooperation, 
as in team plays of friendly rivalry and in matched games. 
Moreover it is a chastening discipline often for fathers; it 
develops personal humility and a due appreciation of the 
boy when he surpasses you at the game you have taught 
him. Father and son are on a new level when they walk 
home from that tennis set that resulted in the boy’s favor. 
Those fathers who have not seriously tried the program 
of play as a means of developing sympathy will be likely 
to dismiss it as a theorist’s dream, or, at best, as one of 
the minor possibilities. They are mistaken; it is probably 
the major possibility. This is the case because play is the 
major experience for the boy. Play is his approach to the 
business, the game of life. Play is the language he thor- 
oughly understands and it is a language in which you can 
say almost anything you wish. These lines are being writ- 
ten after three hours of strenuous play, but they are also 
written in the light of years of observation and especially 
of grateful memories of soul-contacts that came through 
play. They could not have come so freely, so happily, in 
any other way. 
2. A father's real work. But fathers say, “We are busy 
people; our playing days are past; we are no longer boys; 
we have our work to do.” One wonders what is a man’s 
most important work. Surely if he has sons it is to bring 
them up in fine and efficient Christian manhood. No duty 
has priority over that. Some of us are very busy, with 
crowded schedules; but we must crowd out a lesser duty 
here and there to make place for this major one; and some 
of us simply like to “fool” ourselves—and, if possible, our 
friends—into thinking that we are busy. No matter, real 
or imagined, our business must make way for this call 
from our boys. We owe them some of ourselves. FATHERS AND SONS 
127 
3. There lies the main principle, self-giving, the dis- 
covery of our boys by the gift of ourselves to them. We 
like to be known as good providers, but what do we pro- 
vide? Shelter, food, comforts, education? None of these 
things minister much to the real lives in our homes; none 
of these afford much for personality. We must provide 
ourselves. Play has been emphasized as one means of 
self-giving; it reveals the principle that holds in all sharing 
of life as a sharing of experience. Fathers and sons be- 
come comrades in the pathway of a developing sharing of 
life. The boy who shares your game will be likely to 
want you to share his game, his larger round of interests, 
to talk with you of his friends, his plans and his ambitions. 
We want their confidence; we must give it time to develop. 
If we would share their hearts we must share much of 
their time and their general experiences. 
4. Confidences must be mutual. Open hearts are found 
only where hearts are open. Fathers must take the first 
steps. Tell the boy your life so as to help him to under- 
stand you. And that is perhaps fully as important as that 
you should understand him. Certainly there would be less 
of conflict, less of cross-purposes if we were more frank, 
if we talked over our plans and some of our problems with 
our growing children. Help them to share in the family 
life, to develop a sense of responsibility and of coopera- 
tion with you. 
5. And this confidence on your part is a step toward and 
an indication of something the boy greatly needs, your 
faith. Children are usually about as bad, and as good, as 
we expect them to be. We have forgotten our ideals and 
we give them credit for none—and they try not to disap- 
point us. There is nothing to which a growing life more 
readily responds than faith. Let them know you believe 
them capable of fine thoughts and noble deeds and they will 
strain every nerve to meet your expectations. Here fathers 
do well to borrow a leaf from the mother’s book; no mat- 
ter what happens they believe in the boys, and how the boys 
hate to disappoint them! Faith is not simply blind con- 128 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
fidence. It is the vision you hold of what this boy is 
capable of being and doing. You hold this before him by 
holding it before yourself. It is so implicit in all your 
attitudes that, whether it finds its way into word or not, 
it is as though you said, “This is what I am sure you can 
do.” And he does it. 
6. This attitude of faith is really part of something yet 
higher and more inclusive, the fine spirit of comradeship. 
Take it for granted that the boys are walking beside you. 
That is the only way to make sure that they are. They 
will not walk in the way of life under our direction; they 
will not take it on our advice, still less on our compulsion; 
but they will walk in any way that we show to be a worthy 
one. This is the application of the social method in the 
religious training of our children; it must be a social ex- 
perience they share with us. Comradeship means time to- 
gether, work together, enterprises together, talk together. 
It means our cooperation with them and the opportunity 
for their cooperation with us. It means sharing life. And 
when I try to do that I wonder whether I am good enough, 
whether my motives are simple enough, my soul pure 
enough, to walk with my boy through life. 
7. And patience. Even under the best of circumstances 
human comradeship tests us all. One wonders whether 
things might not be better if fathers were as patient with 
boys as boys are with fathers. Not that the boy is neces- 
sarily right at all times; that is not the point; he thinks 
he is and he has to control himself to get his father’s view- 
point. But, if we really love, then we wait, we try to un- 
derstand with the love that beareth all things, endureth all 
things, hopeth all things, believeth all things,—and that is 
what a boy needs, and answers to with all his life. 
CASES IN POINT 
The relations between Mr. B. and his three boys were 
so close and cordial that every one spoke of them as chums. 
Looking for causes one found that he devoted a definite FATHERS AND SONS 
129 
time of every day to being with them; he played ball with 
them; he taught them to make things; the summer vaca- 
tion found them together in camp where, as people said: 
“Everywhere that Daddy went the boys went with him, 
too.” 
Another father found himself seriously estranged from 
his oldest boy; he could not understand why they seemed 
to be at sword’s points. In fact he never did find out why 
they were apart; but they came together and understood 
one another when, one day, that father pushed aside his 
own self-conscious reserve and tried to tell his boy just 
why he was embarking on a particular course of action. 
It was a hard thing to do, because he thought the lad 
would sneer at him for idealism; but, instead of that, 
there came the warm flow of enthusiasm. He put his arm 
on his father’s shoulder and said, “That’s the only thing 
to do.” Then he opened up his own purposes and ideals. 
Mr. H. had to bring his boy home from college for mis- 
conduct. They had, as he put it, a “big set-to” when he 
started the boy to work. But in that work they found 
common ground for discussion, common matters of inter- 
est, and, working together, they came to understand and 
love. 
One father tells how he had a sudden awakening; he had 
found his boys drifting away from him. Then he over- 
heard them talking together and he realized that they were 
small boys no longer, that he was really listening to men 
who were thinking of life in a man’s terms. He had failed 
to realize their development, failed to change his attitude 
as a father. He said that the revelation flashed on him, 
and from that time on he had no difficulty so long as he 
accepted those boys as men and took them fully into his 
man life, leaving them their own responsibilities, counting 
on them just as he would count on any other man and 
confiding in them as he would in his equals. 130 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
HELPFUL READING 
Brothering the Boy, E. W. Raffety (Griffith & Rowland). 
The Minister and the Boy, Allan Hoben (Univ. of Chicago 
Press). 
That Boy of Yours, J. S. Kirtley (Doran). These three books will 
help any father to a better understanding of his boys. They are 
not technical studies. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What separates boys and their fathers? 
2. What most naturally brings and holds them together? 
3. What will it cost the father to know and grow with his boy? 
4. What will be the personal benefits to the father? 
5. What is meant by having faith in your boy? 
6. How can we quicken our imaginative sympathy with boyhood? 
7. Describe any favorable cases that you know. 
8. Look back and consider whether this problem is prevalent. If 
so, give reasons. CHAPTER XVIII 
LOST CONFIDENCES 
Stating the problem: “How can we hold the confidence 
of our children? Every one seems to preach about keep- 
ing the growing child’s confidence; but I don’t know any 
parents who really succeed in this; as children grow up 
they seem to draw away from us. Perhaps I am wrong, 
but it is as though they were keeping things from us, and 
it makes it very hard for fathers and mothers to talk over 
certain subjects with them.” 
This is the problem just as one mother stated it. Those 
who heard made it quite evident that the problem was by 
no means uncommon. Perhaps it might be stated differ- 
ently. On the train, in the intimacy that develops in a 
trans-continental trip, a fellow passenger said, “I know I 
have done wrong in postponing talking over some matters 
with my oldest boy—and now I won’t see him for months. 
But the truth is every time I tried to talk with him it just 
seemed as though I couldn’t get on just the right confi- 
dential terms.” 
The problem is a complex one. Once father and mother 
were the closest friends of their little ones; to them they 
would confide what no other ear might be permitted to re- 
ceive. And now that they are older they prefer the con- 
fidences of their schoolmates. Somewhere a change has 
come and a break has occurred. Then, besides, these chil- 
dren are so busy they have no time to tell mother all their 
gossip and their plans. At the same time there has de- 
veloped, on the parents’ side, a keener consciousness of the 
value of the child’s confidence; not only do they desire to 
share in the guidance of his life, but they grow hungry 132 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
for what his young life and vigor has to give them. And, 
most important, parents feel an added responsibility, espe- 
cially to talk with their children about the larger issues of 
life and about the things they ought to know regarding sex. 
Yet, even when family relations have been ideal, one is 
liable to find himself confronted with a closed door. It is 
as though we have come to the gate of a fair garden where 
often we have walked and, suddenly and without warning, 
the door is shut and the owner stands within, key in hand, 
ignoring our pleas for entrance. 
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES? 
1. Children change. They cease to be children. The 
figure of the fair garden fails because this young person 
goes through transformations no garden could know. The 
mind of a little child is open to almost all. Their lack of 
reticence is familiar and, sometimes, embarrassing. With 
self-consciousness comes a sense of possessing a gate and 
a key to the inner life. Perhaps at no time more than 
in youth is one so conscious of the realities of an inner 
life and at no time is the desire so keen to preserve it 
sacred and keep it secret. To open the door is a sign that 
we honor some one person more than any other. And this 
one thus honored is quite likely to be a new friend. That 
is a characteristic of youth’s growing social experience; 
he is likely to let in a new friend rather than an old one. 
So we may expect and ought to respect a certain kind of 
reticence on the part of even our own children. It is a 
mark both of self-consciousness—which is an inevitable 
and passing stage—and of self-respect—which is highly de- 
sirable. 
2. This growing person expects to be treated as a person. 
He quite properly expects to receive confidences as well 
as to give them. This we fail to recognize or choose to 
ignore. We do not give them our confidence. We do not 
tell them what we are troubled over nor do we share with 
them our hopes and joys. We expect a youth who feels LOST CONFIDENCES 
he is a man to hold an open door for us while we maintain 
the closed door which the adults keep toward the child. 
If we would keep the avenues open there must be freedom 
to go both ways. You can depend upon it that he only 
gives confidence for confidence with those youthful friends 
whom you envy, and when a girl gets a “crush” it is not 
long a one-sided affair. 
3. The break is seldom sudden; we realize it suddenly and 
with a shock, but it has been coming on gradually. The 
child has been growing away from us unless we have been 
sympathetically growing up with him. And this is the 
difficult thing to do. We imagine we are trying to be 
sympathetic; but no one is sympathetic by trying. Even 
we older people who think we are keeping so young cannot 
realize that our children at eighteen feel just as we felt at 
eighteen; indeed in the strain and sophistication of modem 
life they often feel much older. Now, do we remember 
how mature—in some respects—we felt at eighteen, how 
world-wise and competent? True, we laugh at ourselves 
as we look back; but youth cannot look back, and does not 
laugh. It takes itself seriously, and ought to, and so 
ought we. 
4. Confidential relations are not separate experiences; 
that is, they do not occur by themselves, but are always a 
part of other and wider experiences. They come in shar- 
ing the whole of life. We have been thinking of them 
separately, as though we could set times and seasons for 
them. We have said to ourselves, now this evening I will 
see if I cannot have a good intimate talk with Herbert— 
or Helen. But the intimacy we desire does not come that 
way. Girls are more likely to be intimate with their moth- 
ers than boys are with their fathers because, in most fam- 
ilies, they are likely to share duties together. Working 
together is a very simple and, to the youth, a very real way 
of sharing life. It is in this sharing of life that the walls 
or partitions are broken down and all life’s larger areas 
are shared together. 
We all know how common experiences make for inti- 
133 134 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
macy; the fellow workman may know his partner or “bud- 
die” as well as his wife does. Men who hunt together 
open their hearts by the campfire. Sometimes a great 
common experience of tragedy or sorrow breaks down 
these walls in a family. But the fault is ours that they 
have been built up. We have failed to give the child a 
growing share in our daily lives; he has not had the chance 
to be as near to us as when his play was his work and we 
shared it with him. Constant cooperation is the secret of 
constant confidence. 
5. Certain confidences are too long deferred, so long that 
they become forced and unnatural. This it is that makes 
it so difficult for fathers to talk to their boys about sex 
matters. They know they ought to do it; they know no 
one else can do it so well and that, while they wait, these 
minds are being filled with misinformation or with foul, 
gutter-bred facts. Yet they hesitate because they do not 
know where to begin; they have lost the connection. They 
failed to realize that there never was a time, from the day 
the boy could ask an intelligent question, when they did 
not have a duty and opportunity to teach him. They 
waited, thinking they would begin when the so-called dan- 
gerous years arrived. But all years are dangerous years 
in that unless truth is told—in suitable terms—untruths 
will be told and will become seeds of evil. 
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO HELP? 
In analyzing the problem we have been suggesting the 
remedies. 
i. Respect youth’s rights to a life and thoughts of his 
own. He must from now on have the private house of 
his own heart. Parental authority must not violate his 
personal rights. In his growing reticence he is not ex- 
hibiting coldness toward us; he is only becoming a person, 
an individual. The more scrupulously we regard his rights 
in this respect the less he is likely to set up “No Tres- 
pass” signs. If Helen is keeping a diary, do not stay LOST CONFIDENCES 
135 
awake nights wondering what she finds to write about. 
She will get over it and look back and wonder, just as you 
do whenever you look back to seventeen. 
2. Approach him on the level, as an equal, not with con- 
descension nor with any parade of the advantages of longer 
experience. He may often seem to discount your experi- 
ence, but, at heart, he knows better. If the links have 
been broken in the past do not try to pick them up where 
they were broken but rather seek intimacy on the plane of 
present experiences. This meets the third point in our 
analysis of the difficulty. No matter how hard it may be 
for us we must treat the growing young person as a man 
or a woman, as having come into our world. 
3. Expect intimacy to come as a natural part of sharing 
the whole of life. Invite them to share your burdens. Do 
this by simple frankness with them as to family and house- 
hold affairs. Do not be afraid or ashamed to discuss with 
them your business perplexities. You are by no means 
kind if you think to shield them from worries. They will 
not so regard your problems. On the other side, share 
your lives with them. Are you as interested in their in- 
terests as you desire them to be interested in what you think 
is for their good? Do you share with them in the athletic 
interests, in the politics of the school, in the little, big 
things of their lives? Do mothers really get enthusiastic 
about the girl’s crowd? Some do—and their friends won- 
der how they stay so young; and why the young folks 
prefer that home to outside attractions. The two things 
go together. Unless we can share all of life together with 
them what right have we to share its innermost places? 
4. There is an area or aspect of the life that should be 
shared in which we parents are most guiltily selfish; we do 
not share the spiritual life of ideals. We keep the really 
valuable, vital and beautiful part of religion to ourselves. 
Here are the youth, idealists, eager and hungry for every 
ideal expression of life, and when they turn to us for bread 
we offer stones. We present religion as a matter of forms, 
of the church and custom, while within us it is a living 136 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
bread, an upspringing fountain of water of life. If we 
who cherish this life within do not share it with them, talk 
of it as it really is to us, tell them in simple, honest terms 
what it really means, how can we hope to minister to their 
deepest needs? If we give but the shell, the externals, the 
outer form that religion takes, will they not know we are 
withholding from them? 
Family worship when it is simple and sincere helps to 
hold open the doors to these secret places. When that 
worship becomes the act of the family uniting in ex- 
pressing its highest hopes, in finding itself in seeking God, 
then children form the habit of thinking of ideals as part 
of the family life. When there is a sharing of joy in re- 
calling the thrilling expressions of splendid ideals in the 
words of ancient prophets and singers this language of 
youth’s hopes becomes normal in the family. Where re- 
ligion is not only a constant experience in life but has also 
its recognized and expressed high levels in the family, chil- 
dren feel free to let us know their hearts. And the heart 
of youth is crowded with ideals. It is not that they are 
callous but that our hands are clumsy and we fumble with 
the delicate latch. 
HELPFUL READING 
Sex Education, M. Bigelow (Macmillan). Distinctly for parents 
and teachers; one of the best, sanest, fundamental discussions. 
From Youth to Manhood, W. S. Hall (Association Press). For 
fathers to read with their boys or to interpret to them; clear, 
wholesome and scientific. 
Girl and Woman, C. IV. Latimer (Appletons). A comprehensive 
treatment for mothers and older girls. 
Child Study and Child Training, IV. B. Forbush (Scribners). 
Ch. XI discusses this problem and gives references to books to 
be used in the instruction of young children. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Have we the right to expect the under-reserved confidence of 
children and young people in all things? 
2. What causes in us hold back their confidence? LOST CONFIDENCES 
137 
3. What are the causes in them? 
4. What are the dangers of reserve, and of confidences withheld? 
5. What are the bases of continuous intimacy? 
6. What forms of our own confidence do we owe to children? 
7. Why is it particularly difficult to have intimacy on personal 
problems ? CHAPTER XIX 
THE PROBLEM OF CURRENT STANDARDS 
Stating the problem: “Our children are so influenced 
by the life about them, with its low ideals, that the efforts 
of the home life seem to be almost wholly wiped out. How 
can the family counteract current standards of life?” 
One can leave the question of the prevalence and reality 
of this problem to any group of parents. It brings us face 
to face with one of the constantly active factors in chil- 
dren’s education. Among the outside forces which con- 
stantly operate to determine character we would certainly 
include example, ideals and standards. Every growing per- 
son is constantly measuring himself against a variety of 
standards; he continues this process of judging himself and 
adjusting himself until life’s habits are fairly fixed, and, 
often even then, he is likely to break old habits in order to 
reach some standard that has asserted its desirability or su- 
periority. In childhood the standards are set, first, by per- 
sons and, later, by each social group into which the child 
comes, the family, school, general social life and smaller 
particular groups. 
THE SITUATION 
The influential standards are those that offer the most 
by way of social approbation and personal pleasure. As 
these growing young people in our families become more 
and more social persons the standards of their social groups 
become increasingly influential with them. That is why it 
often happens that the social customs, the mode of living 
and the popular ideals of the high-school crowd seem so 
much more powerful with youth than do the ideals, the THE PROBLEM OF CURRENT STANDARDS 
139 
habits and even the rules of the home. In such cases the 
high-school crowd is a real and effective social group while 
the family may have lost the power of social life and may 
attempt to enforce its standards only by arbitrary methods. 
One thing is certain: that young people always will be 
profoundly influenced by the standards set by their society. 
They will always desire to measure up to what is expected 
of them by their group. They will refuse to disappoint 
social expectations. These facts ought to suggest a most 
important possibility in home training, that in it we should 
so develop social living that its standards, being set high 
and made desirable, should have full force in the lives of 
children. These determinating standards are either inten- 
tional or accidental. Commonly they are accidental; we 
should make them intentional; they should be designed with 
the purpose of helping our children to think of life in 
worthy terms, to regard the strong and high Christian vir- 
tues as desirable. In a word, it is possible for the family 
deliberately to establish Christian standards of life which 
will be as effective as those which now control. 
THE DANGER 
We need to face the evil wrought by current standards 
of life. Commonly popular ideals of things worth while, 
especially as these are presented to young people, are not 
helpful toward good character. The curse of covetous- 
ness has soaked clean down into all our life; the whole 
world tends to measure every man by the money he has 
and the goods he can display. The conventions of the 
hour are those of selfishness and pride, of the passion for 
gain and display. Children find themselves in a social 
order, especially in schools, where waste and extravagance 
is a virtue, where merit is awarded to the vain and the 
frivolous while seriousness of purpose is discounted. The 
social standards which they see most immediately are sim- 
ply those of the barn-building fool of Christ’s parable 
worked down into the terms of youth life. THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
140 
The pressure of these popular, current standards is very 
strong. They have tremendous social power. It is not 
enough to say to children that they must refuse to con- 
form. Few adults know how young people suffer from 
social ostracism, from ridicule and scorn, when they cannot 
spend as their crowd spends, when they cannot in all re- 
spects do as the others do. Parents face a difficult situa- 
tion. We know these popular standards are often wrong; 
we know that many of them are most vicious. Yet, if we 
have any sympathy at all, we dread the pain our children 
will suffer if they must be classed as “cheap skates,” 
“molly-coddles” and “frumps,” and, still more, their suffer- 
ing in social separation from their friends. We ourselves 
conform to social demands which we ought to resist. It 
would be, if we only knew it, much easier to live lives of 
social protest, and yet we do not do it; we allow others 
to set our standards of clothes; we are slaves to conventions, 
and not all these conventions are devoid of moral signifi- 
cance. If it is so hard for a man to defy the custom of 
carrying the serf’s badge of a starched collar, how much 
harder must it be for his children to defy the conventions 
of their social group who are all of the age when conven- 
tions count for so much! 
REMEDIES 
I. There are at least two important points to remember. 
The first is that youth must have standards created by a 
social group in which he will find pleasure and approbation. 
It is possible to break away from popular standards and 
to become insurgents only when we have others with us. 
Can the family make standards for its members? To an 
important degree it can. There is a time when family 
opinion is the most influential to a child. But full often 
that family opinion is silent, often it is conscious of no 
standards, while opinion outside is vociferous and constantly 
insists on its standards. This insistence is not in words 
alone; it is principally in action. THE PROBLEM OF CURRENT STANDARDS 
141 
That is where the family has its chance; in beginning 
early—it has the first opportunity, anyway—in establish- 
ing ideals by the constant influence of living examples. 
Here is where we must ask ourselves, Have we, in the 
family life, actual Christian standards of living? That is, 
are the matters of daily conduct, of home-making, of goods, 
clothes, expenditures and upkeep so determined by a Chris- 
tian interpretation of life that this Christian standard de- 
clares itself in them all? This is only another way of ap- 
plying the principle of doing all things to the glory of God; 
but it makes that principle an acid test, one that determines 
everyday action. You can be absolutely certain that the 
way you act about life will speak louder and more clearly 
to children than any arguments concerning current stand- 
ards. 
The success of this method depends, first, on whether 
these Christian standards do effectively and constantly pre- 
vail, and, second, on whether there is a real social life that 
makes them effective to young people. Where that life 
prevails, where the family group really exists for the sake 
of lives, its standards will always be more influential than 
any others that can be set up. 
2. The second principle is that children must be aided 
to look through standards into the principles back of them. 
The best way to do this is to give them a share in the ex- 
perience of basing standards on principles. Encourage 
them to share in the discussion in the family of its methods, 
to share in forming its plans and arranging its expendi- 
tures, to have a part in determining what shall be done 
and what shall not be done, and to determine these things 
by high principles of life. Let them see how principles 
work out in action. If here in this family group we to- 
gether decide on procedure by applying Christ’s law of love 
and service the effect will be not only to help them to 
form standards but also to displace outer standards by 
inner ones, to displace fashion and custom with ideals, 
motives and principles. We cannot meet the craze of the 
age, its wild orgy of spending, its triviality and greed, by 142 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
ranting against it; but we can set around young lives that 
which will be more forcible than all the age appeals, the 
joy and beauty and strength of a life that has found greater 
values, that looks through these popular standards and 
comes to know how foolish and empty they are. 
3. Children can be guided into social groups that have 
higher standards. It is possible to help them in their choice 
of friends and to guide them in the rejection of associates 
who infect with unworthy ideals. Patience and courage are 
a small price to pay in helping children to form a health- 
ful social environment. 
4. Children find guiding ideals in their ideal world, in 
their reading, their dramas and plays. Books may be our 
effective cooperators. 
HELPFUL READING 
Honesty, Wm. Hcaly (Bobbs-Merrill). How this element of char- 
acter is developed. 
Everyday Ethics, E. L. Cabot (Holt). A good book to have at 
hand with its many methods of teaching children on ethical 
problems and duties. 
Ethics, Dewey & Tufts (Holt). Parents especially need to get 
some fundamental understanding of the ethics of our social life, 
and this is one of the most useful and readable books. 
Child Nature and Child Nurture, E. P. St. John (Pilgrim Press). 
Good discussions of property and training in its use. 
Education for Democracy, H. F. Cope (Macmillan). Chap. IX 
discusses the development of a democratic social life in the 
family. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What is meant by popular standards? 
2. How are they formed? 
3. What are the dangers in such standards? 
4. What makes the conventions of a group so potent in youth? 
5. How can the family establish effective standards? 
6. What are the especially dangerous attitudes for parents to take? 
7. How can young people be helped in discovering their own 
principles of conduct? CHAPTER XX 
SLACKERS 
Stating the problem: “What shall we do with children 
who will not work in the home?” 
Sometimes the problem is presented in other forms: 
“Some of my children seem to be born lazy; they avoid 
every exertion except the one of avoiding work.” “I don’t 
think my children are lazy; but they absolutely refuse to 
do any form of housework.” One earnest woman stated 
her question this way, “You say that every child ought 
to have a share in the duties of the home; that is all very 
well in a book; * but it won’t work out in our home; every 
one is either too busy to do any regular duty or they fear 
what their friends will think of them.” 
ANALYZING THE PROBLEM 
Here, then, is the problem: if the family life is to become 
effective in the development of character it must offer to 
every member a fair share in all its life, including that of 
activity and common service. This is the case, not alone 
because modern industrial conditions often compel us all 
to lend a hand, but because this service is desirable in order 
that the child may experience family life and social life not 
only in terms of receiving, but in terms of giving; that it 
may become a truly unselfish, serviceful life for all. In 
the last analysis any educational effort is a success in the 
degree that it affords active experience, of a designed char- 
acter, to those who are being educated. The principle 
* The reference v/as to Chapter VII in the author’s book, “Religious 
Education in the Family.” 
143 144 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
of learning by doing means the guidance of persons in the 
experience of action and enterprise. It is important to 
understand this principle and to apply it in the family so 
that when we seek the services of children, we are not sim- 
ply using them as substitutes for servants, but we are guid- 
ing them into sharing in the active life of the family as a 
life of service. And then we need to see, always, that 
life as service is the essential positive aspect of a religious 
life. 
But many things hinder. Those children who, when 
they were little, begged for a chance to help, now beg off; 
they find so many other things to do; school or friendships 
engross their time; their energies find many new outlets; 
household duties seem to be monotonous and often trivial. 
Often they feel that they would lose social caste if it were 
known that they worked at home; it would be a tragedy to 
be discovered washing dishes. Sometimes they are ac- 
tually physically weary all the time and sincerely glad to 
escape work. 
Yet we must not give up the effort to secure for our 
children the great advantages of sharing the full life of 
the home; they will not thank us in the coming years if we 
protect them from these rights. We may foolishly con- 
gratulate ourselves that they have never known what it is 
to work. That boast is a reflection on the good sense of 
any parents; it is laying up the pains of a deferred educa- 
tion for our children; it is robbing them of their present 
rights. It may be harder to get them to do things than to 
do things ourselves; but that is true of all teaching; any 
teacher could work out a problem in a tenth of the time 
she takes in teaching it. 
THE DIFFICULTIES 
We can turn to analyze the difficulties in the way of this 
task by asking, First, why do they refuse to share home 
duties? Here we get a number of answers. 
I. Take the one, “Too busy,” first. We parents must SLACKERS 
145 
look at that squarely; are we asking too much ? Are these 
young lives over-pressed ? Some are. Then comes the 
question whether the items of their program are all essen- 
tial, whether they are all of a value equal to that which 
home duties would have? We must not arbitrarily decide 
for them; we must help them to think out the values of 
their activities and to lay out balanced programs, to elect 
for themselves the best ways of using their time. Nor 
must this mean that they will be perpetual drudges, living 
without recreation or free hours of leisure. 
But the difficulty usually rises because of a lack of pro- 
gram ; they have no time because they make no plans; 
they are driven hither and thither. They would not al- 
ways be unwilling to help if they could feel the freedom 
that comes from restraint and control of one’s time and 
actions. Perhaps we who now demand their help have 
been too indifferent to the manner in which their time has 
been filled; imperceptibly and without our knowledge or 
thought they have gradually become fully occupied. They 
need our counsel and help to arrange their lives. 
2. Sometimes we are confronted with plain indifference; 
they think we can afford to hire help and they see no rea- 
son why they should be called on for services. Then the 
fault is usually our own; we have failed to maintain that 
attitude of happy cooperation which marks little children. 
We are trying to reestablish lost habits. 
3. Often we have been keeping these children out of the 
real life of the family; they have been living as dependents 
and not as members of the firm. This is the most com- 
mon error. Children do not really belong in the family 
as equals. When they share its councils, when there is 
developed in them the sense that all phases of the home 
life belong to them, when the family circle is in all things 
a group of equal cooperators then they answer to this sense 
of ownership and partnership. The ideal condition is 
reached when children voluntarily take over duties because 
they feel that the home is their responsibility, the property 
and privilege of all alike. 146 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
MEETING THE PROBLEM 
In this problem, as in many others, we come back to a 
matter of atmosphere and attitude of mind. It is a prob- 
lem that does not exist in the family where a true com- 
munity life is lived, where each one feels that it is neither 
Father’s home nor Mother’s but OURS. 
1. But, you ask, what of the feeling of the degradation 
of household labor? That feeling belongs to a past cen- 
tury, to the old feudal social ways of thinking. It is a 
habit of mind that we parents foolishly perpetuate by our 
casual remarks about labor, often by our attitude to do- 
mestic assistants (a disappearing class whom, in the old 
days we used to call “servants”) or by our own attitude 
toward good honest work. True, our children are influ- 
enced by the standards that prevail amongst their friends, 
but such standards soon fall before steady loyalty to other 
standards in the home. If we take the modern, Christian 
attitude toward work; if we are not ourselves affected by 
this foolish and cheap, snobbish attitude toward work, we 
shall find that outside opinion has little weight with them. 
But if we have trained them to esteem only the white-collar 
occupations, if we habitually bow before the parasites and 
sneer at the producers, we must not be surprised if they 
apply our doctrines to the duties we offer them. No dis- 
grace is greater than that of the parents who receive without 
giving. 
2. Another phase of the difficulty rises from the fact 
that we often ask children to undertake duties without giv- 
ing them fair preparation. Even housework demands some 
expertness. We must be willing to take the teacher’s pains, 
to lead them step by step from simple processes to more 
complex ones, from minor responsibilities to major ones. 
Our tendency is to think this matter out in terms of labor 
saving and to become impatient if it consumes our time to 
secure their help. The purpose of this work is education. 
3. Are you directing the voluntary attitudes of little 
children toward the activities of the home? Do you take SLACKERS 
147 
time to think how the young child’s attitude of cheerful 
helpfulness may be continued by affording him or her 
growing opportunities? Do you demand work as a bald 
duty or offer it as an opportunity of cooperation? Do we 
build up the child’s cooperative habits? Is your attitude 
that of the “boss” or that of the partner? Remember 
that little children, just like grown folks, crave the sense 
of responsible sharing and shrink from the drudgery of 
mere slave or task work. The central problem of labor, 
everywhere, is to make it the full and free part that free- 
men play together. This is not less true in the family. 
Our work must have their heads and their hearts or their 
hand-service will have little value. This work must be 
a part of the social sharing of life. 
CASES 
The most helpful method will be to take real cases under 
your own observation, cases that show whether children 
like to work under normal conditions, whether they can 
learn to work, whether they benefit or not by work; cases 
such as that in the home of the college president who 
calmly related to a group of educators how, in his family, 
they had met the servant problem by his older boys and 
girls taking over all the housework, and now “the up-keep 
of that house is their pride.” 
DISCUSSION POINTS 
In how far can we develop in little children any real 
consciousness of partnership? Do we take the same at- 
titude toward work in general that we expect of them 
toward household duties? Is there any essential disgrace 
in a boy’s washing dishes? What makes any work honor- 
able or otherwise? Do we consider the child’s physical 
limitations? Read over carefully that beautiful poem, often 
used as a hymn, “New every morning is the Love,” by 
Keble. Get the complete poem and read particularly the 148 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
stanza beginning “The trivial round/’ In what ways can 
we get the sense of the hallowed joy of common service? 
In what ways can we make daily duty truly worship by its 
sense of fellowship with God and with all His family? 
Does this life of daily service mean to us the expression 
of the love we bear a common Father? Are our daily 
duties so colored by this joy that even drudgery becomes 
divine? 
HELPFUL READING 
Making the Best of Our Children, Vol. I, Ch. 6, Wood-Alien 
(McClurg). A series of brief but helpful chapters on this and 
other practical problems. 
Duties in the Home, Walter Sheldon (Welch). The best prac- 
tical discussion, giving many most interesting details. 
The Home as a School, H. F. Cope (Griffith & Rowland). A dis- 
cussion of social training through work and living in the family. 
When Mother Lets Us Help, C. Johnson (Moffat, Yard). There 
are two volumes in this series on ways in which children happily 
share in home duties. 
The Child Housekeeper, E. Colson (Barnes). Practical and 
stimulating both for children and parents. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. Why is it important that all children should do useful work? 
2. What are the rights of a child as to work? 
3. What are the rights of society as to its work? 
4. How would you meet the difficulty of an overcrowded pro- 
gram for children? 
5. How do you distinguish their work and that of hired servants? 
6. How do you prepare them to do the work well and happily? 
7. How can work be made attractive? 
8. What motives should be cultivated? 
9. How do you overcome the problem of disappearance of family 
duties in apartment-living or in our modern style of housing? CHAPTER XXI 
THE PROBLEM OF MONEY 
Stating the problem: “How can we train children to a 
right use of money?” 
Spending-money, allowances, savings, gifts, church-of- 
ferings ; all are varieties of one great perplexity to many 
parents. Yet that perplexity may be our opportunity. If 
money is the constant discipline of later life we cannot too 
early train children in the right habits of its use. Whether 
we plan to do so or not we can be sure that children very 
early form those habits which determine their use of money. 
Although these habits may be modified later it evidently 
is most easy to mold them at the beginning. 
THE DANGERS 
We have a keen consciousness of the power of money, 
but none of its potency; we know what it will do for us, 
but we disregard what it does with us. We see in it the 
token of almost every kind of power; but we fail to recog- 
nize in it the test of all our personal powers. Character 
is disciplined by it every moment. Character is revealed 
by it. Truly money makes the man—or mars him, and his 
use of money marks him for what he really is and what 
he essentially is worth. The use of money is one of the 
constant disciplines of real life, and its right use, whether 
it be much or little, is one of the best evidences of Chris- 
tian character. In the family there are problems of money 
more serious than those of getting it and stretching it. 
Children have the idea of possession of things before 
they come to understand the significance of money. One 
149 THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
150 
round symbol is to them the same as any other round sym- 
bol. It is a thing to hold and, soon, a thing to withhold, 
to guard and protect and to possess. Very early we need 
to train habits and develop ideas in regard to possessions, 
to catch the principle that whatever we possess is ours to 
use. It is an instrument, a tool to use in carrying out the 
commanding purpose of our lives, that we may be useful 
in the world, that we may usefully fit into its great pro- 
gram of developing goodness and love. 
Now we cannot tell all that to a child; but we can make 
him feel it gradually by the way we help him to use his 
possessions. And, especially as, in time, we lay upon him 
responsibilities in the use of money it is possible to create 
a mental attitude which takes it for granted that the real 
test of the use of money is the good we are able to ac- 
complish by it. 
METHODS OF TRAINING 
1. Training in use. Children should have regular allow- 
ances very early. They should know what to expect and 
they should understand that these allowances are intended 
to cover certain kinds of expenditures. As they grow 
older the area of their purchasing responsibility should be 
extended so that, before they leave high school, they should 
be responsible for the purchase of all their necessities. Per- 
haps it is objected that one cannot trust to their discretion; 
they would spend foolishly. Not if they have had experi- 
ence in the use of money since childhood and if in that 
experience they have been held to the law that money cannot 
be spent twice; if it is wasted then they will have to suffer. 
Through this developing experience there must be held 
before them the ideal and hope that selfishness will be held 
in check, that the principle of service will rule all the use 
of money. 
2. Avoiding avarice. Even in early childhood one finds 
difficulty in guiding character between two extremes. Be- 
ing properly desirous of teaching thrift it is easy to de- 
velop avarice. On the other hand, the wasteful spend- THE PROBLEM OF MONEY 
151 
thrift may quickly develop from unrestrained generosity. 
Perhaps one of the best helps will be to establish the custom 
of keeping books. Do not make these a task; do not pose 
as an auditor, but by sympathetic advice get each member 
of the family into the habit of talking over his accounts 
with you. Then you have the opportunity to make sug- 
gestions, to develop wise forethought without cramping 
generosity. 
3. Reality of responsibility. It is most important, for 
the sake of character, that whatever money is given to or 
used by children should be truly their own. The seven- 
year-old should put her own money in the Sunday-school 
box. It should be money that she could, if she would, use 
for any other purposes. And it becomes an offering, not 
because Father sends it by her little hands, but because she 
wills to use it in this way rather than in some other. This 
will take guidance. But the first step is to insure the sense 
of possession, of right to use and responsibility for use. 
It is much better that children should have and should 
exercise the right to be selfish with their money, to turn it 
to candy instead of to charity, than that they should be 
merely carriers of father’s contribution. 
4. Establishing ideals. Quite likely they will make mis- 
takes in the use of money. You do not forbid them to 
speak until you are sure they will make no mistakes in 
grammar. They must learn through real experience. But 
they must learn under direction. Here parents become 
teachers, not so much by formal periods of instruction as 
by our conversation about money and possessions, our own 
attitudes and habits. Surely we are all to-day in danger 
of covetousness. And, if the lust of things goes on its 
present way, the most serious of all dangers facing our 
children will be that they shall think of life only in terms 
of the things a man possesses. 
5. The higher joys of money. In few particulars is the 
attitude toward life more clearly defined than in the use 
of money. In a thousand ways the life of to-day is saying 
to the young, “Man lives for bread and folly—goods are 152 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
the only good.” We can do little with arguments to meet 
this evil theory of life, this gospel of materialism. But 
if we can help our children to find joy in unselfish ends, 
if we can help them to realize the fallacy of the creed of 
modern life by experiencing the greater happiness of un- 
selfish living, then they will know the truth that sets them 
free from the world. 
At the same time, by the exercise of their own wills in 
acts of devotion, in the selection of objects to which they 
will give their money and in the definite denial of other 
inducements in the effort to give to some worthy ends they 
are acquiring some of the habits of the religious life. If 
habitual, thoughtful, devoted givers, stewards of their 
Lord’s possessions, are not developed in childhood they are 
not likely to happen in later years. Whether we will be 
sufficient for the immensely larger responsibilities, the un- 
dertakings of a new world in the next generation, depends 
very much on whether the family life is now training chil- 
dren to use their possessions in the terms and the spirit 
of the kingdom of love and service. 
HELPFUL READING 
Training in Thrift (No. 29 in “American Home Series,” Abing- 
don Press). 
The Use of Money, E. A. Kirkpatrick (Bobbs-Merrill). An ex- 
cellent study of the moral and educational aspects of the use of 
money. 
Ethics, Dewey & Tufts (Holt). See the references to property 
for a social basis of discussion. 
Money, The Acid Test, W. Conaughy (Inter-Church). An argu- 
ment on “Stewardship” that provokes serious thought on religious 
responsibility for money. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. How would you determine the amount of the child’s allowance? 
2. What, accounting would you expect him to make? 
3. Show how you would help him to realize the power of money. 
4. How would you help him to realize responsibility for money? THE PROBLEM OF MONEY 
153 
5. How make the gifts of children really their own? 
6. What rights have children over their money which we must 
recognize? 
7. How does the use of money train character? 
8. How combat the careless use of money? CHAPTER XXII 
READING 
Stating the problem: Many seriously minded parents 
have asked this question: “How can we encourage our 
children to read good books?” 
To many parents this subject will seem to have little 
meaning in relation to the modern home; they associate 
the reading habit with other old-fashioned ideas and cus- 
toms. But a good deal of observation leads to the con- 
clusion that there is a marked difference between the home 
where books are plentiful and well-worn and the homes 
where reading is not a common habit. You can tell a lot 
about a family when you have noted whether there are used 
books on the shelves and good reading on the tables. Not 
all children are bookworms; but there is no life so barren 
as that which is marked by empty book-shelves. 
IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM 
This matter has religious importance not because we 
are thinking of books about religion but because every good 
book may minister to the life of the spirit; because the 
habit of reading, properly directed, may constantly con- 
tribute to inner strength and vision; because good reading 
makes us better men and women. See what a book is; it 
is the spirit, the thought and ideals of some soul, gathered 
up at its best and open at any hour to us. And here in 
these pages we find the great souls of all the ages; pa- 
tiently they wait for us; they never weary; they never 
falter. Happy are we if, somehow, as we turn the pages 
we catch the sparkling eyes, the gentle face of him who READING 
speaks, and if for us sometimes reading becomes an ex- 
perience in which “spirit to spirit may speak.” 
Every time you bring a good book into the house you 
bring a new friend, one who can remain until all the chil- 
dren know him, one who is never too busy to talk with them, 
one who will enrich the family circle, whose thoughts will 
elevate and whose spirit will refresh every one. Every 
time a child reads in a great book he has enlarged and en- 
riched his social group; he has exposed himself to the sun- 
light that has strengthened many lives. 
Let us not be misled by this foolish chatter that says 
“Give me no dead ones: I want only live writers” The 
great advantage of books is that they are largely inde- 
pendent of time; the ancients are in them alive to-day. 
Only those who are ignorant of them imagine that the 
classics are out of date. One of the most successful bank- 
ers in England says that if you wish to succeed in business 
you should read Homer. Even though you cannot read 
the originals just try the translations and be surprised at 
their messages for to-day. If we read the books of the 
New Testament as books we get the same sense of fresh- 
ness, the same feeling of modern reality. 
155 
THE CURRENT DANGER 
It is not strange that so many of our young people cease 
to have any consciousness of the reality of the spiritual when 
we so consistently act as though the concrete things were 
the only real ones. Sometimes our attitude toward litera- 
ture is so apologetic that one would think we were ashamed 
of thoughts and ideals. When you look at a library do 
you realize that it is one of the most wonderful, perhaps 
the most effective means by which the spiritual life of an 
age is clarified, its best selected and handed down through 
succeeding ages? It is a reservoir of spiritual refreshing 
reaching us by means that are most accessible, most en- 
joyable and most effective. The family that neglects books 
is neglecting the inner life of its members. It is starving 156 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
souls. In effect it is saying to its members, Of course the 
only really important things in life are those to which 
we minister by food and clothing; if there were any other 
important aspects we would not neglect them. 
When we speak of religious training in the home we 
naturally think of direct religious instruction, family wor- 
ship and training in the observances of religion. All these 
are highly important, and none of them are overempha- 
sized. Indeed, it would be difficult to mention any aspect 
of family life and duty that is overemphasized as to its 
religious significance; but it is just as necessary to remem- 
ber that the development of every form of spiritual re- 
freshing is a religious duty. We need, also, to emphasize 
the fact that religious training is a continuous process, 
going on in many ways and that it is most of all effected 
by those experiences in the home which in any way min- 
ister to and discipline the life of thought, ideals and per- 
sonal relationships. This is especially true of whatever 
helps to form ideas as to the meaning of life, as to the 
things and objects that are most worth while. Now this 
is what reading is constantly doing, if it is worthwhile 
reading. 
HOW BOOKS TEACH 
A character in a book will often be as real a person to 
the young reader as any one he knows. But these char- 
acters in books have a peculiar advantage; we can select 
them for our children and we can know just what they are 
going to say; we can usually tell what their purpose is and 
what ideals they will develop. Often they can talk to 
our children more successfully than we can. They are 
teachers whose power we envy. They are friends who give 
counsel or example in such a setting of interest that they 
are not easily forgotten. How blind we must be to the 
child’s needs if we do not see to it that such friends and 
guides are ever ready to walk and talk with him. 
Nor are we forgetting or slighting the reading of the 
scriptures. But this is most valuable when it is most nat- READING 
157 
ural, when it is part of the general habit of reading. The 
widest readers are likely to be the most intelligent, ap- 
preciative and habitual readers of the Bible. The great- 
est values come when it is read, not as a task, nor as a 
duty, but as a part of the delight of literature. 
If we only knew of the inner hunger of boys and girls 
in the period of their lives when ideals mean so much, 
when heroes are as necessary as bread, we would not be 
guilty of starving them or, when they cry for food, hand- 
ing them the chaff of the ephemeral magazine or the in- 
nane funnies. 
These words are not written with the notion that every 
child rushes home from school to bury himself in a book. 
He ought not to do so. But along with all his play, with 
all his irrepressible flood of activity there is developing this 
inner life with its appetites. That these may be normally 
and helpfully met there should be awaiting him an abun- 
dant supply of ideal food. You can lead a youth to a 
book-shelf but you cannot force him really to read! But 
if you leave him long enough with well-filled shelves you 
will find him reading in time. Some earlier and some later, 
but all at some time when two things are present, the sup- 
ply of attractive food for the mind and spirit, and some 
stirrings of inner appetite. 
What books should be at hand? Better get “Finger Posts 
to Children’s Reading” by W. F. Field and “A Mother’s 
List of Books for Children” by G. W. Arnold, and make 
your selections from these. Do not depend on the current 
supply unless you can take time to test it out with a sympa- 
thetic imagination. If you take time to go to the market to 
make sure of selecting good table food take time to go to 
the library and consult with the librarian. If they have 
a children’s librarian, so much the better; you will often 
find good lists available. 
Remember that any book is a religious book that makes 
the reader think of life in religious terms, that helps him 
to live more closely to the divine will, that helps him to 
love men more wisely and devotedly and to work better 158 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
for the will of God. The real test of a book is spiritual 
and social; does it give to the reader the society of good 
men and women and does it add to his life the fellowship 
and aid of some great person who has lived and worked 
for spiritual ends? One might add another test: will this 
visitor be a welcome guest for a long time? 
CASES 
One young lad had his taste for reading almost de- 
stroyed, so that he could scarcely be persuaded to read 
any book, by the too-common experience of a high-school 
course that substituted analyses of literature for an intro- 
duction to books and reading. His father was greatly 
troubled as he saw what the boy was missing. He says 
that it took about six years to work a cure. He began, 
after a good interval of rest, by watching the boy’s domi- 
nant interests. When he became interested in a particular 
science he hunted around to find a good novel that used 
that science practically in the plot. He casually mentioned 
the way the author used his special knowledge. The re- 
sult was that the boy took a dip in that book, but only a 
dip. Then he tried some good detective stories, again 
casually speaking of the exciting problem situation. This 
time, after several nibbles, the lad took a good bite and 
finished a book. That was the first book, outside of a 
text-book, he had finished in years. Then the father pa- 
tiently tried other interests, with varying success, until he 
found books about the sport they both loved, boating and 
sailing. A technical discussion of whether Robertson was 
right about a sailing predicament sent the boy into a stirring 
story, and that led to another, until the reading habit be- 
came fixed as interest developed and pleasure was ex- 
perienced. READING 
159 
HELPFUL READING 
A Mother’s List of Books for Children, G. IV. Arnold (Mc- 
Clurg). Gives graded list of books with helpful guidance to 
parents. 
The Children’s Reading, F. J. Olcott (Houghton, Mifflin). Com- 
prehensive and useful lists. 
Finger Posts to Children’s Reading, W. F. Field (McClurg). A 
useful list of books. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What are the causes for the decline in the reading of books? 
2. Why is this subject important? 
3. How would you develop interest in reading? 
4. How would you combat the dangers of vicious books? 
5. How would you help children to distinguish amongst books? 
6. What definite provision will help to develop habits of reading? 
7. What books have most influenced you in early life? CHAPTER XXIII 
CHILDREN’S RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 
Stating the problem: It comes in a variety of forms, 
in letters asking for lists of books which children may 
read so as to give them correct ideas on religious matters, 
in personal questions of parents who find their children 
expressing forms of doubt and statements of difficulties 
that they would never have dared to utter when these par- 
ents were young. It comes in the anxious questioning of 
harassed mothers who complain that their very little ones 
ask them many questions altogether beyond their intellec- 
tual reach. 
Of course many questions are asked by children with 
no expectation of a rational answer, as manifestations of 
a curiosity that floats, like a summer butterfly, from one 
object to another. Many of them are questions that no 
man, no matter how wise, could answer with any finality. 
Again others are questions that we can answer for ourselves 
but not so as to be comprehensible to children, or not with- 
out danger of setting up permanent misunderstandings in 
the minds of our children. So that there are some diffi- 
culties that time must settle; there are some that we must 
frankly acknowledge to be beyond settlement; there are 
some that can be only partially met with the plea for pa- 
tience and wider general knowledge. 
The religious difficulties of little children are seldom 
consciously religious difficulties; they are difficulties in un- 
derstanding some of the facts about religion, as to its his- 
tory and its meaning. They have no more significance than 
intellectual difficulties in other realms, such as the mys- 
teries of chemistry or electricity afford. But these very CHILDREN’S RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 
161 
same problems may be really religious matters to young 
people, so that there will often be a different approach, 
according to the age and experience of the seeker after 
light. 
In some respects many parents are amongst the worst 
teachers that could be found in dealing with these prob- 
lems. If we could, we would say to many, “Don’t try 
to answer these questions; send your children to wiser 
teachers.” Parents often are incapacitated because they 
have no intellectual sympathy with their children; they 
cannot look at the problems as the young must look at 
them. To us older folk there are large areas of life that 
are like old ledgers; the accounts are all settled; the books 
are closed; the reckoning cannot be opened up again. But 
the young have no closed books; their world is all in the 
making. Their problems cannot be settled by our arbi- 
trary conclusions. 
APPROACHING THE PROBLEMS 
If we really desire to help our children we must make 
up our minds to approach their problems in their way. 
Not that we will wipe out our painfully acquired experi- 
ence; but that we will try to walk with minds that are 
at the other end of the road. We will have to gain the 
patience of the true pedagog who, instead of saying, “You 
must come to where I am,” steps back to where they are 
and walks with them to the goal. 
Another difficulty we older ones must recognize is that 
there have been many changes in the world since we were 
young. Some of these changes have been developments in 
the world of knowledge. Each new generation builds on 
from where the last one left off. We need, not only the 
sympathy to go back to the beginning stage of young minds, 
but also the imagination and open-mindedness to go for- 
ward into the new world that is their heritage. 
i. The first step is to prepare ourselves to meet their 
problems. We need not hope that they will be without 162 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
them. We ought rather to pray that they will be per- 
plexed and troubled, and that we may share their burdens 
with them. Our preparation can best be made, first, by 
earnest effort to keep in sympathy with all that is in the 
minds of our children, and, second, by the effort necessary 
to keep in touch with what their modern world is think- 
ing. Both kinds of sympathy are of immense importance. 
Meeting a child’s problems is not a special experience which 
stands alone; it is a part of a constant experience in which 
parent and child share their lives. 
“I wish he would talk to me about it, but he won’t,” I 
have heard mothers lament. Of course he will not talk 
with you about this unless you have developed the habit of 
talking together about everything. And he will not give 
you his confidence unless you give him yours. This most 
desirable freedom of intercourse comes not by accident nor 
without effort. It takes time; it means that you must 
often lay aside the thing you would like to do, deferring 
it for the more important thing, listening to your boy as 
he talks of that which to you is trifling and to him so im- 
pressive. 
A poor abused wife in London said that after her hus- 
band became an abstainer he treated her “more like a 
friend than a husband.” The pitiful comment suggests 
that it might help often if parents would try to treat their 
children more like friends and less according to the pat- 
tern of the austere parent. There is something wrong 
if you are afraid to be chummy lest the boys lose respect 
for you. Confidence and comradeship are the ways to 
understanding and sympathy. If you would know your 
child’s religious problems you must keep all the doors open, 
and they must be free to come in without knocking. 
MEETING THEIR PROBLEMS 
2. Next, treat their problems seriously. Often they are 
very large to the young. Matters that now seem to us 
unimportant are catastrophic to them. Have you forgotten CHILDREN’S RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 
163 
how they appeared to you? Take for granted the child’s 
sincerity. Treat him with intellectual honesty. His vision 
is clear; it has not been blurred by compromises and he 
can see through a sophistry; if he does not now he will, to 
his despair, later. Nothing can persuade him that does not 
fully and entirely persuade you. It will be wiser to own 
up that you have some problems still unsolved than to 
attempt to give him the solutions you do not yet possess. 
Be sure you understand his problems. Take pains to 
distinguish between truth and truth’s garments; the latter 
change with each new age. Verbal forms vary; the veri- 
ties remain. Do not try to force the young to follow the 
verbal fashions of a bygone day. Try to get at the root 
difficulty. Approach it with an open mind. Talk it over 
with them, not as a closed issue, but as an open field in 
which you are seeking the truth. 
Some parents need to be warned against an overstimula- 
tion of the critical mind. They are so anxious that their 
children shall think of religion in modern terms that they 
succeed in making of it no more than a compound of nega- 
tions, a box of riddles, a bag of rattling, disarticulated 
bones. If only we all could hold to the thought of religion 
as a life, a way of living together in this home circle, how 
much more natural would be our approach to it! Our 
danger now is that all these religious problems shall be 
viewed as objects outside ourselves, that we shall discuss 
religion as a system of thought, a something to be defined 
rather than as a way of life in which truth is learned. 
Whatever we do we need to help our children to this view 
and this experience. 
3. Treat their problems practically; that is, apply to them 
the solvent of life. Let them appear in the atmosphere of 
family life where religion is constantly dominant. Life is 
full of problems that stagger us on paper and are as sim- 
ple as a song in practice. And some problems that bid 
fair to bowl us clean over are met, not by solving them, 
but by hanging on to the great mass of workable facts we 
already have. The total life of a religious family will tide 164 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
many a youth over shoals that would otherwise leave him 
stranded. 
You may feel yourself helpless before some of their 
problems, but you are never powerless if the family life 
itself is an exposition of the reality and power of the spir- 
itual. This does not mean that you will smother their 
questions in pious sentiments; it does mean that living in 
the family becomes for all an experience of the practica- 
bility of Christ’s way of life, the way of sacrificial love 
and service. It reveals the strength and joy of that way; 
it opens firm paths in which perplexed feet may tread. 
Young people may tend to magnify theoretical difficulties; 
they stand hesitating because the charts in their hands are 
obscure; but once give them clear paths, trodden highways 
of living, demonstrated in everyday experience, and they 
will step forward. Then, walking with them, some prob- 
lems are forgotten and others we can help them solve as 
we go forward, step with step, together. Sincerity, sym- 
pathy and fellowship in life and service, these are the 
ways we must go with them if we would help them. 
HELPFUL READING 
Religious Education in the Family, H. F. Cope (Univ. of Chi- 
cago Press). The book gives background of subject, Ch. VI 
deals with children’s religious ideas. 
The Training of Children in Religion, G. Hodges (Appleton). 
Good, practical discussion of the need for training. 
The Dawn of Character, E. E. Read Mumford (Longmans). 
All good, especially Ch. XII, on this subject. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What attitude of mind is essential in approaching the reli- 
gious problems of children? 
2. What is necessary to maintain confidence? 
3. What dangerous mistakes do parents often make in dealing 
with children’s religious difficulties? 
4. What is the value of discussion of difficulties? 
5. What is the special value of turning attention to duties and 
service? CHILDREN’S RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 
165 
6. What difficulties troubled you in childhood and how were they 
met? 
7. What are the causes of children’s religious difficulties? 
8. What responsibility do parents have for the religious ideas 
which children acquire outside the home? CHAPTER XXIV 
THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 
Stating the problem: If we parents desire our children 
to be religious ought we not to give them religious in- 
struction ? But how can we do this when we know so little 
and the subject is so difficult? 
Instruction about religion may occupy a minor place 
in the total program of training Christian character but it 
occupies a front-rank position in the minds of anxious 
parents. It is the problem most likely to be set first when 
these parents bring you their questions. The day-school 
cannot teach religion; the child’s reading is likely to in- 
clude nothing, or next to nothing on this subject; the 
church-school has all too short a time; apparently no one 
thinks seriously about the pathway of knowledge as one 
road which children must tread in the way to the religious 
life. It is clearly a duty resting on the child’s first and 
most intimate teachers. 
THE DIFFICULTY 
Parents realize and regret the ignorance of their chil- 
dren. Yet they feel as though some mental paralysis lay 
upon them when they would introduce the subject of re- 
ligion, and they find themselves often powerless to help 
when children themselves open the subject in the form of 
questions and problems. It is easier to talk about almost 
anything else, because almost everything else comes up 
naturally, in the course of everyday events and conversa- 
tion, at some time. Also, other subjects come easier be- 
cause we know more about them. The difficulty has been 
166 PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 
167 
expressed more than once by an anxious parent in prac- 
tically the same phrase, “It all seems so strange, so un- 
real.” 
That states the heart of the difficulty, and it also indi- 
cates the solution. What is this that is so strange and 
unreal that we feel as though we were dragging it into our 
talks with children? What are these matters that we are 
constantly deferring because we cannot find a natural open- 
ing for them? And why this unanimity of testimony to 
its unnaturalness? Is religion thus foreign to our every- 
day life? Is it a something that is kept separate, some- 
thing that calls for a new vocabulary, that requires a special 
and formal introduction? If so, then so much the worse 
for our religion. True religion cannot be foreign to life. 
Our Teacher spoke always of life and His teachings rose 
out of the immediate life about Him. No; our difficulty 
does not lie in the nature of religion; it lies in the fact 
that we have lost sight of religion and have been trying 
to find ways of teaching theology to our children. 
THE PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLE 
Jesus aniicipated the wisest of our modern pedagogs when 
He declared that if any one would do His will he should 
know of the doctrine. The way to learn is through liv- 
ing, and we who would teach must know how people learn 
before we can teach them. We may fix for our guidance a 
very simple principle, that we are the guides of lives rather 
than instructors in any set of theories or forms of knowl- 
edge. 
Does this mean, then, that I, as a parent, have no re- 
sponsibility for instruction? Not at all; it means that I 
must see to it that instruction rises out of life; it means 
that I have a greater pedagogical responsibility, so to 
guide the experience of living that children will either dis- 
cover truth for themselves or will so feel their need of 
light that they will become eager seekers after truth. Then 
there will be no need to force openings for instruction. 168 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
Perhaps this principle may be illustrated by a single ex- 
ample. Take the question of children’s ideas with regard 
to God. At first we have those questions that young chil- 
dren nearly all ask, about the appearance, the power and 
the location of God. Quite naturally these seem to af- 
ford welcome openings for instruction, and so we try to 
set before the child’s mind the ideas of omnipotence and 
immanence. Some will attempt this in one form and some 
in another. Some will go little further than the attempt 
to show Him as the always loving Father of all. 
But, whatever our method of answering those early ques- 
tions, we are likely later to be shocked to discover that, 
as the child grows up, he has no clear ideas as to God. 
What has happened? His early questions had no special 
meaning even to him; they were of the same class as all 
his other endless interrogations, a curious turning over of 
every stone in his pathway to see what was on the other 
side. All the definition part of our explanation has passed 
away and only that which could be used has remained. 
So that the Father concept has passed also unless we have 
been careful to make it usable by leading the child to think 
often of the great, tender love, to pray to that Father, and 
daily to live in His love. 
In a word, the idea of God comes not through definition 
but through use. It is not so important that the child shall 
be able to describe God as that we shall help him to dis- 
cover God. It is not so important that he thinks about 
God as how he thinks about Him; the what will shape itself 
out of the how. The child’s theology will form itself out 
of the stuff of living, as he finds God a reality in every- 
day life. 
The pathway to instruction in religion then is that of 
guidance in the practice of religion. All that these children 
will ever need to know of religion has its roots somewhere 
in what they will experience as they seek to live the life 
of the kingdom of God with one another. Whether God 
will be an arbitrary despot, a benevolent monarch or a 
loving Father will depend on whether they are trained to PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 
169 
live a life of mechanical compliance with rules, a life of 
submissive service or one of a loving family. 
This may seem to make the problem of instruction so 
simple that it is really removed. On the contrary, while 
it does make it simple, it lifts instruction to a higher level. 
It is not easy to guide in this way of life. It will not be 
enough to say, You should do this, or You shouldn’t do 
that. It calls for a sympathetic understanding of child- 
hood. It sets before us this profound question, What is 
the right and natural religious life for a child? It sets 
the question before us every hour. It calls us to consider 
all the child’s daily living, all his constant experience, in 
the light of his developing relations to his Father and the 
great family of all mankind. 
It would give a new seriousness to table-talk if we always 
realized that the way we help children to think of others 
helps to determine how they will think of God. If they 
do not learn to love their brothers how can they love Him ? 
And if they do learn to love how natural it is to think of 
Him! Then, when questions are asked, we no longer have 
idle speculations, but it is more as though they inquired, 
What would our Father do about this ? Or, how does this 
make for the family of common love and goodness? 
This is the first principle of religious instruction in the 
family: use the laboratory method, lead these young pupils 
into the experience of religion. Help them to know its 
realities through life; see that they approach its problems 
through reality. Most of the problems will answer them- 
selves ; those that remain will be so close to life that chil- 
dren and young people will present them naturally. What 
we may do with them we may consider in a later chapter. 
HELPFUL READING 
The Child and Religion, G. E. Dawson (Univ. of Chicago Press). 
A study of the nature of religious life of children. 
The Religious Education of an American Citizen, F. Peabody 
(Macmillan). Sets the home life in its place in the larger 
program. 170 
THE PARENT AND THE CPIILD 
Religious Training in Home and School, Sneath, Hodges & 
Tweedy (Macmillan). Much good material is suggested. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What hinders our teaching religion to our own children? 
2. Explain Jesus’ principle of teaching. 
3. What is the peculiar pedagogical advantage parents have? 
4. What is meant by the practical method? 
5. What are the especial difficulties of teaching by the theological 
method? 
6. How would you help children to better ideas of God? CHAPTER XXV 
DIRECT RELIGIOUS TEACHING 
Stating the problem.' “How can we deal directly with 
children’s religious development ?” 
It is evident that those educational opportunities and 
duties of the family which have been discussed in this 
series are clearly religious. Surely training in the attitudes 
and habits of the right life are parts of religious training. 
But this question, stated in many different forms, brings 
forward the problem particularly of religious instruction, 
training in religious knowledge. 
WHY AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM 
A large part of the child’s religious knowledge must be 
gained in the family. This is true, first, because the family 
is the most natural agency for instruction in matters so 
intimately personal and so influential as to character. It 
is true, also, as a result of the limitations of other edu- 
cational agencies. The public schools cannot formally 
teach religion; we are all agreed about that. We would 
not be satisfied to have our children taught religion in 
their day schools. The church school, or Sunday school, 
at present does not have sufficient time properly to teach 
religion. 
It is true that the church school might teach much more; 
but even at the best, one hour a week is too short a time 
to teach so large a subject. For the teaching of religion 
is something much more inclusive than teaching the Bible. 
It has to do not only with theories or doctrines about God 
and man and the future; it has to do with every spiritual 
aspect of life; it touches conduct at every point; it touches 172 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
all social relations; it includes the whole art of living as 
religious persons. 
This task falls to the family because here the child spends 
its earliest years and these are the very best years for 
certain most important and influential forms of religious 
instruction. You cannot teach a three-year-old a system 
of theology; but you can make the thought of God the 
loving Father perfectly natural to him; you can establish 
habits of thinking about this world as the home of eternal 
love and righteousness. 
If the religious education of children does not begin in 
the very earliest years opportunities are lost that are never 
made up. These are the years when children receive not 
so much definite concepts as mental colorings and tenden- 
cies. These come from the atmosphere and customs of 
the family, from the mental habits of parents and from the 
regular expressions of religion in family life. 
The family is the child’s first and most influential teacher 
of religion because religion can only be taught through per- 
sonality. Knowledge about religion may come in other 
ways, but the knowledge of religion comes only through 
religious lives. Just as the home exists for the sake of 
personality so personality is its greatest power. Simply 
living with people is learning their way of life. One cannot 
too strongly emphasize the fact that the greatest teaching 
potency of the family works through the power of lives, 
simply lived day after day, in the religious spirit, in loyalty 
to divine ideals. 
ADVANTAGES OF THE HOME 
But where lives are truly religious religion becomes quite 
normal to thought and conversation. Religious instruc- 
tion becomes effective not so much in formal periods as 
unconsciously in normal intercourse. The everyday con- 
versation usually can be led and lifted to religious levels. 
It is possible to discuss almost any subject in such a way 
that it becomes really religious. This helps to make re- DIRECT RELIGIOUS TEACHING 
173 
ligion normal in all the child’s life; it makes it not a thing 
set apart, but a heavenly color and divine quality which 
must pervade all living. 
No form of religious teaching can be more effective than 
to make all our leadership, that is our teaching of lives, 
really religious, to treat whatever may be the subject of 
conversation in a religious spirit. Of course this does not 
mean dealing with it in a mournful, “holy tone”; there 
will be no less joy in it, there will be much deeper meaning. 
Wherever the spirit of religion pervades all conversation 
and conduct it will come explicitly to the surface in at 
least two forms, in questions that are specifically about re- 
ligious things, and in actions which are designed to express 
the religious spirit in a special manner. 
Conversation about religion is not necessarily religious; 
it is for us to determine whether it shall be. Shredding 
the sermon you have just heard is not a spiritual exercise 
at the Sunday dinner table. But out of the sermon may 
rise many questions which can be discussed so as to make 
the meaning of religion clear and helpful. So will ques- 
tions rise out of everyday experience, out of the current 
reading, out of children’s thoughts about life. How shall 
we meet such questions? Only in a religious spirit, that 
is the spirit of absolute reverence for truth, of reverence 
for these growing young lives and of desire to help them to 
full living in God’s society here. 
PREPARATION 
It is doubtful if we can make any specific preparation 
for the questions that children will ask on religious sub- 
jects. But we can do this: determine that we will know 
all that we can, so that, at least, they may realize that we 
do not treat the matter as a negligible one. Even the wisest 
and best-informed parent will be faced with questions to 
which he must respond with a confession of ignorance; 
but no wise parent can hope to see his children grow as 
religious persons when he is content to know nothing in a THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
174 
definite way about religion. We who are so free to criti- 
cize the child’s teachers often have a very narrow footing 
of knowledge on which to stand. That is not treating the 
child fairly. We owe them the very best our minds can 
gather for them. Our duty is not discharged when our 
hands have wrought; we have the duties of mental and 
spiritual parenthood. 
This duty of treating with respect the child’s search for 
knowledge about religion should suggest an examination 
of our book-shelves and library tables. How many par- 
ents seek out the sources of information in order to deal 
fairly with the child’s inquiries in this field? How many 
make anything like the provision for the child’s reading in 
these matters that we make in all others? 
Foundations of religious living are laid in the family in 
the explicit forms of religious acts. If there is real re- 
ligious living in this group then at some time and in some 
way they will seek to give expression to it as a group. 
One of the ways will be through the devotion of certain 
periods of prayer and thanksgiving, to worship and song. 
We will set aside some hours as different from others, as 
times in which we give expression to those ideals which 
have been our strength right along, as times when we make 
explicit what has been inexplicit in all the religious life of 
the family. 
Family worship is really a very simple matter, no more 
than affording a time, it may be very brief, when we can 
sing together, pray together, talk together and together 
recall the high sources of life’s inspiration. A simple 
Psalm said together with a short prayer; a song on another 
day with a chance to talk quietly over some high thought. 
The explicit expression of religion also goes out from 
the family into larger social groups. The family life flows 
over into the church. The religious loyalties that develop 
in the smaller group are carried over naturally into the 
larger one wherever the leaders are conscious of the social 
needs of growing lives. The church becomes the larger, 
community family of the religious life. DIRECT RELIGIOUS TEACHING 
175 
HELPFUL READING 
Child Nature and Child Nurture, E. P. St. John (Pilgrim Press). 
Religious Education in the Family, H. F. Cope (Univ. of Chi- 
cago Press). 
Beckonings from Little Hands, P. DuBois (Dodd, Mead & Co.). 
A beautifully written little book of insight and sympathy with 
the spiritual nature of little children. 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. What especial responsibility rests upon parents for religious 
instruction? 
2. What advantages has the family in this work? 
3. What preparations should parents make? 
4. How do you distinguish between the immediate problems of 
religious instruction and the general work of religious nurture 
in the home? 
5. What are the most favorable conditions for religious instruc- 
tion? 
6. What are the most important elements of children’s religious 
knowledge ? 
7. Give a review of your own experience as to religious teaching 
of parents? CHAPTER XXVI 
CAN WE HAVE FAMILY WORSHIP ? 
What is family worship? We feel that something very 
valuable and vital has gone out of our family life in the 
passing of the custom of family worship. What is it we 
seek to restore? Is it the regular observance of Scrip- 
ture reading and prayer, or is it the essential value in wor- 
ship? It might help us to restore worship if we could see 
just what is desired. Is it not this? Such social acts and 
customs as will do these things: definitely strengthen our 
sense of relationship with God, develop the reality of his 
constant presence in the home, help us to see the home as 
a spiritual institution, and help all members of the family 
to desire and purpose family living in religious terms. 
Worship is an attitude to be brought about by social situa- 
tions which express our fellowship with God; it is the 
precipitation, in definite acts, of our joy in living as God’s 
children, our desire for the life of the Spirit and our pur- 
pose to do his will. 
The entire atmosphere of the home may be religious—■ 
and this is the fundamental thing; but where there is such 
a saturation there will be precipitation; atmosphere will 
form action, a constant experience will have special occa- 
sions. It is not enough to say religion is the whole life 
of this home. We need identification of the life in com- 
prehensible terms. Children, especially, need aids to recog- 
nize this spiritual life. Where we really seek to worship 
these are our problems: how shall this constant spirit and 
purpose most fittingly find expression? What will best 
strengthen it? How may we find time for such seasons? 
How may they fit naturally into the family life? 
176 CAN WE HAVE FAMILY WORSHIP? 
177 
DIFFICULTIES 
Family worship has declined, not because people are less 
religious, but because life is more complex. The pro- 
grams of all the members of a family are likely to be dread- 
fully crowded. Breakfast is eaten hurriedly; school and 
shop and office snatch nearly every one out of the home; 
after the evening meal there seems to be scarce time to 
take up home studies and social engagements. If it should 
be urged that we might take a little more time, the answer 
is that these time schedules are set for us by others; they 
are imposed upon us by society or by the hard facts of 
our present life. Certainly there are few families in the 
cities where it would be possible to gather all the group 
for the leisurely reading and formal prayer that used to 
constitute family worship. 
Other problems are even more serious. Perhaps we 
have made several efforts to have family worship, and the 
attempts have been abandoned because of a sense of for- 
mality and unreality that could not be overcome. The 
father felt as though he stepped out of natural relations 
and assumed a priestly role. Perhaps the attempt was 
abandoned because we felt unequal to the task; we simply 
did not know how to proceed. It is easy to read a short 
selection from the Bible; but who will make the selection 
and how shall we avoid monotonous repetition? It may 
seem to be easy to pray with a family; but if you have 
children and are conscious of their natural thoughts you 
will find the attempt to make prayer real and natural to 
them about as severe a mental task as you could wish. 
Another difficulty lies in the fact that formal acts of wor- 
ship seem to be even more foreign to our children than to 
ourselves; the type of family worship that has passed does 
not seem to belong to the life of the family to-day. 178 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS 
This is a serious situation, not so much because old 
forms have passed away as because we have found nothing 
to take their place. We need now to find our way to fam- 
ily customs which will freely express a genuine conscious- 
ness of God and of fellowship with him and with one an- 
other on the highest levels of our experience, and in forms 
and methods that are real and natural to family life. 
Some conditions are fundamental. Family worship must 
be essentially democratic, not forced or under compulsion. 
It must be family worship, by all as a common act, by the 
will of all. It must rise up out of the family life, because 
the members want it. But in scope it must reach forward, 
beyond the immediate wills of the members. So there are 
here two elements usually missing: the common desire or 
democratic will, and the real leadership. How may these 
be developed? 
Children must learn to pray; praying children and pray- 
ing parents cannot help having common prayer. Here the 
individual experience often precedes the social purpose. 
Children must be encouraged and guided in private prayer. 
When children pray with their parents they will pray with 
one another. Then the social prayer will come out of their 
desires. Then social prayer and private prayer develop 
side by side. It must be remembered that private prayer 
is a social act. 
In the same manner the use of the Bible will grow out of 
genuine desire. Our children do not know the Bible be- 
cause we make it a book of lessons chiefly. These lessons 
seldom touch the parts they would really love. Its use in 
the church service makes it, to them, a far-away, different, 
unknowable book. It is possible, by reading aloud some 
of the thrilling, sweeping poetic passages, to make it a new 
book to them. Or try reading aloud the story of Ruth, 
as a whole, perhaps omitting some details non-essential 
to them. 
In the degree that worship rises out of their wills they CAN WE HAVE FAMILY WORSHIP? 
179 
will participate; in the degree that they share freely in 
worship it will lose its formality and its sense of unreality. 
It is impossible to avoid reality and vitality in that which 
children voluntarily do. 
Here also lies the method by which we shall move out 
into new forms of family worship. Given such an occa- 
sion, children will talk freely; they will contribute of their 
knowledge of passages they enjoy; they will move on into 
song or into instrumental music th‘at expresses their feelings. 
SUGGESTIONS OF METHOD 
Meet the time problem by careful choice of the occasion 
when all are together, when some item of the day’s schedule 
can be crowded up a little and when the least change will be 
necessary. Many are finding the dinner hour, if at night, 
the best time; then, either remaining at the table, or quietly 
moving into another room, at least a few minutes may be 
taken. 
Better to be more brief than any may desire than to be 
longer than they wish. It is surprising how much joy can 
be had in five minutes. Have a purpose. Why should not 
one and another be responsible for determining plans in 
advance ? 
Do not begin with rigid, invariable rules; better the 
occasional worship that is so enjoyed that the nearer it can 
come to regularity the better all will like it. 
Avoid a monotonous program. Let variety arise out of 
changing desires. Occasionally let one or another deter- 
mine the nature of what is done. 
Cultivate cooperative attainment. For example, begin 
a Psalm that is fairly familiar and try to repeat it, each one 
aiding others as they hesitate or forget. Families have 
learned many Psalms and other passages that way without 
ever thinking of learning. 
Do not be afraid of but rather covet immediate reality. 
Let children pray for and talk about the real things of 
everyday life. There is something beautiful about the 180 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
prayer of the very little boy: “Dod bless all people on 
twolley cars, espec’y on route seventy-five;” that was the 
route his dear grandmother lived on. 
Remember that worship may have many forms; it is not 
doing something for God; it is doing something toward 
him. One can remember quiet conversations that throbbed 
with aspiration. Talking with one another may be talking 
with him. Guard and cultivate as highly precious the ten- 
dency to linger and talk over the day. Nothing that busi- 
ness or society can offer can be worth as much as this when 
the family, perhaps by the fireside or only the light from 
without, communes with uncovered hearts. 
MATERIALS 
There are many books of selections available. But a 
printed book of worship is very likely to create an undesir- 
able feeling of formality. This may be avoided by having 
the members of the family make their own books of wor- 
ship. Make selections from the following materials and 
add others. As each new selection becomes a part of the 
program, it may be copied or clipped out and made a part 
of each one’s own book of worship by pasting it in a loose- 
leaf note book. 
1. Biblical Passages: Method. Learn these passages by 
using them. Do not ask children to memorize them; let 
parents memorize the passages and invite the younger mem- 
bers of the family to join in repeating them; they learn 
quickly by this method. Much pleasure will be found in 
chanting some of the Psalms. 
PASSAGES 
a. The Psalms: 
Psalm ioo—“Make a joyful noise.” 
Psalm 72:18, 19—“Blessed be the Lord God.” 
Psalm 23—“The Lord is my shepherd.” 
Psalm 121—“I will lift up mine eyes.” 
Psalm 24:1-7—“The earth is the Lord’s.” CAN WE HAVE FAMILY WORSHIP? 
181 
Psalm 24:7-10—“Lift up your heads.” 
Psalm 1—“Blessed is the man.” 
Psalm 37:1-6—“Fret not thyself.” 
Psalm 67—“God be merciful unto us.” 
Psalm 103:1-4—“Bless the Lord, O my soul.” 
Psalm 119:9-11—“Wherewithal shall a young man.” 
Psalm 95 :i-6—“O come, let us sing.” 
Psalm 90:14-17—“O satisfy us early.” 
Psalm 84:8-12—“O Lord of hosts.” 
b. Other Old Testament passages: 
Isaiah 26:1-4—“In that day shall this song.” 
Isaiah 35:1-4—“The wilderness . . . shall rejoice.” 
Isaiah 35:5-7. 
Isaiah 35 :8-io. 
Isaiah 55 :6, 7—“Seek ye the Lord.” 
Isaiah 40:3-5—“The voice of him.” 
1 Kings 8:57, 58—“The Lord our God be with us.” 
Numbers 6:24-27—“The Lord bless thee.” 
c. New Testament passages: 
Matthew 5 —Beatitudes. 
Matthew 5 :8-i2—Beatitudes. 
Matthew 22:37~39—“Thou shalt love the Lord.” 
Matthew 11:28-30—“Come unto me.” 
Matthew 6:26-2g—“Behold the birds.” 
1 Corinthians 13:1-3—The Love Epic. 
1 Corinthians 13 4-7—The Love Epic. 
1 Corinthians 13:8-10, 13—The Love Epic. 
1 John 4:19-21—“We love him because.” 
John 15:12-14—“This is my commandment.” 
If parents will indicate the passages relating to things in 
which they are interested they will learn them almost 
unconsciously. 
ii. Scripture Reading: Method. At times brief se- 
lections from the Bible may be read. It is important that 
they shall be chosen for worshipful character, interest, and 182 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
brevity. The arrangement of selections furnished by the 
International Bible Readers’ Association and Home Daily 
Bible Readings, prepared by the International Lesson Com- 
mittee, Bible Reading and Religious Training in the Home 
(Veach, Presbyterian Board), A Book of Family Worship 
(Presbyterian Board), will be found useful. They should 
not be followed mechanically. 
hi. Hymns: Method. Some hymns are suitable for 
simple recitation, on account of the purity of their poetic 
style, but children will always enjoy singing together in the 
family group. The greatest care must be taken to preserve 
the informality of this part of worship. Time will often 
forbid its inclusion, and it may be held as a special pleasure 
for occasions. 
SELECTIONS 
“Thou that once at mother’s knee.” 
“I think when I read that sweet story of old.” 
“The King of love.” 
“Can a little child like me.” 
“Abide with me.” 
“Lord, for to-morrow and its needs.” 
“New every morning is the love” (morning). 
“Sun of my soul” (evening). 
“God is love, his mercy brightens.” 
“Away in a manger.” 
“Day is dying in the west.” 
“The Lord is my shepherd, I’ll not want.” 
“O Master, let me walk with thee.” 
“O Zion haste, thy mission glad fulfilling.” 
“Fling out the banner.” 
“Jerusalem the Golden.” 
“For the beauty of the earth.” 
“Jesus loves me.” 
“O love that wilt not let me go.” 
“Jesus, Tender Shepherd, hear me.” 
“America the Beautiful.” 
“God save our splendid men.” CAN WE HAVE FAMILY WORSHIP? 
183 
The important thing under this head in any family is to 
encourage the singing of helpful hymns. It will help to 
have at hand several good books of selections. We sug- 
gest: Worship and Song (Pilgrim Press), In Excelsis 
(Century Co.), Methodist Sunday School Hymnal (Metho- 
dist Book Concern), Hymnal for American Youth (Cen- 
tury), The Methodist School Hymnal (Wesleyan Methodist 
London), The Book of Worship for the Church School 
(Scribners), and Hymns You Ought to Know (one 
hundred great hymns with account of each) (Revell). 
The Presbyterian Board of Sabbath Schools in Canada 
publishes a leaflet of hymns for memorization. 
iv. Prayer: Informal prayers are usually best. They 
should be always brief, so simple that all can really join in 
them. Do not try to include all subjects every day. Beware 
of forming habits of forms of words. For those who desire 
prayers to read there are the many splendid “collects” in 
the Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church, and there are 
other books containing helpful prayers. 
Whatever prayers are used, it will be well often to close 
with the Lord’s Prayer, for in this all can join aloud. 
v. Grace at Table: The following are titles of books 
containing suitable forms for the “blessing” at the tables: 
Grace Before Meat, Wells, United Society Christian 
Endeavor. 
Table Graces, M. R. Munson, Bible House, New York. 
At Mother's Knee, Davis, Pilgrim Press. 
HELPFUL READING 
Religious Education in the Family, H. F. Cope (Univ. of Chi- 
cago Press). Especially Chs. XI, XII for explicit details. 
At Mother’s Knee, O. S. Davis (Abingdon Press). 
The Household Altar, W. C. Gannett (Author, Rochester, N. Y.). 
A Book of Family Worship (Presbyterian Board of Publication). 
Behold, a Sower, L. C. Hastings (Beacon Press). 
Four Weeks of Family Prayers, IV. E. Barton (Puritan Press, 
Oak Park, 111.). 
BOOKS OF WORSHIP 184 
THE PARENT AND THE CHILD 
STUDY QUESTIONS 
1. How many families, within your personal knowledge, have 
regular family worship? 
2. Describe the methods followed, as to hour, character of wor- 
ship? 
3. Does the custom of Grace at table help the spirit of worship; 
and what effects is it likely to have? 
4. If possible give the unrestrained opinions of children as to 
family worship. 
5. What benefits should rise from family worship? 
6. What dangers may be found in the practice? 
7. What are the most serious hindrances? 
8. Why do older children sometimes seem to object while younger 
ones do not? 
9. Is it best to have a fixed time, or a fixed program? Give 
reasons for answers. 
10. In your memory of family worship what stands out as most 
valuable? Why? 
THE END