Children's Ways

ome, including a number of theologians, they have been viewed as steeped in depravity; by ot

ions, and must expect neither the vices nor the virtues of manhood. We must further take some pains to get, so far as this is po

of th

aracteristic feelings and impulses are centred in self and the satisfaction of its wants. What is better marked, for example, than the boundle

val of the feeding bottle before full satisfaction has been attained is, as we know, the occasion for one of the most impressive utterances of the baby's "will to live," and

child is very frequently not only to make free with other children's property when he has the chance, but to show the strongest objection to a

sies, from those having to do with things of the appetite to those which troubl

e as the boy Ishmaelite gives clearest and most emphatic utterance to his will by hitting out with his arms, stamping and kicking, throwing things down on the floor and breaking them, and accompanying this war-dance with savage howlings and yellings. The outburst tends to concentrate itself in a real attack on somebody. Sometimes this is the offender, as when Darwin's boy at the age of two years and three months

, his sister was accustomed to dance about and stamp. They vary greatly too in their frequency and their force. Some children show in their anger lit

he good hymn of our nursery days, which bids us leave biting to the dogs, we see most plainly how firmly planted an animal root lies at the bottom

s the more vigorous stage of the fit, when the little Ishmaelite, growing aware of the impotence of his anger, is wont to throw himself on the floor and to hide his head in solitary wretchedness. This consciousness of

t is not as yet morally good; for the sense of injury is capable of developing, and may actually tur

s, seems to be discoverable also in the unfeelingness of children. A common charge against them from those who a

momentary curiosity about some trivial circumstance of her affliction which is worse than the absorption in play through its tantalising want of any genuine feeling. If, for example, she is ill, the event is interesting to him merely as supplying him with new treats

presence of death. While a whole house is stricken with grief at the loss of a beloved inmate the child is wont to preserve his serenity, being often taken with a shocking curiosity to peep int

ing our grown-up standards. It is one thing to be indifferent with full knowledge of suffering, another to be indifferent in the sense in which a cat might be said to be so at

e little girl who wanted to touch, and to know the meaning of "cold as death," on going to see a dead school

rary, that children are frequently affected in a vague way by the surrounding gloom. In some cases, too, as published reminiscences of chil

with active unkindness, amounting to cruelty. La Fontain

by. Children, I have reason to think, are, in such circumstances, capable of coming shockingly near to a feeling of hatred. One little girl was taken with so violent an antipathy to a baby w

s the exhibition of the signs of cruelty in the child's dealings with animal

of animals. A little girl when only a year old would lift two kittens by the neck and try to sta

be painful. It seems rather to be the outcome of the mere energy of

oubt evidently remained, and he continued uneasy about it." Here the arrest of life clearly brought a kind of shock, and we may safely say was not thought out beforehand. Children may pounce upon and maul small moving things for a number of reasons. The wish to gratify their sense of power-which is probably keener in children who so rarely gratify it than in grown-ups-will often explai

inflict pain, or even to an indifference to pain of which they are clearly aware. Wanton activity, the curiosity of the experimenter, and d

en are no doubt apt to be greedy, and otherwise unsociable, to be ferocious in their anger, and to be sadly wanting in consideration for others; yet it is some consolat

ise of H

at after all he wants to join himself to those whom at other times he treats as foes. If he has his outbursts of temper he has also his fits

lf in a rude form in the first weeks of life, when he begins to get used to and

ld. The intenser realisation of this oneness comes after separation. A girl of thirteen months was separated from her mother during six weeks. On the return of the latter she was speechless, and for so

early forms. A child has been observed under the age of seven months to look unhappy, drawing dow

head ached pretended to have a bad head, we appear to see the working of an impulse to get near and share in others' experiences. The same feeling shows itself i

. One mite of fourteen months was quite concerned at the misery of an elder sister, crawling towards her and making comical endeavours by grunts and imitative movements of the fingers to allay her crying. I have a number of stories showing that for a p

concern. The temporary loss of her presence, due to illness or other cause, is often the occasion for the appearance of a deeper tenderness. A little boy of three spontaneously brought his story-book to his mother when she lay in bed ill; and the same child used to follow her about after her recove

sometimes its awakener. "Are you old, mother?" asked a boy of five. "Why?" she answered. "Because," he continued, "the older you are the nearer y

say to herself: "I wish that Anne would remember to fill the nursery boiler". "He listened, and presently trotted off; found the said Anne doing a distant grate, pulled her by the apron, saying: 'Nanna, Nanna!' (come to nur

ir alternate play. Early in the second year, too, children are wont to show themselves kindly by giving kisses and other pretty courtesies. In truth from about this date they are often quite charming in their expressions of good will, so that the good Bishop Earle hardly exaggerates when he writes of the child:

is ample evidence of kindness to animals. The charge of cruelty in the case of little children is, in

A little boy of fifteen months quickly overcame his fright at the barking of his grandfather's dog, and b

over his fear of the dog's barking would, when nineteen months old, begin to cry on seeing a horse fall in the street. Stronger manifes

deeply pitiful consideration for animals is rooted in their hearts. This is one of the most

mething of that instinctive impulse of helpless things to band together which we see in sheep and other gregarious animals. A mother once remarked to her boy, betwe

for occasional outbreaks of temper and acts of violence, a child's intercourse with his doll or his toy "gee gee" i

loving and the unloving children. Yet allowing for these facts, I think it may be said that in these first fr

se into

ished little liars, to the manner born, and equally adept with the mendacious savage. Even writers on childhood w

d by truth and falsity as to be liars in this full sense. Much of what seems shocking to the adult unable to pla

ild wishing to keep a thing hides it, and on your asking for it holds out empty hands, it would be hard to name this action a lie, even though there may be in it a germ of deception. These little ruses or "acted lies" seem at the wors

apply grown-up standards unfairly. Anybody who has observed children's play and knows how real to them their fancies become for the moment will be chary of applying to their sayings the word "lie". Th

nch boy was overheard saying to himself: "Papa parle mal, il a dit sevette, bébé parle bien, il dit serviette". Such reversals may be a kind of play too: the child

g, answered, "Dolly". "False, and knowingly false," somebody will say, especially when he learns that the depraved youngster instantly proc

ton, "the mere pleasure of beholding interested faces". The well-known "cock and bull" stories of small children are inspired by this love of strong effect. It is the dramatic impulse of childhood endeavouring to bring life into the dulness of

r contradiction and paradox, seem to me to account for most of this early fibbing and other similar varieties of early misstate

m Signorina Lombroso tells us, who is out for a walk, and wanting to be carried says, "My leg hurts me and my foot too just here, I can't walk, I can't, I can't," it is poss

in the whole world!" may be hardly conscious of any exaggeration. There is more of artfulness in the flatteries which appear to involve a calculating intention to say the nice agreeable thing. Some children, especially little girls, are, I believe, adepts a

"Yes" makes it very hard to say "No". Mrs. Burnett gives us a reminiscence of this early experience. When she was less than three, she writes, a lady visitor, a friend of her mother, having found out that the baby newly added to the family was called Edith, remarked to her: "That

ept and act out the idea, so we all exercise a kind of suggestive sway over children's minds. Our leading questions, as when we say, "Isn't this pretty?" may for a moment set up a half belief that the thing must be so. Thus in a double fashion do our words c

He went, it seems, and threw his doll down stairs in one of those capricious outbursts towards favourites which children share with certain sovereigns, then went to his mother and making great pretence of grief said, "Poor dolly tumbled". If this had stood alone I should have been ready to look on it as a little childish comedy; but the same child a month or two afterwards would invent a fib when he wanted his mo

isputable truth. We can see how this begins to work in the first years. For example, a mite of three having in a moment of temper called her mother "monkey,

edingly likely to be "No," even though this may at the moment be half felt to be untrue. From such partial untruths the way is easy to complete ones, as when a naughty little boy who is shut up in his room a

ion, a tendency to falsehood. Some may see in this, as in childish fears and cruelties, rudiments of characteristics which belonged to remote

"bad form" of telling a lie to the head-master is a later illustration of the same thing. On the other hand it seems to be thought that there are people who are specially f

t to be developed myths and legends which are solemnly believed by the simple-minded, and may be handed down to successors. In all such cases of propagated untruths the impulse of im

y to

sity of which they are more or less aware. This is evidenced in the well-known devices by which the young casuist thinks to mitigate the lie; as when on saying what he knows to be false he adds mentally, "I do not mean it,"

whom I know remembers that when a child of four she had to wear a shade over her eyes. One day on walking out with her mother she was looking, child-wise, sidewards instead of in front, and nearly struck a lamp-post. Her mother t

little offender as he or she lies in bed and recalls the untruths of the d

hing attaches to the lying tongue. It seems likely that childish devices for allaying their qualms when saying what is untrue are intended somehow to make things right with God

rs to a dread of supernatural penalties, I should not set down the whole. I am dispos

n, does not seem to be universal among children. Several mothers assure me that their children have never serious

ement. I remember after more than twelve years one little boy's outbreaks of righteous indignation at meeting with untrue statements about his beloved horses and other things in one of his books, for which he had all a child's reverence. The idea of knowingly perpetrating an untruth, so far as I can judge, is simply awful to a child who has been thor

t has shown us that there are other and counteracting impulses, germs of human sympathy and of respect for the binding custom of truthfulness. So far from saying that child-nature is utterly bad or beautifully perfect, we should say that it is a disorderly jumble of impu