Carl Avery Werner

“ Could any mother, for the mere gratification of an egoistic desire, be so unfeeling as to send her helpless boy out into the scene of humiliation and actual physical torture of which the boy with the long curls becomes the pitiable centre as soon as he turns the corner? ”

“ I do not believe it is necessary for a boy, at any age, to fear the dark. Mine never did. Fear of the dark is born of suggestion, and he has been successfully guarded from any word that would couple darkness with danger. Throughout his entire childhood he never sensed the usual terrors of the unlighted room and the darkened passage. I would never confirm even the Santa Claus myth, though I did not dissuade him from it, [43] because I well remember the added joy it brought to me when I was a boy. ”

“ Obedience is the foundation stone of the entire structure of discipline. There is a good deal in discipline besides obedience, but without obedience there is no discipline. It is not the alpha and omega, but is a good deal more than the alpha. Discipline is harmony. Harmony cannot be maintained without perfect obedience, because obedience is a joint affair, a partnership arrangement between you and the boy. All other essentials of discipline are ex parte. In all other essentials you are subjective and the boy is objective. ”

“ If alcoholism were only a habit, like the use of tobacco, there might be a thread of practicability in your line of reasoning. But alcoholism is more than a habit—it is a disease. There are alcoholic wards in the hospitals, there are sanitariums devoted exclusively to persons afflicted with it, there are physicians who specialise in the treatment of it. Some people are immune to it; others are not. I am, it so happens, and perhaps you are—but is your boy?
Science has lately ascertained that none are born consumptives. ”

“ By the perfected toy I mean the toy that is not a plaything, but an ingenious contrivance so perfected mechanically that it leaves nothing for the child to do. I protest against the toy that leaves absolutely nothing to either the fancy or the ingenuity of the boy. The imaginative faculty of a child is constantly reaching out for something upon which it may feed and develop. ”

“ The oneness of affection and the sameness of sex easily compass the disparity in years. He grows older but I do not, for I am waiting for him. In fact I am going back to him—I am meeting him halfway. Our play is as boy with boy. Our talks are as man to man.
In a relationship like this there are no “sex secrets.” There is no ice to break, because the transmission of knowledge is consistent, gradual and unconscious. But when the father fails in his duty and the mother has to step into the breach, it is different, I concede. There is a certain reserve which is womanly, and perhaps not unmotherly. ”

“ She must remember that from now on, every year, every month, every day, widens the gap of sex divergence. She will do well to look at the bearded men who pass her door and consider that every attribute of masculinity exists, embryonically, in her round-faced baby boy.
From now on, if she hopes to appeal to the best that is in him, she must not only study the boy, but she must study the world from the boy’s viewpoint. The nearer the mother can get to the boy’s inner emotions, the more effectively can she direct the trend of his mental, moral and physical development. ”

“ If you want to make sure that your boy is going to use his college education to the best advantage, let him pay his way. The failures that our institutions of learning turn out are not the men who work their way through; they are the sons of the affluent, the little brothers of the rich. The boy who drives the hay-rake or works behind the counter of his father’s store in vacation time is rarely found among the derelicts. Let the boy share the cost with you, and you need have no fear that either the time or money spent for education will go for naught. ”

“ Disobedience calls for a punishment that is short, direct and impressive. A sharp tap on the palm of a boy’s hand, or on the calf of his leg—or two or five or ten—is the only kind of penance I know of that fills the requirements. It is the one short and sure road to an immediate result. Naturalists tell us that the sense of touch is the first experienced by a newborn child. It is the first and quickest wire from the outer world to the brain. ”

“ We fail to grasp the all-important truth that the unfailing application of corporal punishment is the very thing that can render punishment of any [31] kind unnecessary. Many a boy is punished a hundred times where but a few would have sufficed had the penalty been exacted consistently and unfailingly. The right kind of discipline neither spoils the child nor spoils the rod. It spares both. It is like good dentistry. Every moment of hurt saves years of suffering in later life. And good painless discipline is as rare as good painless dentistry. ”

“ Do not say that cigarette smoking leads to the penitentiary or the madhouse, because it doesn’t, and the boy knows better. The [98] principal of my boy’s school walks by every day with a cigar in his mouth. He is near seventy and a good citizen. Do not say tobacco creates an appetite for strong drink, because it is not true, and the boy will not believe it. Do not say that smoking wrecks the nervous system, because in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it does nothing of the sort, and the boy, who is constantly observing the man, will not be convinced. ”

“ The boy is not always a good self-analyst. He is too prone to measure his talents perfunctorily. It does not follow that your son’s calling is art because he can chalk a caricature on the wall; that he should be a poet because he can dash off a sentiment in rhyme; that he is suited to the clergy because he is of a pious turn of mind. It does not always follow that the thing he does the most easily he can do the best. This is the mistake that parents [111] must guard against when the time comes for choosing a profession for the boy. ”

“ You cannot beat a boy into hating a lie, but you can shame him into it.
It is natural for a very young boy to seek to evade responsibility for an offence by disclaiming it. The first time he does this he must be made to know that, however serious the offence may be, it is as nothing compared to the lie that he seeks to cover. I did not go so far as to promise my boy immunity for infractions that he frankly confessed ”

“ The successful man, in the true sense of the word, is the law-abiding citizen who gives unto the world enough of his brain and brawn to pay the way of himself and his family through it.
I believe there is the making of such a man in every healthy boy that is born into the civilised world. I believe that every healthy boy is brought into the world a good boy. If one of these develops into a bad boy it is because he is made to; not affirmatively, but negatively—through the want of proper training. All the boy needs is to be treated as a boy. ”

“ No mother can hope for the best results if she seeks to train her boy as she would arrange her hair—to please her vanity—or as she would plan a shopping tour—to suit her convenience. Self must be submerged and the child’s future kept uppermost. For discipline is a mother’s duty [32] to her boy. If she falters in it the boy will suffer. And every penalty that the unwatched boy escapes through a parent’s frailty, he will have to pay, many fold, in the future years. ”

“ But the fact is, that the children of the moderately poor often get more real joy to a square inch of a Christmas morning than many a little brother of the rich. There can be no great pleasure in receiving when there has been no genuine longing. Only the child who has known want can fully relish realisation.
A few modest gifts, judiciously selected, are more permanently satisfying than a lavish display, indiscriminately gathered. I always try to supply my boy with one thing that he most desires, or with a fair [56] compromise between it and what I can afford to buy. ”

“ Stick right on in the old way as long as you can get the boy to stick with you; for, once you have severed the ties of the Christmas of his childhood, you will have cut the tinsel thread that links your son to the only fairyland he will ever know. ”

“ How can we take the child-boy and so mould him that he will respond to a command instantly and unfailingly? Within him there is a natural, healthy instinct opposed to it. Within him is the natural human tendency to think and act independently, to learn by experiment, to venture unassisted and unrestrained into the unknown. ”

“ He should regard it as his peculiar right, his sacred privilege, to point out the devious paths through which he himself may have threaded his way from youth to man’s estate. There are no barriers between me and my boy. ”

“ I believe that the father and mother yet have that one last touch to give to the character they have helped to form. I believe it is their duty to see, not that the boy has a good situation, but that he starts under a good man.
Naturally, the employer, in most cases, is a man who has met with some success in his business or his profession. He sits apart from his subordinates. However [107] much they may use their ingenuity, it is he who shapes the policy of the business and dominates the concern. Every one about him defers to him. Everything that is done is subject to his approval. ”

“ I have known my boy to take a severe beating from another boy in a struggle for the possession of an apple—and all without shedding a tear. The spat on the hand that I inflicted was a mere flea-bite to that beating, but because of it I could leave an apple within reach of his hand indefinitely and, though he might want it ever so much, he would not touch it if I had forbidden him.
So much for the psychology of corporal punishment. ”

“ Strong drink is no relative of tobacco. The only similitude between the subjects is that they are both unnecessaries, if I may coin the word, to the boy’s career. I have little to say about strong drink, because, while it is a matter of vital importance to the boy, it is a problem which our mothers appear to have pretty well in [99] hand. The great majority, I believe, proceed on the theory that alcohol is not good for anybody, is ruinous to many, and, therefore, should be kept out of the home and away from the boy. ”

“ It is a fine thing to know that you have brought your boy through that plastic period between his cradle-hood and his majority, and to know when he comes of age that he is clean and straight and true. It must be gratifying indeed, when the last text-book is closed and laid away, to see [106] him start into the world, a man grown, with keen aspirations and high ideals, ready and eager to grapple with the world on his own account, and capable of taking care of himself with his own hands. ”

“ If they could be brought to realize the handicap under which they are striving they could fortify themselves against it. They could deepen the interest of the father or, failing that, they could at the least draw upon his experience and knowledge of real boyhood with good effect. But there are no sex distinctions to the average mother. The boys and the girls are just “the children” and the difference of sex is lost in the great catholicity of maternal love.
At the very beginning parents must concede the existence of an inherent temperamental difference between the boy and the girl. ”

“ Every child is entitled to a thorough explanation and a lasting impression [51] of the incident which Christmas commemorates. In shaping the Christmas idea in the boy’s mind we should begin at the beginning. If the story of the Star of Bethlehem is told in the right way and at the right time, it may be depended upon to survive the myths and the merry-making with which the atmosphere is charged during the festal period.
And this need not militate against the development of the Santa Claus side of the celebration, for the one amplifies the other. ”