Part 4

The answer is that it does not arouse harmful curiosity. The right kind of curiosity on any subject is of course good. Indeed without the desire to question and investigate everything about him man would be yet a savage living in a hole in the ground, and the starting-point of all the child's after-knowledge is curiosity. There are two kinds of curiosity, a good kind and a bad kind. The good kind is interested in finding out things for the sake of understanding them; the bad kind serves a bad end,--in connection with this subject it leads to investigations which produce wrong thoughts and feelings, and is gratified for the sake of producing those thoughts and feelings. The same subject may give rise to either kind of curiosity, according as it is presented.

To-day we take every pains to stimulate the curiosity of our children. We teach them to observe carefully the flowers, the insects, the animals,--everything about them. We cannot expect them to exercise their stimulated minds on all other subjects and turn blind eyes upon this one which is obviously so important and so interesting. No, the more they learn to look and ask about other things the more they will look and wish to ask about this.

That children differ in curiosity is very true. Some children seem to have very little curiosity about anything. Yet such children are sent to school with as much care as are the children eager to know. A child might show no interest in books, might find the reading lesson irksome; but the mother would know he was learning to read for the use that reading would be to him later, not for the sake of the things in the reading-book. It is the same here, the child learns the facts for the sake of his future. There are good reasons which will appear later why every child should have the right information on this subject whether he seeks it or not. If he is indifferent, one can be sure the proper kind of information will not hurt him; if he is eager, one can be sure he ought to be carefully and thoroughly instructed.

As a rule the most active and eager children and those with the quickest minds are the ones most curious to understand the origin of life, though there are exceptions. It is not legitimately gratified curiosity that harms, but suppressed curiosity, which in this subject is almost sure to result in the acquisition of wrong and often of perverting information. The surest way to arouse curiosity is to try to conceal something. The only thing, then, is to be ready to gratify honest curiosity by helpful information.

Nor is it safe to defer too long. What the mother wants her child to know in a certain way she should tell him herself, before he has a chance to hear it elsewhere. The moment he leaves her presence, the moment he starts alone to school, he may receive information which she would give the world to prevent his receiving. Not that her telling will necessarily keep him from hearing what others say, but to have his mind preoccupied will tend to prevent the wrong ideas from taking firm root.

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Another question very often asked is, Will teaching this subject not encourage children to talk about it with other children?

On the contrary, the tendency is to prevent talk. The children of a family equally instructed will not find it worth talking about. They know what they want to know, and understand that the only person who can really tell them anything more is their mother, or whoever takes her place in this. If they do talk of it in the spirit in which they have been taught, such talk can do no harm, excepting in the presence of children not equally well instructed.

To meet this danger the mother can take certain precautions. Having won the confidence of her child, she can generally trust him to keep these matters confidential with her. She can explain that children do not always know the truth about these things, and sometimes do not know about them at all. That some mothers do not tell their children, but that she wants her child to understand everything just as it is, and to feel that she can trust him not to talk on these matters excepting when alone with her.

Of course there will be instances where this does not succeed, and the children eager and pure will speak in the presence of the neighbors' children and make trouble. Then the question is, Which is better, to run that risk and take the consequences, or to run the risk of allowing the child to remain ignorant? If the child could really remain ignorant, there might be room for argument against enlightening him, but there is great danger that he will be enlightened in a very unenlightened manner, and possibly by those same neighbors' children who are truly ignorant, though they may not be ignorant in just the way their fond parents believe them to be.

Many people still confound ignorance with innocence, though these are by no means related. The most ignorant person in the world might be the least innocent, and the most innocent might very well be the most enlightened. It not infrequently happens that the very children whose mothers are most opposed to enlightenment on this subject are dangerous companions for good children.

To guard against unprofitable or otherwise harmful teaching, the mother should instruct the child not to listen to talk on this subject and not to join in it, and at the same time tell him that in case he does hear anything that troubles him he should come to her and she will talk it over and explain, so that he may know what is right and what wrong. She should promise to tell him the truth about whatever he may want to know.

Having made this promise she must keep it. There is nothing more dangerous than to put a child off with evasive answers. He immediately jumps to the conclusion that there is some reason why his mother is afraid or ashamed to explain things to him, and if he has heard evil rumors it is quite natural for him to suspect that what he has heard is the truth and the whole truth, else why should his mother not help him? He soon feels ashamed to ask her questions which she refuses to answer, and he ceases to confide in her. There is nothing easier than to win and keep the confidence of a child, and often there is nothing more difficult than to regain it when once it is lost, particularly in this direction. It is a loss the mother can by no means afford to sustain.

Mothers sometimes object that their young sons bring them the most shocking or absurd stories which they have heard in school or elsewhere. The mother who gives one moment's serious thought to such a situation will be forced to the conclusion that for her to hear such tales is nothing compared to the child's hearing them, and that his coming to his mother is proof of his own innocence. It is surely her first duty, no matter how difficult or unsavory the task, to sift out the wrong from the right, to show the child wherein the story is absurd, wicked, and harmful. At such a crisis the mother should be very careful not to show any offence because the child has brought her the story. She may condemn the story as severely as she likes, but she must be careful that the child does not feel himself included in the condemnation. She must also be careful in denying the story not to deny the germ of truth which it will contain, or the child may conclude that she is talking against the facts, and is either ignorant or trying to conceal the truth. Many a mother has said in despair, "My boy of nine knows more about these things than I know myself."

It would be a great mistake to let the boy hear such a confession, as his very best safeguard is his confidence in the knowledge of his mother, or whoever assumes the duty of instructing him in these matters.

TELLING THE TRUTH

Should the mother tell pleasant but totally false stories as to the origin of the child,--or should she tell the truth?

It is generally safer to tell the truth. Excepting with very young children the fiction is not long believed, and a course of deception, having been entered upon, oftentimes proves a stumbling block in the way of later veracity. It is so much easier to go on telling fairy-tales. Moreover, the truth, properly conveyed, is far more beautiful than any fairy-tale.

The parent must not forget that the child's mind is a blank page upon which any picture may be drawn, and that the child sees only what is presented to him. The thousand problems, the thousand troubles and fears, and all the knowledge of evil that burden the mind of the adult are entirely absent from that of the child. He sees only the one shining fact, that he was once a part of his dear mother, nourished and protected by her until he was ready to open his eyes on the big world. The child has very little interest in details as a rule; and how to meet the demand for them, should it arise, will be considered later.

If the mother tells the story of the stork bringing the newcomer to the home, or of the doctor carrying him in his pocket, or the apothecary selling him over the counter, the child very soon learns that this is not true. He gets an inkling of the truth, understands that he has been deceived, and according to his age, his nature, and what he has heard, he will draw his conclusions as to why his mother did not tell him the truth.

Mothers often ask whether there is any more reason for refraining from the stork fiction than from the Santa Claus one. When Santa Claus is found out, the whole thing is generally understood as a joke, a pleasant sort of fairy tale. There was nothing hidden behind the fiction. In the other case, if the child chances somewhere to hear the facts stated in a coarse manner, he will be likely to feel instinctively that the new tale is the true one, and will naturally conclude that the pretty fable was told to conceal a most unsavory truth. His first impression of the real facts will in such a case be ugly and--in a deep sense--false. It will hurt his sensibilities, or arouse his lower nature, according to his temperament.

The mother can guide herself by a rule which has exceptions but which in the main holds good: The child able to ask a question is able to understand the answer.

This is by no means saying that all the facts should be stated at once. That would be absurd. The question asked should be answered as simply as possible, the parent remembering that children's questions are usually more profound to the hearer than to the asker. It is difficult for the adult not to read into the child's chance question all the profundity of his own years of experience, and the mother who approaches this subject with dread is almost invariably astonished and relieved to find how easily the child is satisfied.

Where the child asks by chance or design (and it is a wise parent who can always decide which it is) a question beyond his comprehension, or one that the parent is not ready to answer, he can be put off temporarily with the promise to explain another time. The child may forget all about it. If not, then the promise must be kept; and the very fact that the child remembers shows that he is thinking, and therefore ought to be helped. If the child asks questions which the mother feels sure he is not ready to have answered, she can promise to tell him when he gets older, explaining that he could not understand now. In such cases, however, the mother should always manifest a willingness to tell him something; she should talk with him enough to make him feel sure she will keep her promise. He should never be allowed to forget that he can go to his mother as frankly as to his own heart, with the certainty of finding sympathy and aid. And she should not let him forget that he is not to seek information from outside sources, such information being unreliable.

ON NATURE STUDY

Since the most beautiful and ideal way of presenting the facts of the renewal of life is through nature-study, a few words as to the handling of this interesting topic may be helpful to some mothers.

In all nature-work with the child, the subjects treated should be made interesting and beautiful. This cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The child has a right to the pleasure, the elevation of sentiment, the play of imagination which the contemplation of nature is able to give in such a peculiar degree. He has a right to the romance of the flower, cloud, bird, fish, animal life, plant life, in all their ramifications. It is a part of his soul-development. Consequently, whatever is done for him should be done in such a way as not to hurt his sensibilities. His pleasure in nature should be increased, not lessened, as a result of his study.

As his knowledge expands his interest should deepen. This will almost never be the case where the first instruction is purely technical. Nothing, for instance, has deadened the interest of children in plant life so much as the study of botany. This is because the school methods have been wrong, the work being almost always approached from the wrong end. It is because the learner's mind is dammed up by difficult and to him empty technical terms. As a consequence, the course of its flow in this direction is stopped, and instead of a clear stream leaping joyfully through the woods and meadows finally to reach the great goal of the boundless ocean, it resembles rather a motionless pond, the surface of which is covered with lifeless and unlovely debris. Naturally the child seeks to escape from this uninteresting and dead pool by turning his mental energies in other directions, and too often he loses interest forever, and with it the pleasure and the vast profit that might have come to him from a different conception of the subject.