Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 192, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1916 — THAINING TODAY’S BOYS AND GIRLS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THAINING TODAY’S BOYS AND GIRLS

Secret Ambitions of Parents for Their Children. HOPE AIDS IN DEVELOPMENT It Is Well to Realize That Backwardness or Precocity Does Not Determine a Child’s Possibilities. %y SIDONIE M. GRUENBERG. ALICE, almost three years old, was very busy scribbling forest and cloud effects on the back of a circular letter; and she was quite oblivious to the presence and conversation of her mother and a visitor. “Can she write yet?” asked the visitor. “Oh, no,” beamed the mother, “we do not wish to hurry her. But she does love to play with pencils and paper, and I think she is going to be an author.” The visitor smiled indulgently. But this is what she thought: “She is just as likely to become a cheap clerk or a fourth-rate stenographer.” Which is quite true; only there is no use discouraging parents too early in the game. Parents naturally harbor secret ambitions as to the future of the children; we know that, because they sometimes let the secret out. And it is quite natural that they should, because they transfer to their children the hopes of their own childhood, the hopes that never cystallized into reality. We can therefore understand why the scribblings of Alice should suggest fine writing to the mother, or why Tommy’s tinkering with the decrepit alarm clock should remind the father of that other Thomas, the great inventor. Not only is it easy to understand why parents do such things—which must appear rather stupid or conceited to the parents of other children — but it is very desirable that they should continue to do more and more of the same. For entertaining hopes about children is about the surest way of guiding our plans and bringing unity into our treatment of the developing personality. The hopes can certainly do no harm —unless they blind us. But there is the real danger. For if we have nothing to go by except our hopes, we are just as likely tosbe moved or paralyzed by our fears. It is natural for parents to translate the random activities of their children

into possibilities for achievement But it is just as natural to translate the annoying or unconventional activities into gnawing fear. Charles Darwin tells us in his autobiography of being rebuked by the schoolmaster for wasting his time on such subjects as chemistry. We should explain this by saying that the schoolmaster had no appreciation of a subject of which he was totally ignorant But he tells us further that he was greatly mortified when his father once said to him: “You care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” Now Darwin’s father was not an Ignorant man, and he was not unsympathetic; but his imagination was not equal to interpreting the child’s interests and activities in terms other than those of loafing, shooting and rat catching. But if the experience of Darwin should lead anyone to predict a great scientific career for the son of similar proclivities, he must be warned. The youth of Patrick Henry was characterized by alternating spasms of running wild and hunting in the woods and spells of extreme laziness. “No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work,” his biographer writes, "and every omen foretold a life at best of mediocrity, if not of insignificance.” Which only supports the old suspicion that you must not put too much trust ip omens. Again and again we find cases of children who filled their parents with despair and thel, teachers with disgust, only to emerge later into men .and women of distinction and high social value. The timid youth, backward in school and slow to give any sign of internal fires, develops into a leader in thought or in action. This should not make us translate timidity and backwardness Into signs of leadership. Henry Ward Beecher was so bashful and reticent as a boy that he gave the impression, according to his sister, of "stolid stupidity.” In addition to this he was a poor writer and speller, and had a “thick utterance.” No one would have guessed that this ten-year-old boy was to become a brilliant orator, ee-

pecfaßy since the other children of th» family memorized their lessons readily and recited them with grace and elegance, in marked contrast to the confused and stammering fienry. John Adams gave no sign of abilities beyond the ordinary until well; along in years, and but for the circumstances of the Civil War Ulysses 8. Grant would have remained an obscure, uninteresting and “unsuccessful” drifter. On the other hand, many a precocious child seems to stop short in its development long before there is the maturity or the opportunity to begin to accomplish things of importance. We are not to suppose that every brilliant child will necessarily become a mediocre adult, nor that every backward child is to develop into a genius. The fact is that the "abilities” of a child are in a state of constant change. At no time may we say of the child that it has exhibited a final manifestation of its possibilities or of its limi-

tations. The “inattentive” Isaac Newton, the "dullard” Robert Fulton, the “Indolent” James Russell Lowell, the “weakminded” David Hume and hundreds of others make us challenge our methods of estimating the powers and characters of children. These, more than the disappointments we feel in the failure of children to develop into a realization of our great expectations, make us question our standards and systems and signs. In view Of the common failure to anticipate the ultimate achievements of children, it would seem much wiser to draw all the possible encouragement and stimulus from the positive manifestations, to watch constantly for the best, than to fear and despair for the weaknesses.

Patrick Henry Alternated Hunting With Extreme Laziness.

Henry Ward Beecher Was Bashful and Reticent.