1990 September/October issue Part 1

Training a child to self-control

Shall I brace myself for the inevitable charge of ancestor-worship which is bound to come? This is not the first I’ve quoted my forebears, and probably won’t be the last, but it’s worth the risk of a taunt or two! Henry Clay Trumbull, a chaplain in the Civil War, was my great-grandfather, and only recently I found that his book, Hints on Child Training, has been brought back into print. His reason for writing it was His friend’s having asked for his theory of child training. “Theory?” he responded, “I have no theory in that matter. I had lots of theories before I had any children [he had eight] but now I do, with fear and trembling, in every case just that which seems to be the better thing for the hour, whether it agrees with any of my old theories or not.”
   A book written one hundred years ago which a publisher now deems worthy of reprint must be good. The publisher is Wolgemuth and Hyatt, Brentwood TN; price $8.95. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 10:

   "A child who is trained to self-control- as a child may be- is already a true man in his fitness for manly self-mastery. A man who was not trained, in child-hood, in self-control, is hopelessly a child in his combat with himself; and he can never regain the vantage-ground which his childhood gave him... It is in a child’s earlier struggles with himself that help can easiest be given to him, and that is of the greatest value for his own developing of character... It rests with the parent to decide, while the child is still a child, whether the child shall be a slave to himself, or a master of himself; whether his life, so far, shall be worthy or unworthy of his high possibilities of manhood.

   “A child’s first struggle with himself ought to be in the direction of controlling his impulse to give full play to his lungs and his muscles at the prompting of his nerves. As soon as the nerves make themselves felt, they prompt a child to cry, to thrash his arms, to kick, and to twist his body on every side, at the slightest provocation- or none. Unless this prompting be checked, the child will exhaust himself in aimless exertion, and will increase his own discomfort by the very means of this exhibit...

   “When a child has fallen and hurt himself, or has cut his finger, or has burned his hand... it is natural for him to shriek with pain and fright, and it is natural for his tender-hearted mother to shrink from blaming him just then for indulging in this display of grief. But even at such a time as this, a mother has an unmistakable duty of helping her child gain a measure of control over himself, so as to repress his cries and to moderate his exhibit of disturbed feeling....

   “Coaxing and rewarding a child into quiet as such a time is not what is needed; but it is the encouraging a child into intelligent control of himself, that is to be aimed at of the wise parent. It is only a choice between evils that substitutes a candy-paid silence for a noisy indulgence of feeling on a child’s part... Dr. Bushnell, protesting against this method of coaxing a child out of a state or irritation, in a fit of ill-nature, by ‘dainties that please the taste,’ says forcefully, ‘It must be a very dull child that will not cry and fret a great deal, when it is so pleasantly rewarded. Trained in this manner to play ill-natured for sensations sake, it will go on rapidly, in the course of double attainment, and will be very soon perfected in the double character of an ill-natured, morbid, sensualist, and a feigning cheat besides. By what methods or means can the great themes of God and religion get hold of a soul that has learned to be governed only by rewards of sensation, paid to affections of grief and deliberate actings of ill-nature?’

   “That control of himself which is secured by a child in his intelligent repression of an impulse to cry and writhe in physical pain is of advantage to the child in all his life long struggle with himself; and he should be trained in the habit of making his self-control available to him in this struggle... Every child needs the help of his parent in gaining control over his body, instead of allowing his body to gain the control of him. The appetites and passions and impelling of outer man are continually striving for the mastery over the inner man; and unless one is trained to master these instead of being mastered by them, he is sure to fail in his life struggle.

   “A parent ought to help his child to refrain from laughing when he ought not to laugh; from crying when he ought not to cry; from speaking when he ought not to speak; from eating that which he ought not to eat, even thought the food be immediately before him; from running about when it is better for him to remain quiet; and to be ready to say and do, at the time when it needs to be said and done. Self-control in all these things is possible in a child. Wise training on the parent’s part can secure it. The principle which is operative here is operative in every sphere of human existence. By means of self-control a child is made happier, and is fitted for his duties, while a child and ever after, as otherwise he could not be. Many a man’s life course is saddened through the hopeless lack of that self-control to which he could easily have been helped in childhood, if only his parent understood his needs and been faithful accordingly.”

   Would you like help in the beginning at birth to teach a child self-control? Read My First 300 Babies, written by a midwife who stayed to help new mothers put their babies on a happy schedule so that the infant did not rule the household.