CHAPTER 33WHEN YOUR DAUGHTER DECLARES HER INDEPENDENCE Here is a letter I have just dictated to a mother whose daughter has asserted her independence:
IF the daughter has been brought up on the "don't" plan, and has just kicked over the traces, and assumed her own individuality, I say "Bully for her!" But if she is merely selfish, and takes her friends away to her room to keep from sharing them with the family, it is too bad; she is making a mistake, and will find it out by some sort of unpleasant experience.
Evidently the poor girl is out of joint with her family. This is primarily the result of wrong bringing up. A selfish daughter doesn't come from a truly unselfish family. There are mothers who think they are unselfish, who make selfish daughters by bringing them up without a sense of responsibility for anything but their own pleasure. I know children who came up without learning to help their mothers or anybody about them, simply because the mother would rather do the work than take the trouble to teach and direct the children until they learned how to help. Such a mother very often thinks that she has been very unselfish, but she has not. She simply did what was easiest for her. Her children do the same!
Children must be taught co-operation almost from the time they are born. They must help each other, and be grateful for help rendered to them. If the mother is wise and truly unselfish she will teach and practice this co-operation. Every child will have certain responsibilities, and will be taught to discharge those responsibilities faithfully. Such a mother will have no such daughter as you picture this one to be.
As to this girl's "fortifying her actions by abstract declarations in the New Thought books," if she didn't find justification in New Thought books she would find it somewhere else. People can always find reasons for what they want to or choose to do.
I fancy this girl has been bossed to the limit, and that now she is grown up she proposes to take her life in her own hands. She is certainly making a mistake in trying to live her life apart from the family, but I surmise that the family makes it extremely difficult for her to live her own life. If the mother would get hold of a little New Thought herself, and give the girl her freedom, really give it to her in spirit as well as in name, the girl would soon reciprocate.
The mother must learn co-operation herself, and the father, too. If she showed a disposition to help the girl live her life in her own way, the girl would very quickly come to give her higher consideration and kinder treatment. In this world we get just exactly what we give. A selfish daughter comes from a selfish mother. The mother may have aimed to be unselfish, but she has been merely unwise, instead of unselfish. The mother's feeling abused, or feeling grouchy, will certainly never woo the daughter to bring herself and her company into the family circle.
Here's a beautiful little sentence that I found yesterday, written by Confucius: "Make happy those who are near; and those who are far will come." How happy is the family circle? How happy a reception do they give this girl when she brings her friends? How do they treat the girl when she takes the friends to her room — with cold looks or sharp speeches, or grief or grouch?
Do you think any of these attitudes of mind are attractive? Certainly not — they only give the girl the excuse she may be seeking for taking her friends away to her room.
Don't you see the point? The mother is the key to the situation. Let her wake up and get a little New Thought herself. If the girl has got even a little New Thought she is on the right track even though she may do very unwise things in the way of learning. At least, she will surely outgrow this in time.
Don't fret your own soul over other people's unhappiness! Remember that we get exactly what we attract, and that the unpleasant experiences all tend to correct the mistaken mental attitude which draws them to us. Is the mother interested in making the girl happy, and in helping her to make her friends happy? Or is she merely bent on making the girl and her company come down and add to the mother's happiness, or the family's? Don't you see that in the latter case the mother is selfish, just as well as the daughter? (My little Libra stenographer just exclaimed: "Goodness! — if papa and mamma and the boys didn't come in and help me entertain my company, I wouldn't know what to do with them!")
TAKING SIDES AGAINST FATHER >
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