CHAPTER 34TAKING SIDES AGAINST FATHER
HERE is a letter from a woman with a husband, one little boy, and a peck of troubles. It seems the boy is like her, while the father is short tempered and scolds the boy, sometimes when he isn't to blame. Then the mother comforts the boy and cries with him. Sends him upstairs and lectures the husband, reminding him that there is a family skeleton in a mad house, and if he, the father, doesn't watch out he'll drive their little boy on to the same fate. The husband replies that she is spoiling the boy by "babying" him. When the mother calls the ten-year-old scolded one into another room and puts her arms around him, he sobs, "Oh, mamma, this will be the death of me yet."
Now doesn't that sound natural? To me it is an echo from the past. So I'm calling a meeting right here of all the mothers that want harmony in the home, and I hope all the fathers will snoop around and overhear the talk I'm giving their wives. The husbands will share the fate of all listeners, and I hope they'll accept the lesson and improve.
To every wife interested I say this:
Evidently you and your husband are direct opposites. He is masculine, brusque; you are sentimental, feminine. Your boy takes after you. The greatest danger for him is that you will spoil him by "babying" him at the wrong time.
He needs to learn to take his hard knocks like a man, not like a woman.
Never pity him at such a time! Tell him to brace up and take his scoldings like a major—or as a football player takes his hard knocks.
What if his father is unjust to him at times? So is everybody unjust at times. But the father's injustice is no excuse for the boy's cry-baby-ness.
Rouse the boy's manhood at such times, instead of playing on the woman in him. Tell him to "be game" and proud of himself.
Tell him his father's shortcomings are no worse than his boy's shortcomings, or your own. They are different, that's all.
Tell him his father doesn't mean to be unjust or unkind, any more than you do; he simply isn't perfect any more than anybody else is, and that is the particular form of imperfection that shows up in him.
Tell your boy that his father's brusqueness is due to lack of self-control, not to wrong intention; and that the boy's crying is due to the same kind of lack of self-control.
And that the crying is just as "bad" as the brusqueness.
Then put your boy on his mettle to take his scoldings calmly, without "feelings" of any sort; to correct if possible his actions that called forth the scolding; and to forget it as quickly as possible.
Then help him to forget it by dismissing it from your own thought and talk, and getting interested in something worth while.
Every boy needs a loving and sympathetic mother. And he needs no less a sometimes brusque father, and plenty of boy playmates.
A mother like you melts the boy to softness, while the hard knocks hammer him into shape. It's just the difference between melted iron and steel; between sentimental mush and character — the sort of character that turns every buffet to beautiful results.
Don't fend your son — nor your girl — from anybody's hard knocks. Just teach them both to meet knocks like a man.
They will thank you later.
And as you and your children learn to make light of unpleasant happenings and make much of the right intent at the bottom of the father's heart, you will find yourselves all outgrowing the old discord. Thus does belief in good dissipate unpleasantness. HOW NEIGHBORING MOTHERS CAN COOPERATE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND HAPPINESS OF THEMSELVES AND CHILDREN >
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