Instant Obedience, 1931: Ursula Wise questions the desire for instant obedience and shares her thoughts on the giving of praise .

September 11th, 1935 in The Nursery World

Instant obedience

Instant obedience is only given by a child to a parent on the basis of trust and confidence built up by experience

“Well-meaning” writes: “Having frequently admired the wisdom of your published replies to readers I venture to ask your opinion on the question whether it is desirable, and if so by what methods, to aim at being able to secure ‘instant obedience’ before a child is old enough to understand the principle underlying its necessity. My little girl, not quite two, is as obedient as a strong-willed child who is keenly interested in what she is doing at the moment can be expected to be, but she is quite capable of assuming complete deafness, or reiterating a determined, ‘No’, or just running away if told to come here, or to put something down. Relatives tell me that she is too young to be expected to obey, and advocate the – to my mind - lazy and useless method of distracting her attention. My own view is that while obtaining her obedience by distracting her attention is a useful resource when she is tired, or when there are special reasons for avoiding a scene, it does not teach her anything, and that suitable opportunities should be frequently taken for training her to obey as a conscious act. Surely life is too dangerous for a child who will not obey a sudden order without first having some distraction provided. She might be electrocuted in the interval. I should be most interested to hear your views as to whether one should wait until a child is old enough for argument before attempting to teach it obedience. If you agree that the process can be begun as soon as the child unmistakably understands what is said to it (my child talks fluently and has a good memory), what steps do you recommend for securing obedience, in addition to the obvious one of limiting the frequency of one’s ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’? Is a mild slap on the hand that persists in touching the forbidden object a very mistaken method? Sometimes I can see no other way of preventing the child from thinking; ‘Mother goes on sayin,g “Don’t touch,” but nothing seems to happen if I do.” Is it a psychological fact that at barely two a child may forget a repeated command within a few seconds? My little girl’s persistence in picking flowers in the garden (though I always give her some for herself whenever she shows the slightest sign of wanting them) suggests that it must be so. Sometimes I wonder if it is just that the fascination is so great that she simply cannot desist, though she knows must not pick. If that is so, how can I deal with it? Picking flowers for her and allowing her to pick for herself in certain places do not meet the case. It is not that I attach such importance to the devastation of my garden, but that I feel the problem is probably typical of others that we shall have to face. In case it is relevant, I had better mention that the child has the very hopeful characteristic of being more obedient if I leave her for a moment or two rather than if I am present. She will remain glued to a chair if I tell her not to get down til I come back, though, of course, I never strain this virtue too far. Another small point: I have always been lavish with praise when it has been earned, and now K. is beginning to pat herself on the back in a way that is amusing, but might become intolerable in time. ‘Kitty’s a kind girl to bring that flower to show Mother.’ ‘Good girl not to drop that parcel.’ ‘Brave Kitty not to cry.’ Such phrases as these are sometimes reiterated in tones of indescribable smugness, but provided it passes off, don’t you think it is preferable to the sullen defensiveness of the child who imagines that people only comment on its behaviour in order to condemn? If you think I have been overdoing encouragement, I should like to be told. I shall await your views on the subject of obedience with great interest.”

Instant obedience is only given by a child to a parent on the basis of trust and confidence, built up by experience. One can, of course, enforce it by fear. That is to say, one can stir up so much fear in many children that they will obey as long as the feared grown-up is present, although this has very little bearing upon what they will do when there is no risk of being found out. That, however, is not the situation which you desire. The instant obedience which is based upon love and trust cannot be secured by our merely willing it to happen, nor is it possible for many children to give during the first two or three years. It can be given by a child of four or five, who has learnt that his parents will not demand it without good reason. Two years of age is very rarely a period when a child can obey. Occasionally a child has such a naturally docile temperament that she will obey at any age, but this is not very usual, and not necessarily the most desirable attitude of mind. Any child who is going to be independent and forceful and resourceful in later life is certain to show a phase of obstinacy and contrariness in the second and third years, and your little girl is behaving quite typically when she resists your demands if you interfere with her pursuits of the moment. We cannot hope to train tiny children to the virtues of later childhood, and we shall only waste our time and exasperate ourselves and them if we try to do so. It needs real supervision by the adult and appropriate planning of the environment to keep the child of two years, or even three or four, safe. And it is quite useless to imagine that one can ensure this safety by mechanical obedience from the child. But surely you are exaggerating the dangers? In ordinary circumstances, how is a child of two to get electrocuted?

Learning to tell the truth and what to say about death, 1931: Ursual Wise advises on dealing with continuous lies , as well as the subject of children's questions about death.

February 25^th, 1931 in The Nursery World

Learning to tell the truth

David, aged four, is very imaginative. If he has done anything naughty he tells a story of a little boy or girl who came in through the window and did these things

“D. R. H.” writes: “I read your pages in ‘The Nursery World’ with the greatest interest, and I wonder whether you would some time discuss two questions I am up against with my small charge just now. I am an infant-trained nurse, and David has just outgrown my knowledge and experience, and I am having to feel my way into tackling new problems. He is four years old, and I am staying on to look after a delicate little sister. David is a jolly, very sensible little boy, but has always been very highly strung, and is suddenly frightened of unexpected things, such as blind man’s buff at a party, or the noise of air in hot water pipes. He is at the very imaginative age now, and has just started ‘telling lies’ – chiefly entirely imaginative ones. If you ask him if ‘so-and-so’ was at a party, he will say, ‘Yes,’ and tell you a whole long story of their doings, and perhaps afterwards you find that she was not there at all. Also, if he has done anything naughty (such as removing all the buttons from pyjamas, etc.), he will come and tell me of a little girl or boy who came in through the window and did these things.

“A little while ago, if I listened and smiled, and then said at the end, ‘Now tell me what really happened; think a minute and then tell me,’ he would say, ‘David did it.’ But now he sticks to his story through thick and thin. So I never ask him if he did a thing or not. Once I found an empty bottle of sweets and asked him if he had eaten them all. He said, ‘No, I haven’t eaten one.’ So I said, “What have you done with them?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said. I suggested, ‘Have you given them away?’ ‘Yes,” he said, ‘I gave some to mummy ,’ etc., going through everyone in the house . I left it at that, finding out that no one had been given a sweet. Later I found the sweets, which had not been eaten, stored away in a corner. So it seems to me he has no idea of ‘facts’ at all one moment. And therefore, that the only thing to do is to ‘keep off the grass’ and hope the phase will pass, as I have watched many other difficult phases pass, by being ignored. But also I am wondering how best to give him an idea of being trustworthy – something towards which he can grow as he passes through the phase. And also I would like to know whether I am right in just leaving the subject open for a bit.

“The other question I would like to ask is how to describe death to a child of four years? David always asks me what a graveyard is when we pass, and is dreadfully upset if anything gets run over and killed. He is obviously worrying about it all, and I want to give as happy as possible a reason. So far I have told him that when people get ill or very old and tired Jesus takes them away with Him and makes them better, and when we haven’t them here any longer with us, we sometimes make little gardens for them by the church, and out flowers and their names to remember them by. But this I feel is inadequate. I have never seen either of these subjects discussed in your pages, and I don’t think I can have missed them, as I always find it the most absorbing part of ‘The Nursery World.’ I shall be so glad if you can give me ideas. Following your advice to others, we came very successfully through the advent of the little baby sister, who is a pet of all the household, but most of all David’s pet. They are the most devoted little brother and sister. She is as placid as he is highly strung, and will be a great help to him, I think.”

Yes, I certainly think that the best way to deal with these imaginative lies is to leave them entirely alone. They are quite common at this age, and are pretty certain to die away if no notice is taken of them. And you are quite right in feeling that it is best to avoid the sort of questioning that leads to the lying, as the child is so much on the defensive against either real things or imaginary naughtiness, that he cannot be properly clear about what the truth is, nor dare to tell it. The best help you can give him towards learning to tell the truth is his actual experience of your own truthfulness and trustworthiness. But in addition there is no reason why you should not make some cheerful suggestion to the effect that it is best for little children always to say it is true, because then people can know best how to help them. And there is no reason why you should not enter into his stories about things, showing by your manner that you can enter into his imagination while yet being aware that is it only imagination. A tone of voice, a twinkle of the eye, an occasional use of the words “not really,’ without any preaching or pedantry are the best support to the little child’s feeble sense of reality.

The actual details you give about the behaviour of your little charge make it very clear that the whole content of his imaginative lies at the moment, as well as the dread of death, are bound up with his hidden anxiety about the birth of the little baby sister, which he had dealt with so successfully in his actual relation with her.