WhatKindof Person WillYourChild Be?

Abstract

THERE IS A wIDE-SPREAD MYTH ABOUT children-the kind of human beings they are and how they grow-that certainly needs to be investigated. The myth is that adults are very different from children-that in the process of growing up the characteristics of childhood gradually drop off and different characteristics, those of adulthood, are taken on. Most of us parents act as though we believe this myth. We enjoy the funny little things they do and say, we discipline their naughtiness, and we endure many hours of fretting and fussing and no cooperation-all in the faith that these things will be dropped by the wayside as time goes on. We find ourselves saying as we look back on one of those days filled with trying experiences, “Oh well, he’s only a child. We must give him time. He won’t be like this when he grows up.” Unfortunately, that may be only partly true. He probably won’t write on the walls when he grows up, and he probably will come to learn some manners. But his emotional response to the world -how he acts when frustrated, how he gets what he wants, how he responds to strange adults and plays with other children--these things change very little. The spoiled little girl of three is often a spoiled wife at twenty-three and the boy who is the bully on the play-ground is usually the domineering ruler in his family. True, most adults don’t throw tantrums but “sick headaches” are often just as useful. The traits of personality that make each of us an individual, different from every other person in the world, find their beginnings in the experiences of the child long before he goes to kindergarten. His home and his parents, whether they are aware of it or not, start him out on the kind of person he will be. Is your family composed of persons? What else could it be composed of? You are probably thinking of the word persons as meaning people, and it does mean that. But it also has another meaning, something like what we mean when we say “He’s a real person!” That’s the meaning I want to talk with you about. If you know a family that is composed of real persons, you can tell it in a minute. There’s a distinctive flavor about the way they live together. You experience something in their home that makes you glad you know them, and you wish to be like them. These families that are made up of real persons have some very definite qualities. For the most part these qualities are simple and almost obvious and, yet, not many families have them. The reason they don’t is that these qualities are attitudes, and attitudes are not easy