Free Your Children from Your Chains

"... Thus we shall be a society strong in its elements, firm in its foundations, and build a nation that presses ever forward on the road of life."

Whenever we pause to observe our children in the schools and universities, and our young men and women in the course of their independent work and their social life, we perceive in them an evident weakness, and we feel it, too, taking hold of us to some degree. How many times have we tried with effort to conquer it and master it, and how many times has failure overtaken us and we have retreated two steps, preferring concealment to appearance, preferring silence to speech, despite what surges in our breasts of sound ideas, high hopes, and an ambition that is the road to success and advancement.

If we were taken unawares, without prior warning, to decide between two things, we would find ourselves perplexed, confusion and bewilderment reigning over our thoughts despite the apparent simplicity of the decision... and we would feel our need of a little resolve to settle the matter.

This psychological ailment is lack of self-confidence. It is, upon my life, one of those hidden ailments whose results appear while its symptoms disappear behind the veils of the ailing soul... What concerns us in the subject is to search out the cause of this ailment and to forestall it, before we see our children among its prey and our efforts to bring their upbringing near to perfection are lost.

The planting of self-confidence in our children goes back to their early childhood. We must not impose our will upon them and let them surrender to the fact on the pretext that they are small children who do not know... They do not know how to wash their hands, do not know how to put on their clothes and shoes, do not know how to eat, and so on... especially if the child's family enjoys a measure of wealth, for then it is the nursemaid who always performs all the child's tasks. And if he shows a desire for independence in his own affairs, she rebukes him, saying: "You don't know!" — and so it becomes fixed in the child's mind that he does not know! And this is the Mandate itself!

(1) Riyad, at five, wanted to visit his neighbor, and his mother warned him against going alone. When she saw in him an instinctive courage and an inclination to rely on himself, she poisoned this noble quality with all manner of fears and killed it in its cradle. She sent her child in the company of the maid — hand in hand — and impressed upon Riyad that he must not let go of her hand lest his foot slip and he fall!

By this she protected her child from some bodily harm that might befall him, but she killed his courage and his self-confidence. Did her child gain, one wonders, or lose? Would it not have been better to furnish him with a few instructions and leave him to rely on himself? What harm would it have done him if he had fallen at first and suffered a cut on his knee or a slight bruise? What harm if a companion had set upon him in the street and slapped him, and he had returned slap for slap, tested his strength, and proved his existence?

If you wish to plant self-confidence in your children, you must first free them from your chains. Let them roam and frolic without strict surveillance, which robs them of their freedom and consequently destroys their confidence in themselves, and makes of this suppression a negative outlet to which the child resorts as a channel for his activity and vitality.

(2) Nizar is four years old. His mother devoted herself to her own occupations and entrusted him to a specialized nursemaid. I often heard the mother praise the nursemaid's attention to Nizar and her watchfulness over him. His daily life was a chain of: "Put down that pen! Get away from that light! Don't touch that vase! Don't dirty your clothes!" And the poor thing had to obey her orders without the least consideration for his own opinion.

Chance willed that I should watch Nizar with a group of children at a tea party given for them. The children who had enjoyed some measure of an independent upbringing behaved well, while Nizar never ceased looking at his nursemaid to draw from her a judgment that would enable him to know "what to do," and whether he might eat a second piece of the sweets.

I almost shouted in the face of this nursemaid: "Get out of this poor child's way and leave him be; let him feel the happiness of the freedom his companions enjoy!"

Psychological experiments have proved that a child like Nizar, if allowed for a short while to be freed from this surveillance, is seized by an agitated desire for movement and for showing his latent activity, and he plunges into troublesome play until restraining him becomes exhausting, and returning him to his natural state is a difficult matter.

And as is generally accepted, the theory of modern education requires that children be left for an hour or two a day to play in complete freedom, without any surveillance by a grown person who might withhold from them some of this freedom. The nearer the children are to one another in age, the more general and the nearer to its purpose is the benefit of that play.

(3) A lady complained to me of her little daughter of three. She said: "I cannot take my eyes off Umayma for a moment these days, for she meddles in the affairs of the house — great and small. If she sees the maid washing the clothes, she gets there before her and puts her two little hands into the washing trough; and if she sees me cooking, she is at her wits' end over how she might join me in the cooking. She insists on taking turns with the maid at pounding the kibbeh, imitating her to perfection, and whenever we ask for something and cannot find it, we are certain that Umayma, without a doubt, is the one who has been meddling with it."

These are examples that everyone who has lived with children under one roof has tested and continues to test. In most cases like these, the first thing that comes to our mind — as happened with Umayma's mother — is to check the child and forbid her from practicing these tasks that are none of her concern; and the result is an increase of desire on the child's part, for "everything forbidden is desired."

The more we persist in forbidding the child, the more his longing to practice the forbidden thing grows, and so the conflict in the house between the child and his people continues indefinitely... The method of restraint, then, is a failure, like most negative methods. The positive view proposed by the most modern educators, who vouch for its success in this case, is that the child be given complete freedom to practice all the tasks he cares to practice. When he shows a longing to try the washing, the dusting, and the pounding of the kibbeh, and meets not the least resistance, his longing for them fades and he does not return to them of his own accord, because he will have satisfied the pressing desire in himself to test everything new. And so the matter ends naturally, without the least collision occurring.

This positive method requires forbearance on the mother's part. And this forbearance must have its sacrifices. When the child wishes to help us set the table, and the plate falls from his hands and breaks, we must not make much of the matter and heap blame upon the child. For this plate has taught the child how to carry plates in the future. So hail to a sacrifice that is the first of the lessons of self-reliance and among the paths leading to freedom...

O you grown-ups, free your children from your chains... Let them face the world and test it for themselves, taste its sweetness and its bitterness, exult at their victory and stand firm before their defeat. And what an excellent lesson the child learns from his slip — he seldom repeats that slip once he is convinced that its result has been tested.

Do not pay the child's stumble much attention, for many a stumble teaches the child how to be steadier, and is more useful than the best sermon; it makes the child feel that he enjoys his full freedom, so that he relies on himself, his confidence in himself takes firm hold, and his morale grows strong, and he becomes a man — a hardy man who knows no fear!

So, O you grown-ups! Free your children from your chains. Open before them the field of thinking and of managing affairs, that they may act convinced, not compelled; that they may feel they are free, not slaves; and that they may understand at last that they have a share in the search for what is right — not that they are helpless, moved by the will of others.

Thus we shall be a society strong in its elements, firm in its foundations, and thus we shall build a nation that presses ever forward on the road of life!