Do Not Belittle Your Children

In the Easterner's nature there is an inclination toward indirection, toward not declaring his true feelings outright. And in the Westerner's nature — especially the American's — there is an inclination toward complete frankness, toward showing the contents of the soul in their true form. Only a person of discernment, familiar with both, perceives the vast difference between the two natures — the Eastern and the Western.

I do not deny that heredity, rooted deep in the generations, and the state of the intellectual environment, among other things, have a great influence on the formation of people's characters and habits. But the most important factor in establishing this habit is education — the education of the home surroundings and the education of the school. The proof of this is that the institutions which succeed in following a modern course of education, in accord with the principles of psychology, send out into the world young people sound of soul, who think in a way distinguished by frankness, balance, and precise analysis; who present their talents and their capacities as they are; and who have moral courage enough to examine their own points of weakness just as they would examine any other subject bearing on their success and advancement. They are natural in every aspect of their bearing, and you cannot but meet them with esteem and admiration, wishing in your heart of hearts that you had had their upbringing; but how are you to free yourself from certain fetters that have bound your hands and encircled your neck since you were a child?

That requires strength and resolve — a strength that overcomes by its conquering will and triumphs over the manifestations of weakness within us. But the sad truth is that the great majority of us incline to weakness more than to strength, and so remain prey to their psychological ailments.

Anyone acquainted with the inner conditions of our schools has his attention drawn, every day, to many an educational lapse committed by educators, whether out of ignorance or out of good intention, and the results come in the form of many of the psychological ailments to which our children fall prey and whose effect remains with them for life. Here are a few of the many examples I have chosen from my own personal observations.

In one of the kindergartens of the capital, I stood with the teacher listening to the results of her experiment in applying a modern method of teaching the Arabic language. Presently she called four children by name, and they stood up straight, obeying orders. She named one of them, six years old, and opened a book for him to read, and he won the admiration of us all. She moved on to the second, then to the third, the ability to read growing less, until she pointed to the fourth and said in a voice all could hear: “This child is older than the rest, and yet he is still backward despite our attempts, and the reason for that goes back to a weakness in his mind!”

I stole a glance at the child and saw that he had hung his head and fixed his eyes upon the floor. He had heard with his own ears his teacher's opinion of him — and how often had he heard her repeat this phrase about the dullness of his mind and his backwardness... So he is lower than his comrades in mind and understanding — then let the earth swallow him up!

I marveled at this teacher, who considers herself a specialist and yet overlooks the most important of the laws of child education. How can she hope for this child to advance a single step when she never ceases exposing him to situations like this, lowering his morale thereby and weakening his confidence in himself, so that his success and his progress become past hoping for, and he falls into the sickness of resentment born of the inferiority complex, or the feeling of worthlessness, and a lethargy takes hold of him that may be the cause of his dismissal, not from his school alone, but in all the stages of his life?

Setting the situation right in a case like this cannot come to completion unless he is removed from the surroundings that witnessed his failure and his humiliation, in which he heard the phrases that lowered his worth. However hard the teacher may strive to improve her conduct toward him, a veil of hateful doubt will remain forever, holding the child back from her and preventing him from enjoying his full freedom in her presence. We cannot assure this child of success in school unless we endeavor to move him to another atmosphere, in which the child may begin to establish his personality anew and recover his lost morale; and then he may show conduct that would astonish those who knew him in his first school.

I have known Salma for years — a sensitive girl, affected by the most trivial of incidents; rarely have I heard her join in the talk of her companions or object to a decision or an opinion. She usually pretends to listen, but it is hard to be certain whether Salma takes in the conversation going on around her or not — unlike

her younger sister, who was always the axis of activity and the focus of every eye, at home and at school. I visited them once and made the acquaintance of their mother, and I was among the admirers of her personality and her culture. No sooner had we settled into our seats than the mother — in the presence of her two daughters — began telling me stories of Hélène, her younger daughter, going on at length in describing her intelligence, her power of observation, her boldness in conversation, and her gift for mimicry; and she went further and asked Hélène to act a few parts, and she would drown in laughter at the slightest jest that came from her beaming little girl! And she took no account of Salma — indeed, it was as if Salma were not among us at all, sunk in the corner of the seat, her hands clasped tight from sheer nervousness, pain gnawing at her heart, tossed this way and that by all manner of psychological forces which she tried to suppress and subdue, until presently they burst from her eyes in abundant tears, streaming down and increasing for no apparent reason. And the mother explained Salma's behavior by an oddity of temper inherited from her paternal aunt — as though by that she had succeeded in analyzing the symptoms arising from the situation.

This mother has planted, with her own hand, envy in Salma's heart, and with the passing of days this envy has turned into hatred — the sister's hatred of her sister and of her mother together — and she has withdrawn into herself, secluded in her room, feigning absorption in study and reading, preferring solitude — the solitude that removes her from an atmosphere which oppresses her breast, in which she feels her weakness and her inability to show the contents of her sick soul — sick with the disease of the inferiority complex, or the feeling of worthlessness.

How can we hope for children like Salma to grow up sound in their thinking, eager to

mingle with their comrades and to appear freely in their surroundings, so long as their souls stagger under their burden, feeling their own weakness, or the superiority of others over them?

Not all children are alike. There is the child who surpasses his brothers in height and beauty of figure; and that one surpasses them in intelligence and in endearing himself to people; and that girl rivals the movie stars in softness and beauty of voice; and that one excels not his brothers alone but all the pupils of the school. I do not blame parents for taking pride in their children's excellence and in their possession of enviable talents — who among us would dare deny the joy that floods his heart at his son's excellence in intelligence and beauty?! But it is not wise for the mother or the father to run on, on every occasion and without occasion, and go to excess in displaying her child's talents through her microscopic eye, especially in the presence of her other children, because by that she exposes them to two dangers. The first is the danger of the feeling of grandeur, or superiority, into which her gifted child will inevitably fall; and once he becomes prey to this feeling, no one any longer values his talent, because his objectionable conceit will have laid hold of this beloved talent and disfigured its natural beauty. The second danger, no less important than the first, is the inferiority complex, or the feeling of worthlessness, into which her ungifted children will fall as a result of hearing the phrases of lavish praise scattered without measure upon their brother, so that their capacities for showing their ability — weak enough to begin with — grow weaker, and this ability shrinks under a bitter repression until recovery from this deficiency becomes a difficult matter. If we wish to boast of our children's talents, then, let us beware of two things: first, that we do not overstep truth and reality and exaggerate in describing our children's merits, exposing ourselves to society's criticism and displeasure; and second, that we do not disparage any of our children in his presence, or in the presence of his brothers or of other children. By this we shall have guarded the beauty of their talents from disfigurement, preserved their appearing always in a natural, beautiful aspect, and removed from the atmosphere of the home every danger of a psychological ailment that might be the greatest threat to the children's affection and mutual understanding and to the safekeeping of the family's happiness.