Training the Child's Heart and Will

An old proverb says: "A child is nothing if not a sacred thing." This idea governed the work of upbringing in the family of old, and we are in greater need of it in these days of ours.

What is a child? And what does he represent to his parents and to society?

To his parents, the child is the fruit of their sacred union, the fulfillment of their wishes, the joy of their home, the staff of their old age, and the keeper of the heritage of family and race.

To society, the child is the smiling hope of tomorrow and the pride of the homeland.

Sacred is motherhood, sacred is the child, and sacred is the mother's mission.

And what is the mother's mission?

It is the forming and developing of the child's body; it is the forming and developing of his intelligence; it is, above all, the forming and developing of his heart and his will.

I shall confine my talk to this last mission. I shall try, thanks to my professional experience, to show faithfully the meaning of this mission, the continuous role the mother plays in this field, and the influence she has on the child's spirit — that influence which stamps him with a mark that accompanies him all his life.

When does the education of the child's heart begin?

My answer is frank and without hesitation: before birth! For just as the child inherits from his parents their temperament and their moral character, together with their particular inclinations and their special family stamp, so too he inherits from them the ardent or lukewarm moral outlook that distinguishes them.

Some advise the expectant mother to avoid agitation, to turn her gaze from everything ugly and base, and to surround herself with beauty and cheerfulness, so that the formation of her unborn child may be completed in the most perfect way. This is a fine thing, but it is not enough; for it is a woman's duty, as soon as she hopes for motherhood, to feel the responsibility that falls upon her toward the creature pulsing within her. She must watch over her own moral condition; for the bodily formation that has begun in her infant is accompanied by the formation of his soul and his heart.

Would that mothers thought seriously of the greatness of their mission — then the rising generation of the future would be the pride of the world.

We have said that the outward beauty surrounding the mother, and the gladness that floods her heart, have their full effect upon the unborn child; how much greater, then, is the effect of religion on his spiritual formation?

Here is the child among us, and here is that complete, radiant emotion — yes, an emotion created by God: love, flooding over him; that love whose spring never runs dry, and from which the mother, always and throughout life, knows the treasures of her tenderness, her affection, and her understanding — those treasures that make of this creature a human being.

If God grants the child a conscious and thinking mother, a mother in the fullest sense of the word, he takes from her, from his tenderest years, the meaning of the love that knows no limit and asks no return.

Through this love the child learns that the world is not wholly hostile, that there are generous hands and people who can be relied upon — and how noble it is for a man to begin his life with this idea.

Indeed, I am inclined to believe that the optimists — those who, however black the days turn against them and however dark the calamities, have never despaired — are the ones a good mother cradled. And conversely, the weary, helpless mother is the factory of pessimists and waverers.

Here allow me, before continuing this study, to mention some of the mistakes that parents commit from the very first days of childhood. The first and most frequent of them is the creation of the spoiled child — the child who has never grown used to being crossed, and in whom the faculty of obstinacy and domination has matured. How dangerous is this faculty in a child's heart! For character is formed from the first days, and within a year you will have created either a docile child who accepts training, or one who refuses to acknowledge it.

I often hear: "She has no influence over her children; temperaments are temperaments, and there is no way of changing them." But in many cases this change may be possible at the beginning of upbringing — a beginning whose supreme importance cannot be denied.

We must accustom the child, from the first day of his life, to respect the order laid down for him, so that when the need arises he will be capable of obedience and sacrifice without grumbling and without compulsion.

Consequently, the first education, which is the foundation of moral formation, begins in the cradle.

When must we give the child an idea of God? It seems to me that the time for this idea comes when the child begins to understand what surrounds him — that is, when he begins to distinguish his parents and his brothers and sisters. Some object to this idea, saying it is better not to put this notion into the child's head, nor any other religious matters of which he understands nothing; for questions of religion are difficult to grasp and should not be entered upon before the mind matures. To this we reply: this objection, which claims that the idea of God is a philosophical idea beyond the child's comprehension, and that practical logic does not submit to the understanding of philosophical questions, is an objection without justification.

It is a mistake to claim that children grasp the idea of God only when they are more fully grown. This has been confirmed by educators experienced in the ways of innocent souls, who say that these innocent souls absorb the idea of God better, and draw nearer to Him, because at this age they have not yet been soiled by the stains of humanity, nor yet blinded by the passions.

The idea of God, then, must be brought into the child's heart from his tenderest years, without neglecting at the same time the training of his will and his intelligence; in this way education forms a complete whole, fulfilling the profound mission that cannot

be divided.

How should the mother carry out this moral formation?

She must, first of all, not weary herself with deep thinking, nor learn her methods of training and discipline from the works of the authorities in order to learn how to perform this mission. She must wait, brimming over with confidence, and it will be given to her to know what is required of her, and how she must do it, when the occasion comes.

Beware of lying in front of the child, for lying is the destroyer of authority, the killer of confidence, the begetter of resentment, and an invitation to imitation. This does not mean avoiding tales and beautiful stories, for these are not of the nature of lies; their purpose is the child's delight. But to give these stories their educational value, they must turn and unfold around some great truth.

Thus the child comes out of the mother's school having grown used to sacrificing with joy, and used to prayer — which is the expression of love and of the divine presence, that presence which does away with the idea of God as a person set apart, and makes Him rather the one toward whom all the day's actions are directed, the circle's pivot upon which the rays of the family ring are reflected. So the child grows, breathing deep into his lungs a refreshing fragrance in a wholesome atmosphere.

We live today in an age of difficult paths; grave dangers surround our children and lie in wait for them at every turn of their lives. Let us guard them, then, from indifference and from materialism; let us protect them from the harmful influence of selfishness; and let us teach them to profit from the spiritual and moral circumstances through which God permits them to pass. For every event, however trivial in appearance, is an occasion for the forming of the will and the heart — especially if it is an adversity or a trial.

The joy that fills good parents is beyond describing, above all when their growing son meets with great inner difficulties and comes to them and opens his heart to them, and they trace out for him the straight path and the solution required.

Here a plan must be followed that differs entirely from the standard educational plan. Yes, this standard education is necessary, but it accomplishes nothing without the inner spirit that directs it; and this inner spirit alone is what the mother must create, and more perfectly every day, so that she may be able to influence the child. To attain this inner spirit there must be self-sacrifice and deep preparation. The mother must understand that the responsibility for this mission falls on her alone and on no one else; that she alone must bear this responsibility until the child becomes a man who relies on himself and flies on his own wings; and that she is never entitled to shift this responsibility onto family or relatives or friends or servants, except in a special case. And since this mission is hers alone, she must prefer it to everything else, whatever it may be and however beautiful its appearance.

Often the mother imagines that this mission of hers brings her back to an empty, barren life without production; she imagines she is wasting her time on silly, simple, material tasks of no importance, and that she could have served better outside, where the field is wide. Such imaginings tend to hem in her generous instincts; but let her beware of falling into the trap, for family life spares her this conceited and fanciful enthusiasm

and keeps her away from all that is romantic, because it is a life turned inward.

To create the child's heart is to bring out the treasures that this heart contains; and to create the will is to prepare the victory over every ugliness among these varied treasures. This victory is the work of a whole lifetime, because of that contradiction in our nature:

"The evil that I hate, I do; and the good that I love, I do not."

The child, then, as we have already shown, is woman's greatest work; he alone shows the measure of his parents' heart and spirit.

To create the will, to create the heart, to create the spirit — that is Education in capital letters. And before we can educate, we must begin by educating our own souls, by bettering ourselves day by day. These are the great psychological outlines of a mother's education.

The more we grasp the meaning of these words and their importance, the more we see how delicate this mission is.

To what degree are we prepared for this mission? Here there is no room for postponement; time presses in on us and forbids us to delay. For when the child comes — whether we wish it or not, from his very first days — our influence works upon him for good or for evil, whether to destroy or to build. And so the years pass on... This child whom we see today in the cradle is the man of tomorrow. Let us be ready, then, from today, for this sacred duty — for tomorrow, perhaps, the sword will already have outrun reproach.

And to be ready means to direct our inner life toward God, so that we may be able to speak to our children of Him — not like those women who repeat, parrot-fashion, what they memorized yesterday, but with a spirit free of all deceit and an impulse above all reproach. And when we see with our own eyes the measure of our effort at personal education in its naked truth — then, and only then, shall we uproot from our hearts the spirit of selfishness that is sweeping the world, and make of our homes houses of work, houses of light.