XL
SELL YOURSELF TO YOUR CHILDREN
Did you ever contemplate trying to “sell” your children, as the advertising experts say, the things you wish them to be and do? Did you ever try selling them yourself? Of course, the old idea is that the proper way to rear children is by forcing on them a system of do’s and don’ts. We tell our children that they must do this, and they mustn’t do that. We try to coerce them along the straight and narrow road because that is the proper path for them to travel, but we never take the trouble to artfully entice them into it and make them think that they have chosen it of their own free wills.
We want our children to love us, to admire us, to consider us their best friends; but we expect them to do this because we believe it the duty of children to honor their parents. Not ten fathers and mothers in a thousand ever deliberately try to make themselves attractive to their children or win their confidence. Perhaps this is why there are so many boys and girls hurtling down the broad highway to destruction; why parental influence amounts to so little, and why the average child feels that it has less in common with its own father and mother than it has with any other man and woman it knows.
We have just begun to realize that propaganda is one of the greatest and most insidious forces on earth. We have seen it lift men up to the skies and make gods of them, then turn and pull them down, and trample them into the dust. We have seen it exalt a nation into sainthood and turn it into a howling mob, crying for blood. And if it can thus sway and move grown-up people, what a weapon it is to use upon the plastic mind of a child! This being the case, why should we not “sell” our children the ideals we wish them to have? Why should we not feed them on the right propaganda from their cradle up? Why should we not advertise the good things of life until we make them so alluring that the child will want them?
Why should we not sell righteousness to our children? It is one thing to preach and nag at them about drink, and gambling, and associating with bad men and women until you bore them to tears and make them wonder what is the fascination of the evil that they are so warned against. And it is another thing to make clean living the symbol of health, and strength, and length of days; the respect of one’s fellow men and, above all, the thing that sets one right with one’s own soul.
Why not sell our children education? We scourge them to school, which most of them regard as a place of penance, and where, dull and bored, they sit in stolid indifference, while the dull and bored teachers go through the perfunctory routine of hearing them recite lessons in which they do not pretend to take the slightest interest. But suppose we could really sell these children the idea of education? Suppose we could get them as interested in history as they are in stories of adventure? Suppose we could make them see that spelling and arithmetic are not tasks; that they are the tools with which they will work when they get their first jobs as stenographers and bookkeepers, and that the better they spell and the quicker they are at figures the bigger their pay envelopes will be! Suppose we could make them see that knowledge is power, and that whether they stay at the foot of the ladder or climb to the top is going to depend on how well their brains are trained! Why, if we could make children see the advantages of an education we would not have to force them to go to school. They would be eager and anxious to go.
Suppose we sold our children good manners. We are always correcting Johnny at the table about the way he eats, and he is so used to our don’ts about walking in front of people and keeping his hat on that he has long since ceased to listen when we speak. But suppose, from his earliest infancy, Johnny had heard boors ridiculed, and knife swallowers, and cup cuddlers, and audible soup-eaters held up to scorn as figures of fun. Do you not know that Johnny would as soon think of committing murder as one of these offenses? And suppose Johnny has had it impressed on him by precept and example that good manners are a letter of credit that is honored the world over; that they will take you farther than anything else on earth. Don’t you know that Johnny would be incapable of loutishness, because good manners had simply been bred into him?
Why should we not sell our children industry and thrift? Propaganda again. You can make work the most thrilling of all games. You can make a child feel that his job is of great importance. You can form in childhood an unbreakable habit of industry. You can teach the child how to deny itself little things in order to save the money for big things. You can make it feel the independence of having its own little bank account. You can set a goal before it and light the fires of ambition in its soul.
Finally, why not sell yourself to your children? Why not make as much effort to ingratiate yourself with your children as you would with a stranger? Why not try to impress your children with your ability, your wisdom, your up-to-dateness, as you would any man or woman with whom you are trying to do business? If parents could only convince their children that they are not back-numbers and incarnate killjoys it would do more than any other one thing to improve the family relationship. Believe me, it pays to advertise—especially with your children.