COALS TO NEWCASTLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 177, 13 November 1942, Page 11

COALS TO NEWCASTLE

(Written for "The Listener’ by

"MOTHER RAMPANT"

S a knowledge of child psychology so necessary to parents? It seems to me that kindness, love, intelligence, imagination, a long memory, decently comfortable circumstances and patience together or separately, make good substitutes for psychology. As one well-read in pre-psychological novels and biographies, I am frequently amazed at what is considered new. I have an uneasy feeling that the 18th or 19th century women might be amused at and a little scornful of the modern mother who has to go to a text-book fc~ knowledge that she herself regarded as "her birthright.

I do not think mothers need training in child-psychology; they have more than they have been allowed to practise. What they really require is some beneficent genius to show them how to circumvent the obstructions that stand between them and the carrying out of their duty which love, conscience and intelligence demand, Would all the child psychology in the world have helped the mother to counteract the harm done by the Victorian papa (accepted version), or would it have helped the mothers of child labourers? Is the child psychology taught in Fascist countries the same as that taught in the democracies, and if so, does it help the mothers in Fascist countries to bring up their children more happily? I should not have child psychology scrapped; but I should like to see the psychologist try bullying everyone else but parents. I do not mean the busy workman who says, "Run along, ‘sonny, I can’t answer questions all day," or the shop girl who checks a child for Dawine goods as suitable victims. : » But what of the older child who tells horror stories to a younger child, and for that matter, the younger child who —

drives the older demented by incessant questioning? Then there is the young bachelor who regards every child as something to be unmercifully teased and baited. There is room for mission work there. Sometimes, too, I wonder about teachers. Are their psychological ethics all that they should be. I wonder what methods were used that produced the effect of a careless and thoughtless child returning more than a mile because its identification label had been left at home. The same child would not have returned to school to collect a forgotten coat or cap. Then there was the eight-

year-old who said to a younger but very dictatorial brother: "Gosh, Hector! You’d make a good schoolmaster: as soon as the kids began to enjoy themselves you’d start making a whole lot of rules and stop them." At least when the child was regarded as naturally bad, the grown-ups took their own precautions to guard their property and rights. Now the psychologists have put the responsibility of keeping law and order on the child, and too soon the soul has to put on her earthly freight. If the child population of 50 years ago were to be suddenly transported to modern times among modern adults, I am sure 75 per cent of them would come in the child delinquency category. But the modern parent might realise with horror the responsibilities that have been heaped on the modern child. Also, if the child population of 50 years ago were transported to modern times, would the modern adult have to bring up himself, his father, or his grandfather? There are lots of my contemporaries I should like to have had to bring up. atienial