Not doing is always as important, in its time and place, as doing; and this truth is as applicable in the realm of child-training as elsewhere. Child-training is a necessity, but there is a danger of over-doing in the line of child-training. The neglect of child-training is a great evil. Over-doing in the training of a child may be even a greater evil. Both evils ought to be avoided. In order to their avoidance, their existence and limits as evils must be recognized.

Peculiarly is it the case that young parents who are exceptionally conscientious, and exceptionally desirous of being wise and faithful in the discharge of their parental duties, are liable to err in the direction of over-doing in the training of their children. It is not that they are lacking in love and tenderness toward their little ones, or that they are naturally inclined to severity as disciplinarians; but it is that their mistaken view of the methods and limitations of wise child-training impels them to an injudicious course of watchful strictness with their children, even while that course runs counter to their affections and desires as parents. Their very love and fidelity cause them to harm their children by over-doing in their training, even more than the children of parents less wise and faithful are harmed by a lack of systematic training. It is, in fact, because they are so desirous of well-doing, that these parents over-do in the line of their best endeavors for their children.

A young father who was an earnest student of methods of child-training, and who sincerely desired to be faithful in the training of his first child at any cost to his feelings of loving tenderness toward that child, made a mistake in this direction, and received a lesson accordingly. His child was as full of affection as she was of life and spirit. She had not yet learned what she might do and what she might not do, but she was rapidly developing impulses and tastes in various directions; and her strength of personal character was showing itself in her positiveness of purpose in the line of her tastes and impulses for the hour. Her father had heard much about the importance of parental training and discipline, but had heard nothing about the danger of over-doing in this line; hence he deemed it his duty to be constantly directing or checking his child, so as to keep her within the limits of safety and duty as he saw it.

To his surprise and regret, the father found that, while his little daughter was not inclined to waywardness or disobedience, she was steadily coming into a state of chronic resistance to his attempts at her stricter governing. This resistance was passive rather than active, but it was none the less real for that. She would not refuse to obey, but she would not be ready or prompt to obey. She would not be aroused to anger or show any open sign of disrespect, but she would seem unable or unwilling to act as she was told to. Kind words and earnest entreaties were of no avail at this point, neither were they ever resented or explicitly rejected. If punishment was attempted, she submitted to it with a good grace, but it seemed to have no effect in the way of removing the cause of original trouble. The father never, indeed, lost his temper, or grew less loving toward his child; he prayed for guidance, and he gave his best thoughts to the problem before him; but all to no apparent purpose. The matter grew more and more serious, and he was more and more bewildered.

One day, after a serious struggle with his little daughter over a matter that would have been a trifling one except as it bore on the question of her character and welfare, the father left his house with a heavy heart, and almost in despair over this question of wise child-training. At the door he met a friend, much older than himself, with whom he had been a co-worker in several spheres of Christian activity. Seeing his troubled face, that friend asked him the cause of his evident anxiety, and the young father opened his heart, and told the story of his trouble. “Isn’t the trouble, that you are over-doing in the training of your child?” asked the listener; and then he went on to give his own experience in illustration of the meaning of this question.

“My first child was my best child,” he said; “and I harmed her for life by over-doing in her training, as I now see, in looking back over my course with her. I thought I must be training her all the time, and I forced issues with her, and took notice of little things, when I would have done better to let her alone. So she was checked unduly, and shut up within herself by my course with her; and she grew up in a rigid and unnatural constraint which ought not to have been hers. I saw my mistake afterwards, and I allowed my other children more freedom, by letting them alone except when they must be interfered with; and I’ve seen the benefit of this course. My rule with all my children, since my first, has been to avoid an issue with them on a question of discipline whenever I could do so safely. And the less show of training there is, in bringing up a child, the better, as I see it.”

This was a revelation to that young father. He determined at once to try to act on its suggestions, since the opposite course had been such a signal failure in his hands. When again in his home, an opportunity for an experiment was soon before him. His little daughter came into the room, through a door which she had been repeatedly told to push to, after she had passed it. Without any special thought on the subject, the father, who sat writing at his desk, said, as often before: “Push the door to, darling.” And, as often before, the child stood quiet and firm, as if in expectation of a new issue on that point. The counsel of the morning came into the father’s mind, and he said gently, “You needn’t shut the door to, darling, if you don’t want to. Papa will do it,” and at once he stepped and closed the door, returning afterwards to his desk, without a word of rebuke to his child.

This was a new experience to the poor overtaxed child. She stood in perplexed thought for a few minutes. Then she came lovingly to her father, and, asking to be taken up on his knee, she clasped her arms about his neck, and said: “Dear papa, I’m sorry I didn’t shut that door. I will next time. Please forgive me, dear papa.” And that was the beginning of a new state of things in that home. The father had learned that there was a danger of over-doing in the work of child-training, and his children were afterwards the gainers by his added knowledge of the needs and tastes of childhood.

In the case of this father, the trouble had been that he made too many direct issues with his child on questions of authority and obedience, and that thus he provoked conflicts which might have been wisely avoided. After this new experience he was very cautious at this point, and he soon found that his child could be trained to obey without so often considering the possibility of resisting or questioning parental authority. When, in any case, an issue had to be accepted, the circumstances were so well considered that the child as well as the parent saw that its right outcome was the only outcome. The error of this father had been the error of a thoughtful and deliberate disciplinarian, who was as yet but partially instructed; but there are also thoughtless and inconsiderate parents who harm, if they do not ruin, their children’s dispositions by over-doing in what they call child-training. And this error is even worse than the other.

There are many parents who seem to suppose that their chief work in the training of a child is to be incessantly commanding or prohibiting; telling the child to do this or to do that, and not to do this, that, or the other. But this nagging a child is not training a child; on the contrary, it is destructive of all training on the part of him who is addicted to it. It is not the driver who is training a horse, but one who neither is trained nor can train, who is all the time “yanking” at the reins, or “thrapping” them up and down. Neither parent nor driver, in such a case, can do as much in the direction of training by doing incessantly, as by letting alone judiciously. “Don’t be always don’t-ing,” is a bit of counsel to parents that can hardly be emphasized too strongly. Don’t be always directing, is a companion precept to this. Both injunctions are needful, with the tendency of human nature as it is.

Of course, there must be explicit commanding and explicit prohibiting in the process of child-training; but there must also be a large measure of wise letting alone. When to prohibit and when to command, in this process, are questions that demand wisdom, thought, and character; and more wisdom, more thought, and more character, are needful in deciding the question when to let the child alone. The training of a child must go on incessantly; but a large share of the time it will best go on by the operation of influences, inspirations, and inducements, in the direction of a right standard held persistently before the child, without anything being said on the subject to the child at every step in his course of progress. Doing nothing, as a child-trainer, is, in its order, the best kind of doing.