A child needs sympathy hardly less than he needs love; yet ten children are loved by their parents where one child has his parents’ sympathy. Every parent will admit that love for his children is a duty; but only now and then is there a parent who realizes that he ought to have sympathy with his children. In fact, it may safely be said that, among those children who are not called to suffer from actual unkindness on the part of their parents, there is no greater cause of unhappiness than the lack of parental sympathy. And, on the other hand, it is unquestionably true that in no way can any parent gain such power over his child for the shaping of the child’s character and habits of life as by having and showing sympathy with that child.

Love may be all on one side. It may be given without being returned or appreciated. It may fail of influencing or affecting the one toward whom it goes out. But sympathy is in its very nature a twofold force. It cannot be all on one side. From its start it is a response to another’s feelings or needs. It is based on the affections, or inclinations, or sufferings, or sense of lack, already experienced by another. Hence sympathy is sure of a grateful recognition by the one who has called it out. Love may be proffered before it is asked for or desired. Sympathy is in itself the answer to a call for that which it represents. Love may, indeed, be unwelcome. Sympathy is, in advance, assured of a welcome.

In his joys as in his sorrows a true child wants some one to share his feelings rather than to guide them. If he has fallen and hurt himself, a child is more helped by being spoken to in evident sympathy than by being told that he must not cry, or that his hurt is a very trifling matter. The love that shows itself in tenderly binding up his wound, in a case like this, has less hold upon the child than the sympathy that expresses a full sense of his pain, and that recognizes and commends his struggle to control his feelings under his injury. It is easier, indeed, to comfort a child at such a time, and to give him power over himself, by showing him that you feel with him, and how you want him to feel, than by telling him, never so lovingly, what he ought to do, and how to do it. And it is the same with a child in any time of joy, as in every time of grief. He wants your sympathy with him in his delights, rather than your loving approval of his enjoying himself just then and in that way.

Herbert Spencer, who makes as little of the finer sentiments of human nature as any intelligent observer of children can safely do, emphasizes this desire of a child for sympathy, in the realm of mental development. “What can be more manifest,” he asks, “than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See, when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—‘Hear this new sound.’ Watch how the older children come into the room exclaiming, ‘Mamma, see what a curious thing,’ ‘Mamma, look at this,’ ‘Mamma, look at that;’ and would continue the habit, did not the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Observe how, when out with the nurse-maid, each little one runs up to her with the new flower it has gathered, to show her how pretty it is, and to get her also to say it is pretty. Listen to the eager volubility with which every urchin describes any novelty he has been to see, if only he can find some one who will attend with any interest.”

How many parents there are, however, who are readier to provide playthings for their children than to share the delights of their children with those playthings; readier to set their children at knowledge-seeking, than to have a part in their children’s surprises and enjoyments of knowledge-attaining; readier to make good, as far as they can, all losses to their children, than to grieve with their children over those losses. And what a loss of power to those parents as parents, is this lack of sympathy with their children as children. There are, however, parents who sympathize with their children in all things; and as a result, they practically train and sway their children as they will: for when there is entire sympathy between two persons, the stronger one is necessarily the controlling force with both.

In order to sympathize with another, you must be able to put yourself in his place, mentally and emotionally; to occupy, for the time being, his point of view, and to see that which he sees, and as he sees it, as he looks out thence. It is not that your way of looking at it is his way from the start, but it is that his way of looking at it must be your way while you are taking your start in an effort to show your sympathy with him. In many relations of life, sympathy would be impossible between two parties, because of the differences of taste and temperament and habits of thought; but in the case of parent and child, the parent ought to be able to learn the child’s ways of thinking and modes of feeling, so as to come into the possibility of sympathy with the child at all times.

How the child ought to feel is one thing. How the child does feel is quite another thing. The parent may know the former better than the child does; but the latter the child knows better than the parent. Until a parent has learned just how the child looks at any matter, the parent is incapable of so coming alongside of the child in his estimate of that matter as to win his confidence and to work with him toward a more correct view of it. To stand off apart from the child, and tell him how he ought to think and feel, may be a means of disheartening him, as he finds himself so far from the correct standard. But to stand with the child and point him to the course he ought to pursue, is more likely to inspire him to honest efforts in that direction, until he comes to think and to feel as his parents would have him.

A parent misses an opportunity of gaining added power over his child, when he fails to show sympathy with that child in the child’s enjoyments and ordinary occupations. If, indeed, the parent would be always ready to evidence an interest in his child’s plays and companionships and studies, the parent would grow into the very life of his child in all these spheres; and there would be hardly less delight to the child in talking those things over with his parent afterward, than in going through with them originally. But if the parent seems to have no share with the child in any one or all of these lines of childhood experience, the child is necessarily shut away so far from his parent, and compelled to live his life there as if he were parentless.

Still more does a parent lose of opportunity for good to his child, if he fails to have sympathy with his child in that child’s weaknesses and follies and misdoings. It is in every child’s nature to long for sympathy at the point where he needs it most; and when he has done wrong, or has indulged evil thoughts, or is feeling the force of temptation, he is glad to turn to some one stronger and better than himself, and make confession of his faults and failures. If, as he comes to his parents at such a time, he is met with manifest sympathy, he is drawn to his parents with new confidence and new trust. But if he is met unsympathetically, and is simply told how wrong he is, or how strange it seems that he should be so far astray, he is turned back upon himself to meet his bitterest life-struggle all by himself; and a new barrier is reared between him and his parents, that no parental love can remove, and that no parental watchfulness or care can make a blessing to either child or parent.

It is a great thing for a parent to have such sympathy with his child that his child can tell him freely of his worst thoughts or his greatest failures without any fear of seeming to shock that parent, and so to chill the child’s confidence. It is a great thing for a parent to have such sympathetic thoughts of his child when that child has unintentionally broken some fragile keepsake peculiarly dear to the parent, as to be more moved by regret for the child’s sorrow over the mishap than for the loss of the precious relic. There is no such power over children as comes from such sympathy with children.

There is truth in the suggestion of Herbert Spencer, that too often “mothers and fathers are mostly considered by their offspring as friend-enemies;” and that it is much better for parents to show to their children that they are “their best friends,” than to content themselves with saying so. It ought to be so, that children would feel that they could find no such appreciative sympathy from any other person, in their enjoyments or in their sorrows and trials, as they are sure of from their parents. This is so in some cases; and wherever it is so, the parents have such power over and with their children as would otherwise be impossible. On the other hand, there are parents who love their children without stint, and who would die to promote their welfare, who actually have no sympathy with their children, and who, because of this lack of sympathy, are without the freest confidences of their children, and are unable to sway them as they fain would.

The power of sympathy is not wholly a natural one. It is largely dependent upon cultivation. An unsympathetic parent may persistently train himself to a habit of sympathy with an unsympathetic child, by recognizing his duty of learning how the child thinks and feels, and by perceiving the gain of getting alongside of that child in loving tenderness in order to bring him to a better way of thinking and feeling. But if a parent and child are not in sympathy, the best and most unselfish love that that parent can give to that child will be fruitless for such results in child-training as would be possible if that love were directed by sympathy.