STUDY THE CHILD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 128, 2 June 1938, Page 25

STUDY THE CHILD.

GUIDE FOR PARENTS.

SUCCESS IN REARING

FAMILIES.

LESS FUSS 18 URGED.

(By a Special Correspondents) NEW YORK, May 10. "I learned about children from them." You have it on the word of men and women who have combined brilliant pjiblic careers and succeseful rearing of their sons and daughters. Such figures as Faith Baldwin, novelist; Clara Savage Littledale, editor of "The Parents' Magazine;" Phil Baker, radio favourite; Frank Craven, Broadway and Hollywood star, and Mme. Vina Bovy, prima donna of the Metropolitan Opera Company. They all agree that, just ae in any other career, experience counts, that you achieve better parenthood by studying your children intelligently.

These parents may be celebrities to the world, but at home they are just father and mother, and htiuible 114, their approach to their problems. It is in honour of Better Parenthood Week that the&JiavjgL.told tne principles of . child rearing they have learned from, their own children.

What these distinguished figures have learned from their own children boils down to a single paradoxical statement. Children require both more and less bringing up. More intelligent care. Less fuss over .small details. But each, of course, has his or her own personal slant.

Honesty Held Important. "I have learned that I am not infallible," says Faith Baldwin, summing up her lessons from motherhood. "I have learned if you expect a child's confidence you must give it honeety. Never make a promise (or a threat) which you can't or don't fulfill. It so happens s ttiat I believe in discipline (unusual these days). But also in justicej children detect and despise injustice* They also have a right to expect an honest question to be honestly answered.

•1 have learned that all children live in a world of their own into which an adult merely intrudes, but ie tolerated. Also, they live in the present. Threats or promises laid in the future do. not >add up for them. Everything* must' be immediate. " Also, they run with' the herd. They want to dress, act, be like other children. ■

"I have learned that children like privacy ae much as we do—and are entitled to it. Also, ridicule muet be used very sparingly, and sarcasm, never." Mrs. lattledale'a spn and daughter have taught her that children are people from the day they are born. "They are not," she explained, "inferior little beings whom it is our duty to transform into email replicas of ourselves as fast as possible.

"I am all against a certain type of business in which many parents indulge. Coneeientiouß, well meaning, they seem to feel that they are not discharging the duties .of parenthood to . the best of their ability unless -they are bringing up ..their children every minute.

Gtsater Freedom Urged. "Good parenthood must include a cer-' tain amount of letting children alone, to play freely and imaginatively as young children love to play, without adult assistance or interruption. A very simple routine, put through without too much coercion, but rather with matter-of-factness and a eense of enjoyment, should take care of tlje mechanics of the child's living. ; "Most of all my children have taught me that they like parents who have, time for leisurely, unpremeditated good times —walke, hunts for wild flowere, reading aloud, music around the piano— the eort of thing that is simple and spontaneous and by which families grow in affection and companionship." Some of the parents questioned can look back and size up the things their children taught them about parenthood from the perspective of several- years. But Phil Baker, the radio comedian, is not one of them. He is right in the thick of it now, learning as he goee along with his three little Bakers. "Children teach you patience," says Baker, and paints a picture of Margo

(4), Stuart (3) and Michael (18 months) building a house of blocks or tinkering with a gadget on an electric train. From their patient absorption in the task Baker has learned patience, which he passes back to the youngsters. For, he observes, "You have to have the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job to have an answer for all the questions they ask. Because there's no feeling of inadequacy in all the world like that' of not knowing what your kids expect you to know. And, incidentally, there's no quicker way to lose caste with them."

Craven Learns Tolerance. "The chief thing I learned from John was tolerance," testifies Frank Craven, star of the Broadway hit, "Our Town," in which his son, now 21, appears with him. "While he was growing up I realised he was doing the things I did at his age, and that I couldn't blame him. "I have learned that the chief duty of a parent, as I see it, ie to stop telling his children what to do all the time. I only tried to keep John from being fresh like some stage children, tried to keep him from associating too much with older people. I tried to eee that he had good 'manners, and, when he got old enough, good judgment."

Mme.' Bovy, prima donna of the Metropolitan, has always felt that it would be unfair to her six-year-old Umberto to take him into the unsettled life her art compels her to lead. So ehe gives him up for the eight months of the opera season each year. And ■when ehe Teturns~ ; to her home on the French Riviera to relax in private life as Signora Norbert Fiecher, wife of an Italian army officer, ehe has to make up for a lot of lost time.

"One thing Umberto has taught me," says Mme. Bovy, "is that children, contrary to the popular notion I've met up with on my round-the-world travels, are very rational human beings and reejnond best to the people who treat them as such. I've learned, too, from Umberto and his. little friends that you can go a good deal further with children by appealing to their reasoning powers than by imposing a 'superior' will upon them."—N.A.N.A.