QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Evening Star, Issue 22719, 5 August 1937, Page 7

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DEALING WITH CHILDREN WHERE ADULTS FAIL In an effort to get at the true facts of the case in order to settle a nursery dispute, tho mutual recriminations of the disputants were ignored, and the apparently disinterested member of the party was summoned., to give evidence (states a writer in the ‘ Manchester Guardian ’). The trouble had arisen about a broad stripe of ink, across the head of a hairless doll, said by the doll’s owner to have been laid on by her brother, and by him to be the result of the doll being rubbed against his fountain pen nib. The latter certainly seemed a lame tale, but as both children iprotested most righteously against the order to take the doll out pud wash the ink off, it was decided that their live-year-old companion should be consulted before the order was repeated to one or other of the quarrellers. AVho, the witness was asked, put that ink on the doll’s head? Instantly and with a radiant smile she answered “ Not me!” and ran out of the room. Most of us have heard of school children who have given similar answers when asked who, for instance, discovered America or tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. And we can believe these stories. “ Please, sir, it wasn’t me,” is a natural answer; for to a small child the only point of any inquiry into behaviour or misbehaviour that may concern him is the establishment of his own exoneration. He has no impersonal interest in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and is impatient about the attempts or adults to probe and group facts for their own purposes. Digging the truth out of any situation seems a wearisome and profitless business to a child, who prefers to dig for concrete things. PLAIN ANSAVERS. This attitude makes him, one may suppose, generally of little value as a witness in any case the outcome of which does not, so far as he can see, affect himself. Therefore direct approach by those social workers, perhaps, or magistrates who want definite information from a child, and think the best way to get it is to ask for plain answers to plain questions that keep strictly to the point, is not usually satisfactorv. A plain question often produces, when dealing with young people, unnecessary lies. Many a housewife has complained that when she- asked a young maid a “ perfectly straightforward ” question she was told an obvious and apparently pointless lie—and felt that if she had only worded her question less plainly the response would have been different and an unpleasant state of general distrust avoided. Children arc suspicious of most plain questions, and if they do not ask: “Why do you want to know?’ it is because they answer that question for themselves with the assumption that in order to keep themselves free from any dangerous entanglements a policy of “ least said, soonest mended ” is safest. AVe must own that they are to some extent justified in their distrust of our motives, since adults rarely do

take the initiative in conversation with children unless they are investigating misdemeanours. When all is going serenely children know—learning from adult ungraciousness—that their elders do not want to hear as well as to see them. A child never enjoys answering questions except on topics he has raised himself, as any embarrassed adult stranded for a time in the company or a child whose mental-age level ho is unable to assess discovers quickly. Leadins questions about lessons, holidays, and hobbies are answered distantly and briefly, and the .questioner is bamed. when his young companion repeatedly takes refuge in such an evasive reply as “ I don’t know.” If a child has noticed the constraint of an interlocutor he resents questions all the more. Anyone who finds himself desirous but unable to escape from someone else’s child would be well advised not to make the usual opening bid of asking: “What do ydu want to be when you grow up? ” when it is obvious to the child that his answer is awaited only as the stimulus to another question. No wonder the reply “ I don’t know ’ is put forward as an obstacle 1 MASS PUNISHMENT. Voluntarily given evidence is another matter altogether. If the adult unfamiliar with children only waited for a moment instead of trying to elicit small talk he would find innumerable conversational loads forthcoming. Without asserting that a child should always be left to direct the flow of talk, one can : give the assurance that the way of least persistence is the easiest for an adult who has to deal with a child. Mass or class punishments are incomprehensible to children below the age of 10 If because a wrongdoer has not been discovered a whole junior class is “kept in” or debarred from some pleasurable activity, every child except the guilty one is bitterly resentful on his own account, protesting to himself, if not to the teacher, that it was “ not mo ” and entirely unconcerned with the necessity for discover ing the culprit, whose anonymity seems to have nothing to do with an affair of honour. Tale-bearing is not at all the same thing as giving disinterested evidence. The youthful informer is tremendously interested in his tale, and usually, one suspects, unless he has a legitimate concern about some injury to his person or possessions, this is because lie identifies himself with the culprit and enjoys vicarious confession. Most parents would admit that the tale-telling of children is generally about misdeeds that might easily have been the tellers’. They are not interested in deeds they could not conceivably have wished to perform. “ There but for the grace of God go I” is_ the usual implication of on© child’s indictment of another. ... What a child says, therefore, in answer to direct questions is not necessarily dependable evidence. 'Before accepting his replies, we must bo sure he realises, not only our motive in asking, but our sympathy for his instinctive fear of being drawn into any hostilities.