QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4327, 17 August 1937, Page 2

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DEALING WITH CHILDREN I In an effort to get at the true facts of the case in order to settle a nursery dispute, the 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 protested most righteously against the order to take the doll out and wash the ink off, it was decided that their five-year-old companion should be consulted before the order was repeated to one or other of the quarrellers. Who, 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 of adults to probe and group tacts tor 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. P.LAIN ANSWERS. 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 strictlv to the point, is not usually satisfactory. 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 straightforquestion she was told an obvious and apparently pointless he-and felt that if she had only worded her question less plainly the response would haie been different and an unpleasant state of general distrust Children are suspicious of most plain questions, and it they do not ask. “Why do you want to know? it is because thev answer that question toi themselves with the assumption that in order to keep themselves free from any dangerous entanglements a .policy of “ least said, soonest mended is safest. We must own that they are to some extent justified in their distrust o 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 then daeido not want to hear as well as to see them. A child never enjoys answering questions except on topics he has ranee himself, as any embarrassed adult stranded for a time in the company of a child whoso mental-age level he is unable to assess discovers quick y. Leadin" questions about lessons, holidays, and hobbies are answered distantly and briefly, and the questioner is battled when his young companion repeated y 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 you 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. It the adult unfamiliar with children only waited for a moment instead of trying to elicit small talk he would find innumerable conversational leads forthcoming. Without asserting that a child should always be left to direct the How 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 me ” 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 he 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 one 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 be sure he realises not only our motive in asking, but our sympathy for his instinctive fear of being drawn into any hostilities.