WHAT BOYS MY BOY SHOULD PLAY WITH.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2568, 31 July 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

WHAT BOYS MY BOY SHOULD PLAY WITH.

ONE MOTHER’S. IDEAS ABOUT HER SON’S COMPANIONS.

(Ladies Homo Journal.)

My experience in raising boys-, had been practically nil when I started ill to bring up a boy of my own. All I had to guide me was the remembrance of my own circumstances in childhood. Could boys be brought up as girls were ? ■ * Everybody said no, but as I had no other ideas of what to do I determined to try the methods which had been practised ■with, niy sisters and me and jet my own invention get to work where experience failed. '• 'For while I may have been a litt.o vague as to what to do I was uncommonly clear as to what not to do. My observations of other’ mother’s boys had made me positive on that. I did not ta'ke kindly to the small sons of most of my friends. Their manners w-ere not good, their language—when I got samples of it in their off-guard momcjits—left much to be desired. .If an offence were flagrant enough to attract attention I was told: “Children pick up those things from the children they play with, and there is no way to prevent it.” Was there no way? That was what I meant to try and find out on my own behalf. While the bov was small I had little difficulty. He played contentedly either in my presence or Under the supervision of a trustworthy nurse, who was on the alert, as was I, for any faults which might have been picked of) bv occasional association with other children in play, or, as ho grew older, ut the kindergarten. He was fortunate enough to have the charming littie daughters of a friend for close play- • mates,'and for a good, while I had no real .bother about what ho might gather from his associates. My chief trouble •■. ..was in the summer, wuen we went to the country and lie was brought Hi touch with the children of the owner of the farm where we boarded.. I did not take it for granted that the country child and innocence were interchangeable terms and turn my- offspring loose to play indiscriminately, v L watched his • ■-associates cjuite as jealously here as 1 would have done in ■ town, and took . as muchi pains in the one place as the other to keep that. close companionship between my child and myself which seemed to be the only safeguard against evil associations. ' The crux, however, came -when the boy left kindergarten behind him and . began to go to a real school. .1 hopo I am not too rigorous an opponent to democracy. I have heard everything that can be advanced in favor of a boy’s associating with all sorts and conditions • of children, president Hadley, of Yale, is reported to have said that the ■ main purpose for which a boy goes to college is to become acquainted with his generation, his race. The acquaint- . auco begins in the schoolroom, and tho man who gets on best in this workl is the one who has the best understanding . of■ liis fellows. For years I had known and felt all - this, in a way, and yet, was there not • something to bp said on the other ... s ide? Was it well to turn an impressionable child loose among a horde of ’companions, many of them most undesirable in speech, manners, and morals, and entrust to this chance comradeship the moulding of his nature? Had I reared and trained him to the school • ago only to give over the task to these ignorant hands? Mas it not possible to steer a middle course: to let my boy have the advantage of associations with his kind without at the same time foregoing the influence l had sought to v establish over him since his infancy It took a good deal of hard thinking to decide upon this matter. I did not want my bov to be a milksop, a mollycoddle, accepting things as right or wrong with no reason but “Mother says so.” My standard might hold for a while, but how would it be when he got out into the -world of older boys and men? No, he must have his share of the seamy side of boy life, but it lay with me to say to what extent that share should go. ~ , When I was a small child I recollect very well the standard established by mv mother. We had just fnovod into a new neighborhood —T was about ei<dit years old—and I had gone out -o ' play in the park in front of the house. Until then my associations had been with my younger sister or with selected playmates who had been invited to my home. On this day I first met children at random, so to speak. Threo very nice little girls they seemed to me, of about my owii age, and to this day I recall the delight of that unexpected and unprecedented companionship. I went into luncheon full of it. My mother listened to my tale with sympathy and then asked me the little girls’ last names. I did not know: One was Annie, one was Mary, one was Fanny. “Find out their last names, my dear,” said my mother; “I don’t wish you to play with little girls unless I know their mothers.” Great was my joy when I learned that the mothers of my new friends were calling acquaintances of my mother and that I. was to be permitted to. continue the association. From this past experience I took a leaf whop ,it .came to training boys. In a big, public school 1 could not be sure of knowing the mothers of all my boy’s friends, but I could at least know the boys themselves,' and this I did. In spite of the influence one child has Upon another and that this is a very strong no one who has known much of children can deny—it cannot be exerted to the exclusion of other influences n the only opportunity for its exercise is in school hours, either in. study periods or at recess. It is the freedom, of playing-times after school is over that the harm comes, if harm is done. Bearing this in mind I recognised that it was, in ■ slang, mhraso, “up’ .to me” to counteract anything undesirable in my boy’s associates., lie would choose what pleased him from among them, -ami it was my task to direct his choice as far as possible, and, v here I could not, to offset it by my personal influence. To do the first I determined, as I have said, to know the other boys. There came back to me the experience of a judicious inothoi of my acquaintance. • , “When I was a child, she said, “tho other girls had better times at -their homes than I had at m m e, ana ‘ I Wiis all the time running oft to visit them. After I had children, of my own I made up my mind that if there were anv running to be done it should be done to mv house, and that my elmd- . run should" have.such good times that all others should want to come hfiie.*

Wise woman ! I profited by her precept and example. My hoy was free to bring his friends homo with him at any time, and sure of a welcome when he brought them. I had a frank talk with him on the subject. “You will meet all kinds of boys at school,” !, said. “Some oT them would be good friends for you and some, would not. I want to have a chance to judge of them, and I don’t want you to play habitually with any boy I don’t know. If you like him bring him home to dinner with you and let me get acquainted with him.” So we followed this plan. We had the bovs with us at dinner or in the evening or at Saturday luncheon, and I had the opportunity_to see them and weigh them'for mysen. To the credit of my son’s choice be it said that I seldom found them undesirable. Probably the fact that they were to be, in a way, subject to my censorship made him more careful in his selection, but not more than once or twice did it happen that I said to him: “I don’t think that boy is a good friend for you, and you had better , have as little to do with him as possible.” Of course, I could not judge finally of" a child at one meeting and when lie was presumably on his best behavior. But little things indicate character and habits and I was on the lookout for them. Constantly, too, I boro in mind the second part of my responsibility: that of counterbalancing the possible bad effects, of the boys by personal influence. . Just here I wish to take issue with one ■ remark I have frequently heard made,, relative to the. difference in the care involved in training boys and girls. “Girls, are so much easier to manage,” I have been told. “You know where the girls are, but you never know where the boys are.” That is i precisely where mothers make a mistake. You should know where your boys are, you mothers of sons, and if you would take half the pains to follow them up that you bestow -upon your girls you would learn much that you should know. I do not mean that your beys are to be tied to your apronstrings, or that you are to call them to account for every hour they spend. But if you are on the .right- terms of intimacy with them they will want to tell you of their' friendships and occupations, and will come to you with, them as naturally as ever small girls come to their mothers with their feminine needs and interests. This is not vain theorising. j I speak of what I know. I have tried this plan and it has worked to a charm. My boy is a big, manly fellow now, but he and I are close chums, and there is none of his fun, there are none of liis trials in which I am not asked to share. „ The easiest method for cultivating such an intimacy is to begin at the beginning—when the boy is a baby aiul not permit that intimacy to drop. I have never understood why the departure for a day-school should be equivalent for a break in the intimate relations between a son and a mother. “I have lost my little boy!” mourned a mother -whom I met the other day, in the course of a shopping expedition. I looked aghast and words of sympathy sprung to my lips. “Oh, I don’t mean that he is dead, or inything of that sort,” she said easily. “But I started him off to his first boy’s school this morning. He felt very fine and grown up, but I broke down and cried, ‘You -will never he just my own little boy again,’ I told him. ‘I have lost you 1’ ” 1 could have stopped there and then and delivered a homily with her remark a S a text, hut I refrained. Lost her littlevboy! Perhaps, but she had gained a man—and I don’t even own that she had lost her little hoy. There came rushing, to my mind the recollection of another mother who numbers three sons as her portion. Fine, manly little fellows they are—and not so very small either, for one is in the high school and he is not far ahead of the others —who would certainly not count themselves or be counted by their mothers as' “lost.” When they came home for luncheon or in the afternoon their first cry was for their mother, and she must hear all there is to tell of school and play. Neither she nor any other mothers Will have to use a metaphorical corkscrew to extract information as to his occupations and his companionships from a boy if they have kept the habit of close confidence from tho beginning. Hero is a mistake many mothers make: —A boy does not like to be held up and commanded to deliver himself of an account of where he lias been, whom he has seen, and what he has been doing. But if a boy feels that his mother’s desire to bioar all that concerns him is but a continuation of the interest which she has shown all her life, if she makes him know that while she has no desire to force his confidence or pry into his affairs —those affairs which are as important to a small boy as to -a grown man —she yet wishes to share his perplexities and pleasures in bis school life, as she has at home, he will come to her with the tale of liis joys and his woes, and bring her his problems as simply and naturally as ever would a daughter. What this may mean to a boy at critical junctures in liis life I do riot need to indicate. If most women told the truth about it they would probably confess to a <secret longing to shield a bov from temptations, and to keep him clean and pure by restricting liis companionship and giving him only entirely unexceptional associations. You cannot do this—-and if you did the boy would not he worth much after it was done, He has to meet other hoys and men and develop along his own lines—not yours. It is highly unlikely that, you will care lor all liis-friends. Yet, since they are liis, don’t show your distaste for them unless you think the association positively detrimental. If your influence is w.liat-it should be you can counteract nearly every contagion, and if you know your boy’s friends well you will be able to- bring intelligent measures to bear upon satisfactory associations, and so, by degrees, eliminate companionships that make for evil. Because I speak of this plan as practical I do not mean that it is easy. .There are times, kvhen the work of being' a boy along with your boys will come a little hard. You may not be one of the wom'en with a congenital interest in' baseball and football and hockey and cognate sports. I myself was not. But if you want to bold your son close to you, - you must cultivate a knowledge' of ■ that' sort of thing.- " , My intimacy with my boys fnonds introduced me to some associations that .were new to me. A public school is like- a dragnet; you will find all sorts of .fish iri.it. Some of the friends my boy brought home wero not just the type I

would have chosen for him. When be ed in the son of a street-cleaner one clay I winced a little, i must coni ess. But whatever the father’s occupation nay have been. I am willing to assert hat the mother was a lady in gram, l’ho lad was gentle or speech, polite, and well-behaved, and the slips lie made l in grammar did not hinder iny thinking him a fit companion for my son. I could trust myself to keep his grammar in order! But I wished him to make his associates of boys of clean lips and lives, of good principles and practice, and these I found quite as frequently among the children of “plain people” as among those of better opportunities. So. after all, it resolves itself into this —You cannot bring your boy up under a glass case —that is, unless you mean to keep him in a hothouse all his ;ife. Let him take liis chances, meet liis associates as conditions indicate, and learn to. choose his friends lor himself. That is his right. It is your right; and more, your privilege, your duty, your blessing to be the first ana best of liis friends, his confidante, his chum, his mental measure of companionshin to which all other comradeships must he compared. If you can hold this standard no associations your boy can form need possess any terrors for you. Meet whom he may,, work and i ay where he will, ho will come back, n the end, to the best and highest.