Today, the Catholic Hour offers the first in a series of programs on Catholic child guidance, which will be presented by Sister Alice Francis of the Sisters of St.
Joseph and Assistant Professor of Child Study at St.
Joseph's College for Women in Brooklyn, New York.
How many times have you mothers and dads listened to that request? At bedtime or when driving in the family car and by all means when something particularly pressing engaged your full attention.
Teachers have heard this appeal too.
Children gather around a storyteller in a way that casts a spell over a classroom.
I am going to tell you a story.
Its title is Child Guidance, not a tale of what we have come to call juvenile delinquency, nor is it to be a recounting of the scientific studies of child behavior.
This series on Catholic Hour TV aims to tell the story of those children you have with you in your own home, growing and learning from day to day.
Child guidance, why? Three reasons.
One, the nature of the child.
Two, well, the role of parents, their job within the family.
And three, the two worlds of which our youngsters are citizens and the kingdom of heaven.
Preschool children need a wholesome environment.
These youngsters that we will see require for play, activity, space, companionship and supervision.
Rolling down the hill is quite active, but tensions are also released.
Even new skills are practiced.
These children often tell us that they feel better and are much nicer people after a turn on the hill.
More intense reactions sometimes.
Danny is upset, but he is living with his problem.
He's not doing much about it right now, but pretty soon here we see that he's feeling better about it all.
Danny is relieved from pressure.
What next? From Gunther.
It's hard to stand by sometimes when the struggle for achievement continues.
These children think they're having a parade.
Will taking turns be the solution? They all want the drum today.
Quiet times too have their place in child time play.
What wonder and questions are forming in Joan's mind? Social learnings too have their place in the busy preschool day.
These youngsters are really not playing together, just near each other.
Watching these children in their everyday play has introduced you to some of the phases of the nature of the child.
Their activity, striving and unpredictability.
Questions arise.
Should traffic regulations be enforced on that hill? Is that kind of play more within the three year old's interest or would you say it has to do with five year old skills? And how are we going to get through to Danny? Will he feel better about it next time? As we move together into a study of child guidance, be aware of the many sided nature of the causes of child behavior.
Do not be looking for one right reason for what happens, nor aim at pat answers.
Why this child does this or that.
Try to think as a scientist does.
Gather up all the facts, then make a good guess as to why these facts are in the picture and then test your guess by looking some more.
Our second point refers to the role of the parents.
If you reject both extreme measures of child guidance, you are well on the way of practicing the middle road, effective guidance of children.
If you depend on using your superior brains and brawn, doing all the thinking and dominating all the choosing for children, for instance making them walk chalk lines for turns on the hill, then you are being authoritarian.
If the other extreme comes into practice where you look over in Danny's direction and say, my, he can't help it, he's just like his father, then Danny is being indulged.
Or you can indulge Louise by letting her take those mud pies into the house to decorate the living room table.
We will not be resourceful with children if we are authoritarian as their leaders and neither will they ever achieve responsibility if we neglect to lay out for them the limits to what they may do.
Effective guidance develops self -control, helping them to have better relationships with other people and in the end fostering good citizenship and righteousness.
Environmental conditions today do not always help us in our job of child guidance.
Our consideration of the two worlds in which our children live.
One world that we come face to face with can be remembered as having of its part three C's.
First C, crowding in our homes and neighborhoods eliminates the real poise and prayer and serious habits of work and study so necessary for growing children.
Another C, companionship.
You know there are companions of our children less wisely guided than our own that seem to militate against anything like a united family policy taking shape in our homes.
And the last C, crime thrillers on TV and on the radio and in the movies and in the comic books can disturb the sleep that children so badly need and also introduce confused concepts of life and conduct unless our entertainment is carefully screened.
The second world in which our baptized children are citizens is the world of the supernatural.
The world of the spirit because it is less tangible is very often neglected and who can say but that some of our children may see the bright wings and feel the warm breast of the Holy Spirit who as Hopkins says over the bent world broods.
This is the beginning of the story.
On this series in Catholic Child Guidance we hope to talk to you some more about the nature and the needs of children, parent child relationships, methods of discipline or effective handling of children so that you can act on principles and not depend on pat answers in your guidance.
Let's look today at individual differences as they appear with youngsters together in a school.
Last year one day our group of preschool children was discussing God.
We got into this serious matter through many other former discussions when children met together enjoying the social give and take of conversation and an opportunity to have their say.
The following comments were fairly typical of meeting time in preschool.
David, a four year old contributed, God is a good person.
He makes things grow and goes with you every time.
Woody, his playmate, added, God gives everybody babies, puts out the sun and the rain.
Five year old Michael awed at his own contemplation of divinity said, gee, God could even lift the Empire State Building.
And our Claire whispered, God is so pretty.
Yes, these children were telling us what they thought about God, but they were also teaching teacher about themselves.
Each one of these reactions came about because each child is a person and he was speaking in his own right and from what in God he had been impressed.
Their comments showed the children's awareness of and interest in activity, change, achievement.
We also caught overtones of the child's need for security and affection.
You know, right now in childhood, God has a place in their thoughts and hearts.
He belongs along with their interests and daily experiences.
Children come to a knowledge and a love of God as they play and as they ask questions and particularly when they imitate the example of God fearing and God loving people.
And no two of these children do this in exactly the same way.
David, child artist as he is, is comfortable with the thought that God is a good person.
David has begun to understand the how of living, that some things are good and therefore that they should be done.
Goodness is imputed to God.
He has learned that that is God's way.
He thinks God is wonderful too.
He makes things grow and if you knew David as I knew David, you know that he meant that little boys grow into daddies, puppies grow into companionable mascots, seeds grow into fields of daisies.
This little fellow likes people.
At school we often hear him speak about mother and daddy and the baby brother of his nicknamed house breaker John.
And with the final touch of the artist's brush, David paints into his everyday living how nice it is to have God go with you every time.
Woody is a boy who gets things done.
He appreciates God as the great achiever who in his almighty work day puts out the sun and the rain.
David illustrates the craftsman which we can observe in so many children.
Children are busy people, especially if they are in tune with their environment and at ease with the adults around them.
The tools of their craft are their eyes and their ears and their hands, particularly that great gift of language which helps them tell us what they think and feel about their products.
As good craftsmen do, children toss away what they find to be unsuitable in their products, therefore shedding or laying by unmeaningful or immature efforts.
Adults then should not always hammer away at children expecting them to make the same mistake or leave children to their own devices, nor leave them without blueprints, those signposts on the way of adjustment which help these people to grow.
Happiness depends on an atmosphere of firm and consistent yet warm and affectionate guidance.
So God can lift the Empire State Building.
Michael has a flair for the dramatic, doesn't he? Dramatizing the visible world, reaching from the here and the now into the realm of abstract, though nonetheless real, experience.
At three years, a boy can visit with his daddy by saying, why, why, why? At four years, he dramatizes and pushes back the frontiers of his own experience when he plays engineer or takes off his favorite TV entertainer.
At five, he wonders how they made the Empire State Building.
And so these children learn, taking part in life, participating as well as learning in a secondary way from conversation, books, and teachers.
And Claire, God is so pretty.
How many of us wish we could recapture the charm of childhood with its simplicity, its glow of liking things and enjoying the passing present moment, being quiet and calling it good? To bring children into their roles of artist, craftsman, and actor, the job of education is to begin at the point where these children are operating, to begin where they are.
Rich living has its beginning in the four freedoms of childhood.
Freedom, to be happy with God, with adults and their ways, with things that are interesting, wholesome, and safe.
Security then is the frame of reference which helps our children to stretch into maturity.
Freedom, to learn, to experience the beauty of life.
And so, to experience many things, to become oriented into what is expected of them and what will happen as a result of nonconformity.
Belongingness sweetens the cup of learning.
To create freedom to express the many things that they have been impressed by.
Freedom to enjoy the things they enjoy.
To use, neither to abuse nor misuse, persons, places, and things.
Remember the Davids who like good persons, the Woodies who have so much to learn, the Michaels who reach as high as the Empire State Building while their hearts are strong for the things of the spirit and the Claire's who have an affectionate need.
As special guests today, we have with us the NBC News commentator, Mr.
Frank Blair and his wife Lillian.
Good afternoon, sister.
Good afternoon.
I understand that you folks have a particular interest in our series on child guidance.
Well, we certainly do, sister.
I think we have seven good reasons for interest in it.
See, you remind me of my dad.
He never goes anywhere without one of these.
Thank you, sister.
Now, as Mrs.
Blair and I listened and watched throughout the past few minutes, we noted some questions that occurred to us, if you don't mind.
First of all, this ideal of self -expression, sister, isn't this actually the same thing as leaving the child to his own devices? We hear that so very often.
No, leaving the child to his own devices yields spoiled children and we think of it as the indulgent method of child guidance.
Sometimes it can become a serious problem.
For instance, rejection of children has its basis, often, in the guilt that parents experience because they have left the child to its own devices and not being able to face that, that their job of rearing the child has become so very difficult, they feel that the hands -off policy is the very best one.
On the contrary, when we speak of self -expression, we're thinking particularly of the child's abilities, talents, even those developmental tasks that he's busy about learning day by day.
Now, these developmental tasks, sister, do they follow a particular pattern? Yes.
Children are expected to be doing certain things at certain times.
They have their time schedules, too.
At one and a half, we expect the baby to be busy about toddling.
When he's three, we expect him to be asking questions.
We call them chatterboxes.
By the time they're five, saints preserve us.
They're just wild with running and shouting and enjoying big motor activity.
We've had that experience.
Well, sister, all family groups are not alike.
How do we get a blueprint for our particular family situation? You've been looking for a blueprint.
Indeed I have, sister.
We hear this so very often in talking to mothers and dads.
You know, when Mrs.
Blair talks to the neighbor next door, she probably picks up some new plans and new devices, and I imagine you dedicate yourself to that kind of thing for about a week to try to find out if we can succeed using somebody else's technique of child guidance.
You know, desiring the blueprint is the first stage, but you can do better than that.
For years now in this country, child experts have been building in and compiling lots of information that has come about from a scientific study of children through their reports and their investigations, even control studies.
And these things are now made available.
For instance, in California, there is a growth study in process which will grant us knowledge about children right up through the age level.
And in Rochester, Minnesota, the youngsters that are born are being studied for a period of 20 years.
We ought to have many facts and build up a fund of information gradually that people can find and apply.
Are these results available, sister, in printed form? Yes, and I hope during this series to send out a list of books that will, particularly in the area of Catholic child guidance, give people a start on the materials that have been coming on the market to help them do a better, more enlightened job of child guidance.
Of course, we have to apply these things, and it's up to the school teachers and the lay people and parents in the home to understand better and then to give the children the scope that they need to grow.
Well, sister, you tell us to be warm and affectionate with our children, but not to indulge them.
What is the middle of the road in this policy? Say, let me use this seesaw a minute.
The middle of the road policy, of course, is the one that we're looking for.
If an adult is very authoritarian with children, she will rise up high like this, and of course the child becomes submerged into a submissive character.
This child can't think or plan.
He can't work toward any kind of experimentation to find what mistakes he's made or how to do a thing better.
On the contrary, if the adult gives up and goes way, way down on the seesaw, there's a child left alone up in the stratosphere, maybe feeling rejected, feeling completely uncharted, and not too comfortable.
Now what we hope to be able to work out for children in the methods of warmth is that we recognize that these youngsters have needs.
The need is to work through in a permissive atmosphere their dependence upon adults.
For instance, if our way up here, alone in Times Square at night, for instance, I'd be rather confused.
I need somebody to show me around.
Children also, besides needing this warmth, have to have stretching room.
They have to be able to grow up toward maturity in a gradual way.
And I think by now we see that it's up to us to give them guidance so that the culture won't come in and lash against their immaturity.
Sister, what about the old adage that children should be seen but not heard? I think you're saying that we don't want to be bothered by children.
And you know, school teachers feel that way sometimes too.
Being not bothered, I see as a result rather than an aim in education.
We're not bothered about with children if they're well adjusted.
For instance, let's take a hypothetical family.
Over here we have family A.
The children came into the home when they were wanted and they're expected.
They receive good guidance, not only for their mental needs, which we often consider the job to help them learn, but also their physical and emotional, moral, spiritual, social needs are being met.
There is a consistency.
The child expects what he's going to hear in the home.
He knows what will happen when he does not conform.
This child, you say, can grow up in an atmosphere where he will become well adjusted.
And I'd like to say he probably doesn't bother his parents too much.
Then of course, and we all have met this type of family and it means that we get together and talk like this because it is such a problem.
Here's family B.
There is an inconsistency in the guidance.
You might say it's haphazard.
Every man for himself.
The children here are told on Sunday, and you know how important Sunday afternoons are in family living, they're told on Sunday that Aunt Tessie is coming to visit.
So they want the child to either say a poem or play the piano or show off in some way.
They do and think that this is what's expected of them.
Comes Tuesday night and dad is awfully tired and something particularly interesting is coming up on his TV program.
The child is told, go away.
Don't bother me.
Now a youngster like that doesn't know exactly what's a mishap and therefore it's pretty hard for him to grow up within a good atmosphere.
We have to be career parents and get across to our own children that we're going to try to be more consistent and at the same time feel free to have them be with us many times when we're so busy.
Well how then can we plan to have children assume their legitimate role in the family home without overturning our whole lives to them? I can appreciate what you mean there.
And in talking this over I have found it's helpful if we sort of get a little catechism together.
First that parents have to agree.
Mothers and dads should agree on the hours of retiring, choice of companions, allowances, spending money, the kind of thing that entertainment brings be it movies or comics or TV programs.
In other words there are some musts.
Secondly or be in our catechism, every child should understand what is expected of him and also should expect that when he doesn't conform certain things are going to happen.
We protect children against themselves in this way.
Thirdly that in a matter of, it is a matter of justice to encourage children.
Now here I'm talking about rewards but I don't want you to think you have to pay everybody for doing things around the home.
But can't we appreciate that children like ourselves are fighting the world and the flesh and the devil and when they do a pretty good job about it let's praise them and reward them and let them know that we know it's a hard job and that they're doing very well.
Another little word on that, sometimes parents should build up into their vocabularies encouraging statements that bring about cooperation in children.
Just let me say this tiny little bit more, instead of being negative let's be positive and say I know you're trying or it was a mistake wasn't it you'll do better next time.
That kind of thing I don't think we can stress enough.
Then to the child this would be success but what about the parent -sister? Seems to me we've been striving for success for about 20 years.
Let's make it 15 or 13 it's hard to believe.
Success is relative.
A one year old boy is expected to be a baby.
A four or five year old boy is having success and he is successful.
When he's hammering he can get that nail to go right through a piece of wood.
Children when they're painting sometimes are successful when they don't paint.
Even sometimes children can be successful in playing Santa Claus.
Well thank you sister we hope that next week you'll let us visit with you again and help us solve some more of our problems.
Thank you Mr.
and Mrs.
Blair for being with us today and it's our hope that your interest in our problem clinic will be reflected on the home front.
Today we have brought to you three prominent ideas on child guidance.
First concerning the nature of the child.
That the child is active though an immature learner.
We have tried to show you that parents should not be indulgent nor should they be authoritarian in their methods of handling children.
And lastly and quite importantly that we adults as well as children are citizens of both the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth.
We see each child as an individual person moving and growing in his own pace and into his own level of maturity.
Next week we shall continue our study through baptism that great potential in children and develop some other valuable methods of child guidance.
Next week too I hope to give you ten commandments for parents.
Until next week may God be with you and with your children.
Today the Catholic Hour has presented the first in a series of four programs on child guidance featuring Sister Alice Francis of the Sisters of St.
Joseph.
If you would like a copy of today's Catholic Hour TV Washington 5 D .C.
That's Catholic Hour TV Washington 5 D .C.
The Catholic Hour is produced by the National Council of Catholic Men.
Join us next week when Sister Alice Francis will demonstrate tactile guidance with special emphasis on the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.
Your answer Don Pardo.
