The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1897-07-20
CH1LDREN's LACK OF MANNERS

The prevalent bad manners of many
children-their inexcusable rudeness
in raising their clamorous voices and
demanding attention in the very pres
ence of a guest or caller-their persis
tent teasing and crying until their
claims are met-Who is responsible for
all this, if not the parents themselves9
A HottentOt father or mother would
scarcely allow to pass unrebuked what
many an American parent endures
passively, sven willingly.
Mark Twain's amusing magazine
article a few years ago on The Training
of Parents was written from the pro-
phetic mind.
Says an exchanges: ''It is a notorious
fact that the present generation of
parents far from being irascibly irri-
tated by children's noise and bad man,
ners, suffer it gladly. There is not a
hotel piazza, nor a gangWay, nor a
steamboats, deck from one end of the
United States to the other, where con
slant evidence of the fact may not be
collected. Noise, racket, contradic
ton, impertinence, impudence, and
even insult-all are endured from the
children with a patience which in
parents is a new thing. For lr~rltablllty,
shortness of temper, gh,strung
nerves., and quickness of resentment,
one must look on the child's side not
the parents. A person trained to en-
dure children as now brought up can
endure anything"
While the above may seem only the
pessimistic view Of a dyspeptic or a
crusty old bachelor, yet there are
surely some grains of truth in it. Many
city apartment houses are rigid in
their exclusion of children, and some
Summer hotels forbid the use of the
halls and verandas for play to the
children among their guests, hard and
.unfeeling as this may seem to the
doting mothers. Yet, have not other
guests a right to be considered9-the
nerve-racked invalid, the exhausted
teacher, the brain. weary literary
worker, whose only salvation lies in
peace and quietness during the brief
weeks of vaction9
In the children advanced beyond the
kindergarten age-for tits as true as
tits pitiful that the rudeness and clamor
referred to in the foregoing paragraphs
are Gv no means confined to little ones
of tender years-onem may well wonder
if the high pressure school system is not
largely responsible for nervous irrita-
bility and consequent bad manners.
The writer herself has seen, on q slate
brought home by a little girl Of eight
or nine, examples in division in which
the divisors contained from five to
eight figures, and the child was ex.
pected to work at least half a dozen
such examples before the next nor
opening of school.
Whatever the chief cause, it is
patent to the most superficial observer
that q new Reign Of Terror, so to
speak, has been inaugurated, with
many more heads to the government
than in those far-Cf days of Murat,
Danton and Robespierre.
IF you don't let me have it, I'll get
a dancing SPELL" was the threat once
held over the head of a mother by a
small girl. Comment is needless. The
dancing spell" evidently had only to
be mentioned, in order to bring the
parent to terms.
They do these things differently in
France. Says a writer of that nation:
mo one goes into e~cstacies owe
French children-they do not feel that
they are the rulers Of the household.
They soon learn to keep their place,
and seem to understand that though
their mamma may give herself up to
them entirely, they are not equally in
5eresting to the remainder of the
If called to the drawing room,
they come in washed and combed, bow
politely, and leave before becoming
tiresome. They are not allowed to
come to the table, even in the strictest
intimacy, until they can behave
properly, be silent, and commit no