Waterbury Democrat., 1901-07-20
CHILDREN AND THEIR PETS.

There is nothing more unsafe than to dogmatize on the subject of children,
 unless it is to predict the weather for the coming week. The most sage and
 conscientious parent may have child
 which upsets all known nursery con- ventions, and the person who is care less in every daily habit may find him. self, some day possessed of a small Puritan descendant whose every look
 and act is q reproach Nobody can tell On general principles, children
 are benefited by having animals to
 play with and take care of, but it is
 not one of those benefits which de- scend like the sun and rains without trouble to anyone. It has to be work ed for.
 There is certain amount of the savage in most children, and the sav-
 age is natural Ishmaelite. His
 instinct is to fight, to be suspicious, and to tyranniZe on the theory that if
 he does not prove his strength he will
 be abused. Those so-called savage tribes ill which different principles pre-
 vail will usually be found 10 have
 some sort of civilization to their credit.
 The chisl is necessarily a subject,
 obliged to the will of his superiors, and
 to do thousand things which he does not particularly like, and the necessity
 Tor which he cannot in the nature of things see. Therefore, his impluse is to take it out on somebody. The
 only somebody at hand, when he is in
 bad humor, may be the cat, and he
 consequently takes it out on the cats
 tail. If she be a patient animal she
 will submit, without resistance; other wise she will give the youngster a 1e.-- son which he will not soon forget If she submits he is likely to be carried
 away by the love of experiment and keep on teasing her until she resents 1 it vi ct claws, or uns.l his natural l guardians intervene and stop the in vestigation.
 A great deal of the cruelty and de- struct1yeness of children is simply ex- pertinent. The infant has all the laws of the universe to discover, and among them are the laws of animal and hu-
 man psychology. He goes about in- vestigating these in much the same way as his elders. do. Few of us have come by our knowledge of human na- ture without somebody's suffering for 1 it directly or indirectly. How do we know that men or women suffer in any given situation unless we ourselves
 have experiences or caused, or seen in
 one near to us, such unhappiness? The question is, then, how to teach | the child what he needs to know with
 as little cost to himself and others as
 possible. Some parents are injudicious in fostering the child's natural notion that everything is against him. When | he bumps his head on the chair they sympathetically cry, Naughty chair to hit baby!' When the. kitten scratches | him they box the kittens ears and con dole with the sufferer. But even when |. this is not done, the child's natural barbarous instincts will crop out sometimes.
 One way to teach the child the value, 1 of animal life is to give him the prop l erty interest as an influence. If he is 1 given one out of flock of chickens, or pair of pigeons or a canary-prefer- l ably something which cannot easily be
 mauled and abused -he will usually de | yelop sort of interest in the animal
 which will prevent his knocking it in | the head. If there is more than one child in the family and each has it's
 share in the livestock of the place the 1 case is all the better. Each will then
 have the instinct of protecting it's pet
 from possible encroachments by the l others, and the public sentiment in the
 little community will condemn teasing and worrying. If the child really does | J h,
 monly better the instruction of his parents, and rebel at having the horse l whipped or the chickens killed for din
 ner. This is inconyenient now and
 then, but not nearly as inconvenient as
 the opposite extreme would De. Still another plan which may be fol
 lowed with older children is that of in- I structions as to the habits and nature I of animals. The untrained instinct for l investigation will then receive legiti- mate exercise, and a great deal of
 children's mischief is simply the exu-
 berance of perfectly legitimate inn
 pulses, which, if guided aright, would
 make a well-behaved troop of lads and | lasses out of a restless mob of young vandals. The child should be encour- aged to study nature by watching the
 ways of birds and animals, not in | cages, but out of doors, by tanning a l squirrel or bird without imprison-
 ing it, by feeding animals and taking
 care of them. If it is absolutely inn possible to teach the child to be kind
 to his pets, perhaps it is wise for him
 not to have any, at least of the kind
 which he can easily abuse, or which
 will endure a great deal without being
 actually killed.
 LIST OF. PATENTS.