All in the Family E-Book

Elizabeth Longford

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 403

Leseprobe

All in the

Family

All in the

Family

Parenting

the 1950s Way

ELIZABETH LONGFORD

FOREWORD BY RACHEL BILLINGTON

To Catherine

First published 1954

This edition published 2008

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port,

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

© Elizabeth Longford, 1954, 2008

Introduction © Rachel Billington, 2008

The right of Elizabeth Longford to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 8170 5

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Foreword by Rachel Billington

Introduction to the Original Edition

1 In Praise of Children

2 The World of Let’s Pretend

3 What Do We Learn from Fantasy?

4 Can We End those Quarrels?

5 ‘I’ve Got Nothing to Do …’

6 Christmas—What Shall We Give Them?

7 Leading Your Child to a Good Book

8 Father Christmas—To Be or Not To Be?

9 Christmas Day Without Tears

10 ‘I’m Giving a Party …’

11 What Are Good Manners?

12 Obedience

13 The Problem of Punishment

14 Rule Without the Rod

15 ‘He’s So Rough …’

16 Jealousy

17 Fear

18 Afraid of the Dark

19 Bedtime

20 A Teenager in the Home

21 New Problems

22 A Later Stage of Discipline

23 Full Life or Family Life—Which Shall I Choose?

24 Full Life or Family Life—Which Would my Children Choose for Me?

25 The Importance of Being Father

26 Father and the Family

Foreword

I was eleven when my mother put together this book. I was number five in a family of eight children, four girls and four boys. We lived in a tall ugly house in Chelsea and in a beautiful Georgian house in Sussex, inherited by my father.

We were a loud, argumentative family; the five youngest, including me, went to Catholic day schools in London. My mother was a woman of great intellect, energy and charm.

If she’d been living now, instead of in the early 1950s, I think it inconceivable she wouldn’t have had a long-lasting political career. She set off to be a politician, standing for parliament as a Labour candidate, but eventually, for a mixture of reasons, she gave it up and turned her attention to her children.

I wouldn’t, however, describe it as all her attention. She remained involved in politics and various public good works. Some of my least comfortable memories as a self-conscious child are of her speaking at fêtes or schools, her voice made strident by the lack of a microphone. Every year she opened our village fête and every year I spent weeks turning myself into a sweetpea or a butterfly in high hopes, if not certainty, of winning the fancy dress competition. As disappointment piled on disappointment, and my sweetpeas elaborated into hollyhocks and my butterflies into bumble bees, I realised at last that my mother would never give her own child a prize.

She did make a point of always being at home at tea-time when we returned from school. She also drove us in a windowless Dormobile van to Sussex every Friday evening, which was heroic considering my habit of being sick over treasured possessions and our joy in quarrelling more or less non-stop. We did stop: once to spend our weekly sweet money and once to eat our picnic of white baps and processed cheese. We were all, I may say, extremely healthy on this diet. My mother’s second-favourite filling was sandwich spread.

Her mothering did not include cooking, cleaning, shopping or washing, which was done by a succession of cooks and au pairs who were loved or tortured by us according to their just desserts—or at least our view of their just desserts. Two of these noble women stayed with us to my parents’ last gasp and are still alive: Gwendolyn and Ellen, I salute your skills.

My mother’s skills were very obvious to us and we were enormously proud of the things she did instead of making us cottage pies. She probably started writing, like so many women, because she could do it in the home. Eventually she became a biographer, writing classic biographies of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington amongst others. Her concentration was so good that she could produce a newspaper article or, in later years, a page or two of a book, with quantities of restless children filling the room.

I can remember very well when she started writing the pieces for Beaverbrook’s Daily Express which eventually were turned into this book, originally titled Points for Parents. We thought it great fun that we were the material for a real book. We didn’t bother to read it, of course, or we would have seen that for every reference to one of our childhood foibles, there were many more taken from her devoted readers’ letters.

My personal copy was signed lovingly with the advice to see p. 134. So I did turn to p. 134 and read: ‘At two years old, Rachel was a fierce biter but has turned into the most calm and sanguine of the children.’ Frankly, I’m not sure which characteristic I prefer.

My mother was an excellent journalist. She brought to her writing her deep sympathy and interest in people—whether they were family or stranger, ninety years old or nine. Even after her death I often meet people who feel they were her best friend because she had helped them in some special, imaginative and loving way.

She brought this approach to her writing about children. Whether she is discussing jealousy, teenage parties, night fears or aggression, she tackles the subject with a mixture of common sense and intelligence. Most important of all, she is determined to see things just as much from the child’s point of view as the mother’s—an attitude remarkable for the time. Although not against discipline when necessary, she assumes the child to be a good, interesting human being capable of every kind of success. In this, the book reflects her own optimistic approach to life, which she never lost over the ninety-six years of her life.

It would be hard to deny that the book is in one sense a period piece. My mother is discussing whether children should be allowed to read comics, rather than whether they should be allowed to play violent computer games. Even television was so new an institution that she didn’t think it worth writing about. The book is aimed at the English middle classes during the middle of the century at a time when houses had pantries and a husband was a remote breadwinner, only called in as a father in the last resort. Famously, my own father once admired a pretty baby in a pram only to be told it was his own child. His pocket money hand-outs included all children in the house to avoid having to pick out his own. Occasionally, my mother’s take on things raises a wry smile. For example she suggests that it is fine for children to read comics as long as they turn to Keats as well. Oh for those halcyon days! So there are those who may be drawn to this book as to an historical document, the record of an era long past, charming but no longer applicable.

But that is to miss two basic points about the book: firstly, her understanding of children’s needs goes far beyond any particular time or place; and secondly, she is able to turn her views into practical advice. I’ll give just one illustration of this which also shows her thoroughness once she got onto a subject she cared about.

My mother believed deeply in the importance of reading, and a love of reading is probably the most important gift she gave all her own children, and possibly the reason so many of us became writers, since reading and writing are inextricably entwined. But her advice is utterly practical and is, as so often in this book, divided into individual points. One section is headed ‘The Art of Reading Aloud’—notice the use of the word ‘Art’!—and throws up no less than eight pieces of advice, all with at least a paragraph of explanation:

1 Have a regular time every day for reading

2 Always have the children really close to you when reading

3 Small children need pictures on every page (publishers note)

4 Don’t try reading long stories aloud till the children are of school age

5 Don’t worry if your children demand to be read the same book over and over again

6 Encourage older siblings to read to younger

7 Reading needn’t stop altogether even when children are in their teens

8 Adults can read aloud to each other too

There follows a list of classic books for younger children, most of which would still be on a contemporary list and, if not, should be.

Her eight rules do not include the joys of reading in the open air. On one memorable occasion she drove us five younger children to Tintern Abbey expressly so that we should read the great poem from the spot where Wordsworth had sat as he composed it. Rain, stinging nettles, barbed wire, a herd of curious bullocks and no certainty where the poet had positioned himself did not deter her. We read the poem; in fact, I read the poem, as proved by a photograph, and if honesty compels me to admit that we all look both bored and rebellious, we never forgot the experience.

Throughout the book, little snippets of brilliance jump off the pages: for those who are worried about children receiving too many presents at Christmas, make sure they give as well as receive—little cheap things or things they have made themselves; if a little boy wants to hit his sister, tell him to pummel the sofa instead; a ten-year-old who cuts his knee gets far more sympathy than a teenager who feels moody and yet the plight of the second is more to be pitied.

As I was growing up, I grew accustomed to peoples’ wondering looks when I told them I was one of eight children. Usually I interpreted this as admiration or even jealousy; sometimes I couldn’t avoid seeing the criticism. I can still remember my outrage when my mother received a letter accusing her of breeding like a rabbit. But nobody ever asked why she wanted so many children nor did I ever ask her.

Looking at this book so many years after it was written, I think the answer is there: my mother thought human life at all stages absolutely fascinating, whether babies, children or adults. Nothing gave her greater pride and pleasure than to bring another human being into the world, then guide their development and growth. This book allows the reader to share her enjoyment and learn from her wisdom.

Rachel Billington September 2008

Introduction to the Original Edition

Dear Fellow Parents,

This book is very unassuming. If I were a qualified doctor, psychiatrist, nurse, teacher or social worker I should not feel so humble. I should feel that my practical experience as a mother had the right kind of backing. As it is, I present my ‘points’, unbacked, to the ordinary non-specialist world from which they come. The world of parents and children; of home. They are part of a mixed harvest gathered over a period of twenty-one years.

Most of them have been published in the Daily Express, to whom my thanks are due for kind permission to use them here, in considerably amplified form.

I am also grateful to the Revd R. Gorman, C.P., Editor of The Sign, New Jersey, U.S.A., for allowing me to include part of an article first published in his magazine.

I suppose there are some advantages in this kind of non-professional book. At least you will get advice based on the experiences of a normal family. We have had the usual ration of ill-health and other troubles. But also as much or more success than we deserved. The parents of these children have had the normal number of outside interests—perhaps rather above the average on the mother’s side, for I have tried at different periods to combine motherhood with a career. But I think I can honestly say that we, like so many thousands of other parents, have tried to put our children’s interests first.

I should add that your letters from which I quote were also written in the atmosphere of ordinary life. I was not appealed to as a scientific expert on children’s upbringing, but simply as another mother interested in the myriad problems of a normal home.

You can see from the small size of this collection that only a tiny fraction of the problems that face us can find a place here. There is no chapter, for instance, devoted to religious teaching. I shall hope to write about this all-important subject on a future occasion. Even the subjects I do touch on are certainly not dealt with exhaustively. But I don’t think this really matters, for a reason I shall now explain.

Personally, I have always been an avid reader of books, magazines and articles about children. I have found there are two different ways in which this reading can be of enormous help. First, we can get concrete advice on particular problems. We can get answers to the actual questions that bother us. That is very useful, and I hope some parents will find some answers in this book. But I’ve never found that was the only pleasure or even chief pleasure I got from reading about children.

My chief delight was in the interest, enthusiasm and increased keenness it generated in me, a mother, for my task of bringing up a family. After a ‘good read’ I would feel a new determination to do better in the future. I would feel encouraged and even excited. All my hopes for this book will be satisfied if it can produce similar enthusiasm for their job in other parents.

I have found the writings and conversation of child psychologists and psychiatrists immensely stimulating and helpful. But in one important matter I believe parents must go beyond them. Mothers and fathers must teach their children to be good. To be well-adjusted and well-balanced is not enough. A well-adjusted person could be extremely selfish. Conversely, some of the saints were maladjusted to a degree. Of course I do not therefore mean that parents should adopt a plan of instilling sanctity through misery. We hope that our children will be happy as well as good. But I do suggest that to regard them as little machines, which we must keep well-oiled and assist to work smoothly for whatever mysterious or inexplicable purpose, is not the full idea of parenthood.

There seems to be a fairly widespread tendency among psychologists to deny that children are ever ‘naughty’ (or for that matter, ever ‘good’). Some of them express this view by saying that they do not believe in ‘original sin’. Most so-called ‘naughtiness’ is due, in their eyes, to the parents’ mishandling. A few go further and admit that the parents are not to blame either, for their parents have in turn mishandled them (I often wonder how far back, on this theory, one has to go to find where the trouble began. Naturally not to our first parents, Adam and Eve, for on this account they were only invented to explain ‘original sin’. Perhaps it all started when some unlucky protoplasm divided itself hurriedly, without due care for the personality of the emergent ego.)

My own view is the accepted Christian one. Namely, that we are all born with a slant towards wrong-doing; but also with free-will and a strong hope of supernatural help. A Christian can easily agree with the psychologists that maladjusted parents are likely to produce maladjusted children. But a Christian parent cannot agree that there is no such thing as a bad child. It is precisely his business to help his family to be good.

Again, this is far from implying that any child is ever bad in an absolute or even predominant sense. I would not agree with one correspondent, a father, who wrote, ‘Some children have not a redeeming feature in their make-up.’ We are all made in the same image, and we must respect our Maker in every human personality. But at certain moments in every child’s life, as in every grown-up’s too, Christian parents are bound to recognise that the devil is having a bit of a break. Of course our own mishandling may have given him his chance. Nevertheless we must face the fact that sometimes he is there. On these occasions our main concern is how to drive him out. And, as I shall hope to show in the chapters that follow, our greatest weapon is love.

It is a doctor’s job to make people healthy, not to make them good. Most psychiatrists have been trained as doctors. Perhaps that is one reason why they sometimes seem to err in reducing genuine problems of morals to technical defects in organising one’s personality.

I must end with a personal note. I have decided usually to call my children by their real names in the pages that follow. The alternatives were to give them noms de plume—a horrid practice—(I once called my daughter Antonia ‘Belinda’ in an article. She strongly objected!) or to refer to them as ‘my five-year-old’, ‘my youngest daughter’, ‘my second son’, etc.—a somewhat clumsy device. It is simpler to use real names, as do so many parents who write to me.

Four of mine are girls and four are boys. Here are their names and ages: Antonia 21; Thomas 30; Patrick 16; Judith 13; Rachel 11; Michael 10; Catherine 8; Kevin 6. The older ones would like to take this opportunity of saying that all the opinions expressed in this book are entirely those of their mother. And I would like, in turn, to thank them for allowing me to use them as raw material, and in many cases for recalling incidents I had forgotten or never known.

My special thanks are due to Antonia for reading this book at every stage, administering exactly the right amount of praise and criticism and seeing it most effectively through the press.

Of my husband, who has helped me unstintingly throughout, I shall only say that in every sense without him this family, and hence this book, could not have existed.

Finally, I return to you, my fellow parents, who with your letters and postcards have contributed any spice of real life there may be in the chapters that follow. Each time I open one of these letters I am more than ever impressed by your determination to give your children the best possible chance in life. The spectacle of your humour, patience and absorbed interest convinces me that the art of family life is not dead. In countless homes it is being studied and practised every bit as devotedly as it was in the past. I hope this book will help you.

We shall never discover a better way of living than in families. And you, who are trying to make family life work in these difficult times, deserve all the help we can give you. The traffic, of course, will not be all one way. I, too, have been helped. For every parent has his own or her own golden touch; a magical power to convey some new aspect of what Elizabeth Barrett Browning called ‘home-talk and blessing’. To all of you I send a grateful salutation.

Elizabeth Pakenham April 1954

1

In Praise of Children

‘It gave us all a good laugh!’ That is the familiar phrase in which parents remember some incidents in the happiest days of their lives, the days when there were children in the home. Children up to mischief, in trouble; doing amazing, amusing, charming, embarrassing, endearing things. That particular episode may have stuck in the memory because of its more than usual outrageousness. All the same, there still comes the cheerful summing-up: ‘Anyway, it gave us a good laugh …’

Children’s Sayings

With a child in the house—or even next door—you need never have a humourless moment. Think of those wise-cracks! Of the almost professional slickness with which the smallest child answers back. A small girl uses the word ‘What?’ Her mother looks at her reprovingly and she promptly explains, ‘The “Beg your pardon” is tired, but the “What?” is not.’

Even when caught red-handed the little smart-alec defends himself with consummate logic and brevity. A four-year-old boy is told to wash his face after breakfast. He picks up the flannel and thinking he is not observed, just dabs his mouth. ‘That’s not the way to wash,’ says mother, who had been watching after all. ‘That was the only part I used,’ says he.

Not all wise-cracks are consciously smart. Children misunderstand or mishear worlds. But the results, for us, are often felicitous. A fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, when looking through a song book, came across ‘Should Auld Acquaintance’. In amazement she exclaimed, ‘Well, I always thought it was “Should All the Quaint ’uns be Forgot!’”

Children with a taste for long words and literary phrases most often make these pleasant mistakes. Antonia, at the age of ten, wanted to call a boy at her school an ‘infant prodigy’. ‘He’s an “infernal reptile”,’ she brought out with emphasis. A Shakespearean villain ‘soliloquising’ on the stage was described by her as a ‘solo-Quisling’. We still use that expressive word. Rachel, trying to make a good impression on her older brothers and sisters at tea one day, remarked sagely, ‘Of course the best part of a lettuce is its “tummy”.’

Then there are those gaffes. No one has ever discovered how to handle the worst of them—perhaps that ‘good laugh’ is the only possible solution. But the mild ones certainly cheer us on our way. A little girl had often seen her mother put broken eggs on one side to use in cakes. One day she watched a neighbour open an egg that was bad and throw it away. ‘My Mummy always puts the bad eggs in the cakes,’ was her comment. My third son Michael was fond of telling new friends that he was born ‘on Mummy’s wedding day—November 3rd’.

Children Are So Helpful

However the enfant terrible often intends to be a ministering angel. There is something irresistible about the child who says ‘Let me help’. But what devastating—and comic—things can happen when he sets about it! A three-year-old was very busy on the stairs, ‘What are you doing?’ called his mother. ‘Only just helping you,’ came the answer. He was scrubbing the stairs with half a pound of lard.

There is nothing small children love more than ‘helping Mummy and Daddy’. We must be prepared to receive their help with heroic fortitude. How would you like your son to announce: ‘I’ve posted your letters all by myself, Mummy’—and then find he had posted them down the drain?

The garden is a favourite place for these exploits. One helpful son watched his father thinning out the parsnips. Later that day he brought indoors all the parsnips that remained. This was called ‘weeding Daddy’s garden’. A two-year-old pulled up a hundred young cabbages that had just been planted out and laid each neatly by its hole, just as they had been before planting.

A mother, waiting impatiently for the grocer to bring some cooking apples, was presented with the whole of her husband’s precious crop of green tomatoes: ‘Me grocer man, Mummy. Bring you lots of apples.’

Sometimes children are inspired to beautify their parents’ gardens—with fatal results. One little boy reset the shallots upside down, ‘because they are prettier that way’. Another horrified his mother by picking off all the tulip heads, only to melt her immediately by pointing to the heap with a sigh of admiration—’Booful, Mum!’

A third spent a busy morning washing the apple trees clean when ‘naughty Daddy’ had covered them with whitewash. Yet another adorned his father’s prize vegetable marrow with a coat of chocolate paint.

Talking of paint, anything connected with mixing, stirring, daubing with brushes, spades or fingers is another favourite way of ‘helping’. How I feel for the parents whose son’s clothes were ruined by painting their hut as ‘a nice surprise’. Or the father who had just laid a cement foundation for his hut, and heard ‘an ominous squelching sound’. There was his son digging out the cement much faster than he had laid it.

Yet we must recognise that it is natural and good for children to make a mess with paint, cement or even mud. So give them as many harmless opportunities as possible for ‘playing in the dirt’, as Hilaire Belloc put it; and if they occasionally seize the wrong chance, try once more to take it with a laugh—as indeed most parents seem to.

Catherine loves ‘helping’ in my shoe cupboard. When I come to put on a pair in a hurry, I find she has done up every buckle, button, strap and lace beforehand. How I abuse those buttons and bows! But I must not abuse her. For this childish urge to help is valuable. It may not help you, but it helps the child. This may happen in at least three ways.

Helping the Child

1 It teaches him to do things by imitating his parents—however inaccurately.

2 It introduces him to a half-way stage between play and work. When a small girl stands beside her mother on a stool at the sink, apron around waist, arms up to the elbows in lather, what is she doing? ‘Playing’ or ‘working’? Neither, and yet both. At any rate, it is an essential step in her development.

3 It trains her for the time—perhaps ten years hence—when her mother will need her help in the home. In the chapter on ‘A Teenager in the Home’, we shall see that this help is not always so easy to get. But if a child has happy memories of the sink at three, she may not hate the sight of it so much later on.

I think the account of ‘helpful’ children I liked best came in a letter from Mrs Lowe, of Cambridge. ‘My son John solemnly told a school friend that he and his sister Hope were both born on a Sunday, “because Mum keeps a shop”.’ The children were delighted to find that even their cat co-operated in the family business. It produced three kittens on a Thursday afternoon—early closing day!

Lastly, what about the children who are not so helpful, either in intention or result? When they eat untidily, drink noisily, interrupt our conversations; combine all the iniquities of Shock-headed Peter, Augustus and Fidgety Phil—can we still praise? At least we can try to keep on smiling as we help them along the road to better things. Sometimes they themselves help us to do so.

Someone told a small girl that it was ‘rude to drink with your nose in the cup’. For weeks afterwards this child carefully ‘took off’ an imaginary nose before a meal and placed it on the table—replacing it later. Picture the consternation in the family when her mother inadvertently threw her ‘nose’ out of the window with the crumbs for the birds.

Perhaps you feel that this story is too old to be characteristic of any but a few exceptional children? You find it hard to believe such behaviour, even of a child—the most imaginative of God’s creatures. But in fact the story is a true one. And it is by no means without parallel. Indeed, nine out of ten children live partly in a world of their own more strange by far than anything we could invent for them. It may be hidden from you. You may not suspect its existence. But it is there. In the next chapter I shall try to enter this world.

To invade the realm of fantasy is to plunge headlong into the child’s own inner life. For what is so deeply internal, so utterly part of himself, as a child’s imagination? And you will see, as you read on, that the fantasy-theme is never wholly absent from this book. Like a revolving light, it will continue to send its flashes across succeeding problems, illuminating them with a beam at once authentic and direct.

2

The World of Let’s Pretend

If you heard that a friend was ‘living in two worlds’ you would pity him deeply and assume he was mentally ill. Yet our children are doing this very thing every day.

Children generally begin to give us hints of their dream world at about two to three years old. Once while I was staying with a friend I noticed that her small daughter kept hopping off into a corner of the room during breakfast. ‘I am laying an egg for your breakfast,’ she explained. Altogether about twenty eggs were laid for us.

Animals seem to dominate the dream world of the youngest children. We have all seen that head popping out from under the dining-room table with the words, ‘I’m a pussy’ or growling that it’s a bear or a lion or a tiger. But these familiar examples are nothing to the host of different animals, many with most peculiar names, which children have imagined themselves to be, or to own. I have come across or been told about a frog, a swan, a monkey, a bird, a calf, a sea-lion, a kangaroo, many horses, a pig, a family of squirrels, a mouse, a cow, a panda, a deer, an elephant, innumerable dogs, a guinea-pig, a hippopotamus, ‘Mr Cobweb’ and his two pigeons, and a bull with the surprising name of ‘Polly’.

Between three and five years old the fantasies become extremely elaborate, varied and amusing. As we shall see, they are worth studying for the light they shed on what is going on inside our children’s heads.

Fantasy Makes Life Exciting

I was once going up to London for the day when Antonia, then four years old, casually remarked, ‘Oh, Tibby and Tello have gone up to London, too.’ ‘Who are Tibby and Tello?’ I asked, properly taken in. ‘Just two friends of mine,’ was the matter-of-fact reply. ‘Tibby’ and ‘Tello’ soon became familiar members of our family circle. They always had a good time, sat up late, went to parties and had lots of new clothes. In fact they led the blissful life of a grown-up in the mind of a four-year-old.

There is no doubt that ‘Tibby’ and ‘Tello’ satisfied her own childish longing for importance and excitement. They provided what we should call ‘vicarious satisfaction’—the satisfaction of our own longings and desires through the life of someone else. To a child, the fact that the ‘someone else’ is purely imaginary matters nothing at all.

My youngest son, Kevin, felt a need, at the tail-end of eight, to bolster up his position in the family. He chose a large grey donkey on wheels—his first Christmas present—on which to build his fantasy. ‘Donkey’, as he was prosaically called, grew from being an ordinary toy into a kind of superman. He had a birthday every day, was several hundred years old (instead of being the youngest) and had millions of pennies of his own (instead of getting a penny a week). Incidentally, small children become aware of the meaning of money far earlier than we sometimes imagine. They soon discover what an important measuring rod it is in the world of man, and adjust their own ideas accordingly.

The rates of pocket-money throughout the family, and the various increases that occur with birthdays, cause many an inferiority complex. In one family the children were given a penny a week for every year of their age. ‘Oh I shall be glad when I’m a hundred years old!’ sighed the youngest. Another ‘youngest son’ was offered, by a kind uncle, the choice of ‘one big penny or two little pennies’. He shocked the elder brothers and sisters by saying without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Two big pennies.’

But this is a digression. The point about ‘Donkey’, as about so many other invisible friends whom children invent, was that he lorded it over all the world, just as Kevin longed to do himself. As time went on ‘Donkey’s’ possessions became more and more vast, his empire more far-flung. He came to own racing cars, trains, aeroplanes. We never passed a stately mansion or handsome park without Kevin saying proudly, ‘That belongs to Donkey; Donkey lives there …’

Fantasies Take the Blame

Children use their fantasies, however, for many things besides giving themselves pleasure. They use them as scapegoats, or to save themselves from getting into trouble. One day I told Antonia to put away her dolls and tidy her toy-cupboard. She protested, and as a last resort brought out, ‘But I really can’t do it! Tibby and Tello simply won’t let me. The toy-cupboard belongs to them, and they don’t like me interfering with their things.’

On another occasion I came into the drawing-room to find a large vase of flowers upset all over the carpet. Thomas, aged two-and-a-half, was standing by, covered in splashes. ‘Oh Thomas,’ I exclaimed, ‘what a mess you’ve made!’ It was only a matter of seconds before Thomas thought of the answer to that one. ‘It wasn’t me, Mummy; it was that teddy-bear who did it.’ Thomas had always detested soft toys. They seemed to give him the creeps and he would shrink if one was offered him to cuddle. But he found the horrid things had their uses—as scapegoats.

A child who manages occasionally to put a quick one across his parents must be allowed his little victory. It is a great mistake to challenge his world of fantasy with a downright denial of it. ‘Of course it wasn’t Teddy, it was you,’ is quite the wrong answer. It is far better to enter into the game and play it with the child. You can achieve the same results in a better way by saying, ‘Well, we must help Teddy to be more careful when he’s in Mummy’s room, with all her best things around.’ The same tactics apply to small children who blame their actual naughtiness or disobedience on some fantasy figure.

It is particularly important not to deny or challenge the child’s dream world when he is using it to escape punishment. This is because a certain element of fear is shown to be present by the very fact of his taking refuge in an invented tale. I do not agree with those who say it is bad for older children (or adults) to feel a sense of guilt. But I do think it is bad to make our children feel afraid of telling the truth for fear of punishment. Thus the fantasy is a good way round the difficulty, both for them and for us. It is quite right to accept the child’s own explanation, however untruthful it sounds. For you will be helping him to confess in a symbolic way, that he has done wrong (if indeed it is wrong, and not just an accident). Beneath the surface of his fantasy there will be tacit agreement between you and him about the true situation. As one parent put it, writing from Edinburgh, ‘There’s always a natural kind of half-way mark between believing in fantasy and not believing, when the child pretends to believe.’ Small children should be allowed to develop naturally out of this stage of half-belief in the world of ‘Let’s pretend’, into the final stage of full belief in the world of reality, without having the process rushed at awkward moments. These awkward moments are so often the ones when they feel afraid and guilty. Their instincts are to dive for cover to the world of make-believe. Do not brutally yank them back into the world of reality.

(These remarks, of course, only apply to small children. I would not for a moment encourage parents to let older children escape from moral decisions with pretence or evasion. Though there are still ways and ways of teaching the moral law to children, whatever their age. But that is another, and a bigger question.)

Study Your Child’s Fantasies

At a later stage, say from four to five onwards, the type of fantasy may change again. Children begin to identify themselves with real human beings, instead of mysterious ‘friends’ and animals. These people are very often the heroes of romance or legend, the cinema or television. A friend’s small boy likes to call himself ‘Gipsy Boy’. The name ‘Gipsy Boy’ stands for everything carefree—the freedom and independence that every child longs for. A child who chooses to be a gipsy is giving a big, useful hint to his parents. When you want to give him an outing, take him somewhere where he can climb trees and make a bonfire. Don’t dress him up and take him for a walk ‘round the shops’.

Fantasies, at whatever stage, can be most helpful to parents trying to understand their children and bring them up in the best way. It is, indeed, impossible to overrate the value of fantasies in this direction. Happy the parent who has a child with an intense gift of imagination! Among other things, a fantasy can show observant parents the secret and otherwise hidden hopes and fears which their child would never consciously reveal to them.

Lindsay, a small boy of three-and-a-half, lived near Derby and had an imaginary friend called ‘Bedia’ who came to visit him regularly in a horse-drawn cart, from a village twelve miles away. Lindsay’s parents noticed that ‘Bedia’ never stayed for the night, but always had to ‘take the horse home to his stable’. In this piece of make-believe Lindsay was clearly revealing his twin and conflicting instincts. One was a longing for freedom from his parents and connection with the wide world. This was represented by the coming of ‘Bedia’ from twelve miles away. The contrary instinct was to remain in the shelter of his parents’ home, and found its expression in ‘Bedia’s’ care never to be caught away from home at night time. But as this instinct was of a fearful nature it had to be concealed and could not even be expressed at one degree from Lindsay himself, e.g. through the feelings of ‘Bedia’. It had to be two degrees away, disguised as the horse’s need for his stable! Lindsay’s parents were wise to take the hint and refrain from trying to push independence upon him too quickly—a course that is particularly tempting to parents of only children who are afraid of mollycoddling and becoming possessive.

I have received a large number of letters which all show in varying but similar ways how a child uses fantasy as a buffer between himself and the growing strains and difficulties of the real world. Take for instance, the rush and hustle of modern transport. We adults are continually aware of the added strain in our lives created by bus queues, crowded platforms at stations, or fast cars. How often do we think of the effect of these things on a child of three or four, who is asked to battle with them several times a week?

A favourite form of defence-mechanism is the imaginery ‘friend’ or ‘family’ who gets left behind in the street or off the bus or train. In these cases the child, among other things, is giving his parents a broad hint not to hurry him too much, to go at his slower pace and not at the speed of life as it whirls by in the 20th century.

Here are some examples of this kind of fantasy. From London comes the story of a two-year-old who invented a family of boys called ‘Bunna’, ‘Bourne’, ‘Dee’ and ‘Tommy’. ‘They had meals and were bathed at the same time as he was,’ writes his mother. ‘Many a time I have had to recross a busy road because one of the boys had been left behind and would get run over if he crossed alone.’

Now the mother of a three-year-old from Salfrod. ‘My little boy used to take out an imaginary “Friend” holding him by the hand. Imagine how I felt when having come out of a shop and carefully crossed the road, my son started to cry because he had left his friend in the shop. I tried to pretend we were still holding Friend’s hand, but no. We had to go back across the road to the shop, collect nothing and lead it on our way. Then he was happy again.’

A third instance of the same thing comes from a Sheffield mother. ‘Anne, aged three, when accompanying me on walks with her baby brother, always pushed an imaginary pram. One day we called at the grocer’s and left the ‘pram’ outside. As we were returning home she suddenly stopped and said in an anguished tone, ‘Oh, Mummy, I’ve left my pram at the grocer’s!’ Back we had to go to the spot where she’d left it. She kicked off the ‘brake’ and rejoined me with a look of intense relief and joy on her face.’ One can sympathise with these mothers whose shopping expeditions were thus prolonged by imaginary companions. But one must also admire them for their patience and self-control in not rudely breaking the tiresome fantasy. Later they will reap their reward in happy, well-integrated children.

Bill, aged, three, who led an imaginary bull called ‘Polly’ around on a real piece of string, showed an interesting variation on this same theme. His mother writes that ‘Polly’ was a respected member of the family, ‘and a great help in making a dreamy three-year-old walk briskly. But try and hurry Bill into a car and inevitably ‘Polly’ got left out, and the door had to be opened again. I was once reproached with pinching ‘Polly’s’ tail in the door by a too hasty slam.’ This story shows that sudden slamming of the car door—as I’ve always suspected—must frequently take small children by surprise and give them a momentary shock. Bill did not mind being hurried on his feet, but cars were a worry.

Perhaps the most common use of all for an invented ‘friend’ is to ease the loneliness of an only child. I have had scores of letters describing this type of fantasy, many of them ending with the characteristic comment that the arrival of a baby brother or sister, the beginning of school life, or a visit to the children’s ward of a hospital, have provided the real companionship which finally brought the fantasy to an end.

Here is a typical letter from Southport. ‘One day as I was preparing dinner in the kitchen Valerie, aged three, said someone was at the front door. I went and opened it, but no one was in sight. I was about to close it when Valerie said, “Oh Mummy, it’s Tatterwid and he wants to come in and play with me.” So I opened the door again and her face lit up; she looked so pleased. I told her to call him in, which she did. I went back to the kitchen, while she played quite happily in the living-room, showing her new friend all her toys, talking to him all the time. A little while later she came and said, “There’s lots more Tatterwids outside who want to come in, Mummy.” So once again we trotted to the front door and let them all in. I couldn’t help laughing, she was so serious about it all. As time went by these friends visited us frequently and their names were now Begamp, Tempest and Tatterwide. We used to ask what they were like and whether they were all boys, but she would only smile and say they had run down the “grid” (imaginary) behind the settee.

I got worried in the end she was so serious about it, and when asked to do something that didn’t please her, she would reply, “Oh, Begamp wouldn’t like me to do that!” I mentioned it to the welfare officer who kindly informed me it was quite natural and she was a little lonely. Now she has a two-year-old brother Paul, and Begamp, Tempest and Tatterwid are things of the past.’

3

What Do We Learn from Fantasy?

The reaction of parents to their children’s imaginary worlds varies a good deal. At one end of the scale comes an anonymous correspondent who sees in these imaginative children the geniuses of the future—the Whittles, Newtons, Shakespeares, Flemings, Nightingales. He urges parents and others to give their fantasies every possible encouragement, so that the day may never come when he has to sign himself ‘Alas No Wonderland’.

At the other end of the scale come the considerable number of parents who are made distinctly uneasy by the intensity of their children’s belief in unreality. The letter from Valerie’s mother is an example. She was fortunate to have a welfare officer to advise her. Another mother wrote to me whose two daughters were both born cripples. She was disturbed by the fact that they played elaborate games of make-believe up to the ages of seven and nine, always pretending they were Eastern dancers or fairy princesses. She had never heard of the same thing in other children, and feared that her husband was right when he said they were ‘cracked in the head like their mother!’

Many parents seem to find the child’s fantasy easier to ‘take’ if there is at least some sign of a concrete object involved, and not just the thinnest of thin air. A letter from Waltham Cross puts this point of view. ‘My little girl at two had her own make-believe world and an invisible girl-friend she called Jean. She would always be walking round the room with hand out-stretched, talking to Jean and holding her hand. I worried about it at first, as I have an older boy who never talked to himself. So I bought her a big doll and told her to call the doll Jean. Then she could talk to someone we could all see!’

In actual fact a child’s fantasy is equally ‘real’ or ‘unreal’, silly or understandable (whichever way you look at it) whether he bases it on a concrete object or on nothing visible at all. It may be less eerie for the parent, but it makes no difference to the child. Some children like something visible to hitch it on to; others do not. Kevin had a toy donkey, Antonia had nothing. On the whole I have found it is more common to have nothing. And when a real object is used it is generally of the more sketchy and symbolic kind. One child pulled along a stalk of real grass, at the end of which was Fido an imaginary dog. (Fido would lie under the bus seat and cause great embarrassment when he was told to keep still, for the conductor would then come up and ask for his fare!).

Another child, who longed for a companion, invented a girl-friend who was sometimes embodied in the visible form of her mother’s mop. ‘She would borrow my mop, turn it upside down and gently twist or shake it, to give the illusion of hair on a taller girl, and she would hold extensive conversations with this friend.’