"Too many parents are worrying and overburdening themselves to lift all the rocks out of the children's road of life instead of training the children to be able to clear their own roads, fight their own battles and make their own way," writes a mother, apropos of Tad's letter of a while ago. " So much self-sacrifice for children seems to me a great loss; a selfishness, for the children would get so much more from a mother who kept interests of her own." writes another. "The primary object of life is not self-sacrifice, but self-fulfillment."
This lifting the rocks is the big task of parenthood. There are so many kinds of rocks in the path of life, and some of them need to be lifted. The question is which ones should be lifted. If we mainly strive to lift financial rocks and provide material comforts, we may not be doing our children the service we intend. For it is a peculiar attribute of money that it brings most satisfaction to him who has earned it.
But there are character rocks to lift. We can, with what meager knowledge and poor ability we have, try to lessen the frailties and faults which our children inherited from us and protect them from our mistakes. We can never lift aside all such rocks, for personality is a mysterious compound of impulses, cravings and ambitions, and it is so hedged and walled about by reserve we never children well enough to protect them altogether.
Must Lift for Themselves
Then there are achievement rocks. Most of these the children must lift for themselves, but we must pick the rocks which are adjusted to their strength, and we must be ready to help them until they learn to help themselves.
Whenever we talk of lifting these rocks we talk of self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. But nobody knows what those words mean. We interpret them differently. Sometimes I think self-development is only achieved through much apparent self-sacrifice. Sometimes "self-fu1fillment" is only an excuse to cut loose from irksome responsibilities. But most of us agree that there is in the average life a line beyond which self-sacrifice should not go, for the good of all individuals concerned. Each of us must fine his own line. In discussing such a question we understand each other so. We seem to speak the same language, but with a different accent.
"Scotland's a-Burning"
It reminds me of a story Grandmother Kate used to tell of her childhood. At one of the neighborhood parties the game of "Scotland's a-burning" was being played. Grandmother Kate, standing next to a carpet-topped, raw-boned maiden afflicted with a heavy cold, modeled her singing after her neighbor and caroled trustfully in a clear, treble voice, "Scotland's a bird-egg!" All she got for her sincere expression of the music as she understood it was a glare from carrot-top and snickers from the rest of the crowd, and her mother hastily ushered her into a back room for explanations.
It is the same way when we talk of child training. We are all trying to do our best and give our children the best, but when We try to put our motives into words, it seems as though part of us sing "Scotland's a-burnin" and the rest sing "Scotland's a bird-egg!" and then we glare at each other, but it is all the same song.
And I suppose the we'll go on singing same song, with different accents to the end of time.