Frank R. Stockton - "A Jolly Fellowship"

Unknown - "Pages for Laughing Eyes"

William Wordsworth - "Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I."

Feodor Sologub - "The Created Legend"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Mother and Her Child

W >> William S. Sadler >> The Mother and Her Child




When the little one is discovered to be nervous, fretful, impatient,
and easily irritated early in the morning, it should be left alone in
its bed or in the nursery until it quiets down. If it has a good,
healthy crying spell, leave it alone. Let it early get used to living
with itself--teach the little fellow to get along with the world as it
is--and you will do a great deal toward preventing a host of
neurasthenic miseries and a flood of hysterical sorrows later on in
life.

You must not expect to train the nervous child by the simple and easy
methods which are successful in the case of a normal child; that is,
you cannot repeat a simple discipline two or three times and have the
child learn the lesson. In the case of the high-strung nervous child
it requires "line upon line and precept upon precept;" for, whereas a
normal child will respond to a certain discipline after it is repeated
a half dozen times, the nervous child will require the persistent
repetition of such a discipline from twenty-five to one hundred times
before the lesson sinks into his consciousness sufficiently to enable
him to gain control of his erratic and unbalanced nervous mechanism.


SPOILING THE CHILD

As bad as all spoiling methods are in child culture, they are
decidedly disastrous--almost fatal--in the case of the nervous child;
and yet it is these delicate, sensitive, cute little things that are
the very ones who are most frequently the worst spoiled. Nervous
children simply must not be played with all the time. They must be by
themselves a great deal, at least this is true in their earlier years.

The nervous baby must early learn absolute respect for authority, so
that what it lacks in its own nervous control may be partially made up
for by parental suggestion and discipline. Of course, as suggested in
a later chapter, the more ideal methods of suggestion, education, and
persuasion should be employed in your efforts to secure obedience and
promote self-control; but, when through either the deep-rooted
incorrigibility of a child, or the inefficiency of the parent's
efforts in the employment of suggestion--no matter what the cause of
the failure of your ideal methods to control temper, stop crying, or
otherwise put down the juvenile rebellion, whether the child has been
spoiled on account of company, sickness or through your
carelessness--when you cannot effectively and immediately enforce your
will any other way, do not hesitate to punish; spank promptly and
vigorously and spank repeatedly if necessary to accomplish your
purpose. You must not fail in the case of the nervous child to
accomplish exactly what you start out to do.

When the little fellow wakes up in the night and cries, see if he
needs anything and administer to him. If you have previously tried the
method of letting him "cry it out," which is usually entirely
sufficient in the case of a normal child, and if such treatment does
not seem to cure him, then speak to him firmly, give him to understand
that he must stop crying, and if he does not, turn him over and
administer a good spanking--and repeat if necessary to get results. In
dealing with a nervous child we must follow the directions on the
bottle of the old-fashioned liniment "rub in until relief is
obtained."

No "spoiling practices" should be countenanced in the case of nervous
children. They should be taught to sleep undisturbed in a room in the
presence of usual noises. They should not be allowed to grow up with a
sleeping-room always darkened by day and a light to sleep by at night.
They should be taught to sleep on without being disturbed even if
someone does enter the room; they should be taught to sleep normally
without having to quiet and hush the whole neighborhood.


PLAYMATES

The early play of nervous children should be carefully supervised and
organized. Under no circumstance should they be allowed exclusively to
play with children younger than themselves. They must not be allowed
to dictate and control their playmates; it is far better that they
should play at least a part of the time with older children who will
force them to occupy subordinate roles in their affairs of play; in
this way much may be accomplished toward preventing the development of
a selfish, headstrong, and intolerant attitude. When the nervous child
is miffed or peeved at play and wants to quit because he cannot have
his way, see to it that he quickly takes his place back in the ranks
of his playfellows, and thus early teach him how to react to defeat
and disappointment. The nervous child must not be allowed to grow up
with a disposition that will in some later crisis cause him to "get
mad and quit."

If the nervous baby has older brothers and sisters, see to it that he
does not, through pet and peeve and other manifestations of temper,
control the family and thus dictate the trend of all the children's
play. Early train him to be manly, to play fair, and when his feelings
are hurt or things do not go just to his liking, teach him, in the
language of the street, to be "game." It is equally important that
the little girls be taught in the same way how to take disappointment
and defeat without murmur or complaint.


TEACHING SELF-CONTROL

When nervous children grow up, especially if their parents are well to
do, and they are not forced to work for a living, they are prone to
develop into erratic, neurasthenic, and hysterical women, and
worrying, inefficient, and nervous men; and in later years they throng
the doctor's offices with both their real and imaginary complaints.
These patients always feel that they are different from other people,
that something terrible is the matter with them or that something
awful is about to happen to them. Their brains constantly swarm with
fears and premonitions of disease, disaster, and despair, while their
otherwise brilliant intellects are confused and handicapped because of
these "spoiled" and "hereditary" nervous disturbances--with the result
that both their happiness and usefulness in life is largely destroyed.

The fundamental abnormal characteristic of that great group of
nerve-patients who throng the doctor's office is sensitiveness,
suggestibility, and lack of self-control. Sensitiveness is nothing
more or less than a refined form of selfishness, while lack of
self-control is merely the combined end-product of heredity and
childhood spoiling. I am a great believer in, and practitioner of,
modern methods of psychological child culture, but let me say to the
fond parent who has a nervous child, when you have failed to teach the
child self-control by suggestive methods, do not hesitate to punish,
for of all cases it is doubly true of the nervous child that if you
"spare the rod" you are sure to "spoil the child."

Let me urge parents to secure this self-control and enforce this
discipline before the child is three or four years of age; correct the
child at a time when your purpose can be accomplished without leaving
in his subconscious mind so many vivid memories of these personal and,
sometimes, more or less brutal physical encounters. Every year you put
off winning the disciplinary fight with your offspring, you enormously
increase the danger and likelihood of alienating his affections and
otherwise destroying that beautiful and sympathetic relationship which
should always exist between a child and his parents. In other words,
the older the child, the less the good you accomplish by discipline
and the more the personal resentment toward the parent is aroused on
the part of the child.


CRIME AND INTEMPERANCE

While it is generally admitted that feeble-mindedness lies at the
foundation of most crime, we must also recognize that failure on the
part of parents to teach their children self-control is also
responsible for many otherwise fairly normal youths falling into crime
and intemperance. The parents of a nervous child must recognize that
they will in all probability be subject to special danger along these
lines as they grow up. The nervous child, as it grows up, is quite
likely to be erratic, emotional, indecisive, and otherwise easily
influenced by his associates and environment.

Nervous children are more highly suggestible than others, and if they
have not been taught to control their appetites and desires, their
wants and passions, they are going to form an especially susceptible
class of society from which may be recruited high-class criminals,
dipsomaniacs, and other unfortunates.

It is true that any spoiled child, however normal its heredity, may
turn out bad in these respects if it is not properly trained; but what
we are trying to accomplish here is to emphasize to parents that the
nervous child is doubly prone to go wrong and suffer much sorrow in
after life if he is not early and effectively taught self-control.


UNSPOILING THE CHILD

If the child of nervous tendencies forms the habit of crying, sulking,
or otherwise misbehaving when it is denied its desires, or when
something it wants done is not immediately attended to, it will be
found an excellent plan simply to stand still and let the little
fellow have it out with himself, in the meanwhile kindly reminding him
to say, "please mamma," "please papa," etc. I well remember one
nervous little girl who would yell at the top of her voice and become
black in the face the moment she wanted a door opened or anything
else. A few weeks of patience and firmness on the part of the mother
entirely cured her of this unbecoming trait.

As a rule, it will be found best not to argue with the nervous child.
The moment your commands are not heeded, when you have admonished the
child once or twice without effect, take him quickly to the crib or
the nursery and there leave him alone, isolated, until he is in a
state of mind to manifest a kindly spirit and an obedient disposition.
It is an excellent plan quietly and quickly to deprive such children
of their pleasures temporarily, in order to produce thoughtfulness;
and these methods are often more efficacious than the infliction of
varying degrees of pain under the guise of punishment.

Nervous children must be taught to go to sleep by themselves. They are
not to be rocked or allowed to hold the hand of the mother or the
caretaker. The nervous baby should not be encouraged to exhibit its
cuteness for the delectation of the family or the amusement of
strangers and visitors. He should be especially trained in early and
regular habits, taking particular pains to see that bed wetting and
similar bad habits are early overcome; otherwise, he may drag along
through early life and become the cause of great embarrassment both to
himself and his parents.

The control of these nervous habits is somewhat like the management of
the slipping of the wheels of a locomotive when the track is wet and
slippery. The little folks ofttimes endeavor to apply the brakes, but
they are minus the sand which keeps the wheels from slipping. The
parent, with his well-planned discipline, is able to supply this
essential element, and thus the child is enabled to gain a sufficient
amount of self-control to prevent him making a continuous spectacle of
himself.

When nervous children do not walk or talk early, let them alone. Of
course, if later on it is discovered that they are manifestly backward
children, something must be done about it; but if the nervous child is
encouraged to talk too soon there is great danger of his developing
into a stutterer or a stammerer.


PREVENTING HYSTERIA

Every year we have pass through our hands men and women, especially
women, who possess beautiful characters, who have noble intellects,
and who have high aims and holy ambitions in life, but whose careers
have been well-nigh ruined, almost shattered, because of the
hysterical tendency which ever accompanies them, and which, just as
soon as the stress and strain of life reaches a certain degree of
intensity, unfailingly produces its characteristic breakdown; the
patient is seized with confusion, is overcome by feeling, indulges in
an emotional sprawl, is flooded with terrible apprehensions and
distracting sensations, may even go into a convulsive fit, and, in
extreme cases, even become unconscious and rigidly stiff.

Now, in the vast majority of cases, if this nervous patient, when a
baby, had been thoroughly disciplined and taught proper self-control
before it was four years of age, it would have developed into quite a
model little citizen; and while throughout life it would have borne
more or less of a hysteria stigma, nevertheless it would have
possessed a sufficient amount of self-control to have gotten along
with dignity and success; in fact, the possibilities are so
tremendous, the situation is so terrible in the case of these nervous
babies, that we might almost say that, in the majority of such,
success and failure in life will be largely determined by the early
and effective application of these methods of preventive discipline.

I was recently consulted by a patient whose nervous system was in a
deplorable state, who had lost almost complete mental control of
herself, and who really presented a pathetic spectacle as she told of
the fears and worries that enthralled her. In an effort to get to the
bottom of this patient's heredity I had a conference with her father,
and I learned that this woman, in her childhood days, had been
constantly humored--allowed to have everything she wanted. She was a
delicate and sensitive little thing and the parents could not bear to
hear her cry, it made her sick, it gave her convulsions, it produced
sleepless nights, it destroyed her appetite, and so she grew up in
this pampered way. The father recognized the greatness of his mistake
and he told me with tears in his eyes how, when the ringing of the
school bell disturbed his little girl baby, he saw the school
directors and had them stop ringing the bell, and he even stopped the
ringing of the church bells. He was an influential citizen and could
even stop the blowing of the whistles if it disturbed his precious
little daughter.

And so this woman has grown up with this nervous system naturally
weakened by heredity and further weakened by "spoiling"; and fortunate
indeed she will be if off and on the most of her life she is not
seeking the advice of a physician in her efforts to gain that
self-control which her parents could have so easily put in her
possession at the time she was three or four years of age, if they had
only spent a few hours then, instead of the many months and years that
subsequently have been devoted to medical attention.


METHODS OF DISCIPLINE

We run into many snags when we undertake to discipline the nervous
baby. The first is that it will sometimes cry so hard that it will get
black in the face and may even have a convulsion; occasionally a small
blood vessel may be ruptured on some part of the body, usually the
face. When you see the little one approaching this point, turn it over
and administer a sound spanking and it will instantly catch its
breath. This will not have to be repeated many times until that
particular difficulty will be largely under control.

It will be discovered when you undertake to break a bad habit in the
case of a spoiled child who is of a nervous temperament, that your
discipline interferes with the child's appetite and nutrition. The
delicate little creature who has perhaps already given you no end of
trouble regarding its feeding, will begin to lose in weight, and even
the doctor often becomes so alarmed that he advises against all
further methods of discipline. We think this is usually a mistake.
Both the nutrition and discipline should be kept in mind and carried
harmoniously through to a successful finish. It will be necessary
during such troublous times to conserve both the physical and nervous
strength of the child; it should not be allowed to run about and
over-play, as such high strung children often do. It should be given
a reasonable amount of physical exercise, and two or three times a day
should have short periods of complete isolation in the nursery, where
it may quietly play with its blocks and toys, sing and croon or talk
as the case may be, but should be left entirely alone.

Wise efforts should be put forth to keep the feeding up to the proper
number of calories, and to see, if the child does not gain during this
disciplinary struggle, that at least it does not lose; and I give it
as my experience that I have yet to see a case in which both the
child's nutrition and discipline cannot be efficiently maintained at
one and the same time, though it does sometimes require adroit
scientific and artistic management. But the game we are playing is
worth the effort--the battle must be fought--and it can be fought with
the least suffering and sorrowing the earlier the conflict is waged to
a successful issue.

I am decidedly opposed to allowing these young nervous children to
over-play and thus wear themselves out unduly. This over exhaustion
sometimes renders the training of the child much more difficult, as it
is a well-known fact that we are all much more irritable and lacking
in self-control when we are tired, more especially when we are
over-tired and fatigued.

Let me emphasize the importance and value of proper periods of
isolation--complete rest and partial physical relaxation. You can take
a child who has gotten up wrong in the morning, whose nerves are
running away with him, who is irritable, crying at everything that
happens, who even rejects the food prepared for him, and who, when
spoken to and commanded to stop crying, yells all the louder--I say
you can take such a little one back to its crib, place it in the bed
and smilingly walk out of the room. After a transient outburst of
crying, within a very few minutes you can return to find a perfect
little angel, winsome and smiling, happy and satisfied, presenting an
entirely different picture from the little culprit so recently
incarcerated as a punishment for his unseemly conduct.

But let me repeat that while such methods of discipline often work
like magic on normal children, they must be repeated again and again
in the case of one who is nervous in order to establish new
association groups in the brain and to form new habit grooves in his
developing nervous system.


RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY

There are just two things the nervous child must grow up to respect;
one is authority and the other is the rights and privileges of his
associates. The nervous child needs early to learn to reach a
conclusion and to render a decision--to render a decision without
equivocation--to move forward in obedience to that decision without
quibbling and without question; that is the thing the nervous man and
woman must learn in connection with the later conquest of their own
nerves; and a foundation for such a mastery of one's unruly nerves is
best laid early in life--by teaching the child prompt and
unquestioning obedience to parental commands. At the same time,
endeavor so to raise the child that it acquires the faculty of quickly
and agreeably adapting itself to its environment, at the same time
cheerfully recognizing the rights of its fellows.

It is a crime against the nervous child to allow it to hesitate, to
debate, or to falter about any matter that pertains to the execution
of parental commands. Let your rule be--speak once, then spank. Never
for a moment countenance anything resembling dilatoriness or
procrastination, let the child grow up to recognize these as its
greatest dangers, never to be tolerated for one moment.


FALSE SYMPATHY

We are aware that many good people in perusing this chapter will think
that some of the advice here given is both cruel and hard hearted; but
we can safely venture the opinion that those who have reared many
children, at least if they have had some nervous little ones, will be
able to discern the meaning and significance of most of our
suggestions. Sympathy is a beautiful and human trait and we want
nothing in this chapter in any way to interfere with that
characteristic sympathy of a parent for its offspring--the proverbial
"as a father pitieth his children"--nevertheless, there is a great
deal of sympathy that is utterly false, that is of the nature of a
disastrous compromise, for the time being making it easy for both
parent and child, but making things unutterably more difficult later
on in life when both (or perhaps the child alone) must face the
calamitous consequences of this failure early to inculcate the
principles of self-control and self-mastery on the mind and character
of the nervous child.

We so often hear "mother love" eulogized. It is a wonderful and
self-denying human trait; but, as a physician, I have been led to
believe that "mother loyalty" is of almost equal or even greater
value. All mothers love their children more or less, but only a few
mothers possess that superb loyalty which is able to rise above human
sympathy and maternal love, which qualifies the mother to stand
smilingly by the side of the crib and watch her little one in a fit of
anger--yelling at the top of its voice--and yet never touch the child,
allow the little fellow to come to himself, to wake up to the fact
that all his yelling, his emotion, his anger, and his resentment are
absolutely powerless to move his mother. Thus has the mother--by her
loyalty to the little fellow--taught him a new lesson in self-control,
and thus has she added one more strong link in the chain of character
which parent and child are forging day by day, and which finally must
determine both the child's temporal and eternal destiny.


SYSTEM AND ORDER

System and order are desirable acquisitions for all children, but they
are absolutely indispensable to the successful rearing of the nervous
child, who should be taught to have a place for everything and
everything in its place. When he enters the house his clothes must not
be thoughtlessly thrown about. Every garment must be put in its proper
place. These little folks must be taught a systematic and regular way
of doing things.

Nervous children must not be allowed to procrastinate. They must not
be allowed to put off until tomorrow anything which can be done today.
They must be taught how to keep the working decks of life
clear--caught right up to the minute. They should be taught proper
methods of analysis--how to go to the bottom of things--how to render
a decision, execute it, and then move forward quickly to the next
task of life. When they come home from school with home work to do it
would be best, as a rule, first to do the school work before engaging
in play. In fact, all the methods which are needful for the proper
discipline of the ordinary child are more than doubly needful for the
training of the nervous child; while more than fourfold persistence is
needed on the part of parents to make them really effective.


EMOTIONAL RUNAWAYS

Whether the child be two years of age or ten years of age, when the
parent discovers that the nervous system is "losing its head," that
the child is embarking on a nervous runaway, or that it is about to
indulge in an emotional sprawl, it is best to interfere suddenly and
spectacularly. Lay a firm hand on him and bring things to a sudden
stop. Speak to him calmly and deliberately, but firmly. Set him on a
chair, put him in the bed, or take him to a room and isolate him.

In the case of the older children, tell them a story of the horse
which becomes frightened, loses self-control, and tears off down the
highway, wrecking the vehicle and throwing out its occupants. Explain
to them that many of the mistakes of life are made during the times of
these emotional runaways, these passing spells of lost self-control.
Tell the little folks that you have perfect confidence in them if they
will only take time to stop and think before they talk or act. Explain
to them that since you saw that they were rapidly approaching a
foolish climax you thought it was your duty to call a halt, to stop
them long enough to enable them to collect their wits and indulge in
some sober thinking.

Personally, we have found it to be a good plan not to be too arbitrary
with the little folks, like putting them on a chair and saying, "You
must sit there one hour by the clock." They usually begin to indulge
in resentful thoughts and a situation is often produced akin to that
of the stern father who felt compelled to go back and thrash his boy
three different times during his hour on the chair, because of what he
was satisfied was going through the boy's mind. No, that is not
usually the best way. Put them on the chair with an indeterminate
sentence. I prefer to carry it out something like this: "Now, son,
this will never do; you are running away with yourself. Stop for a
moment and think. Now I am going to ask you to sit down in that chair
there and think this over quietly. I will be in the next room.
Whenever you think you have got control of yourself and have thought
this thing out so you can talk with me, you may get up from the chair
and come into the room to me." Sometimes five minutes, sometimes
fifteen minutes, and the little fellow will walk in and talk to you in
a very satisfactory manner. He will give you his viewpoint and you
will be able to adjust the matter in a spirit of conference which will
be satisfactory to both parent and child, without doing the least
violence to the responsibility of the one or the individuality of the
other.

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