Advancing the Development of the Sentiment of Gratitude.

Now, although parents must not be impatient at the slow appearance of this feeling in their children, and must not be troubled in its not appearing before its time, they can do much by proper efforts to cultivate its growth, and give it an earlier and a more powerful influence over them than it would otherwise manifest.  The mode of doing this is the same as in all other cases of the cultivation of moral sentiments in children, and that is by the influence over them of sympathy with those they love.  Just as the way to cultivate in the minds of children a feeling of pity for those who are in distress is not to preach it as a duty, but to make them love you, and then show such pity yourself; and the way to make them angry and revengeful in character—­if we can conceive of your being actuated by so unnatural a desire—­would be often to express violent resentment yourself, with scowling looks and fierce denunciations against those who have offended you; so, to awaken them to sentiments of gratitude for the favors they receive, you must gently lead them to sympathize with you in the gratitude which you feel for the favors that you receive.

When a child shows some special unwillingness to comply with her mother’s desires, her mother may address to her a kind but direct and plain expostulation on the obligations of children to their parents, and the duty incumbent on them of being grateful for their kindness, and to be willing to do what they can in return.  Such an address would probably do no good at all.  The child would receive it simply as a scolding, no matter how mildly and gently the reproof might be expressed, and would shut her heart against it.  It is something which she must stand still and endure, and that is all.

But let the mother say the same things precisely when the child has shown a willingness to make some little sacrifice to aid or to gratify her mother, so that the sentiment expressed may enter her mind in the form of approval and not of condemnation, and the effect will be very different.  The sentiments will, at any rate, now not be rejected from the mind, but the way will be open for them to enter, and the conversation will have a good effect, so far as didactic teaching can have effect in such a case.

But now to bring in the element of sympathy as a means of reaching and influencing the mind of the child:  The mother, we will suppose, standing at the door some morning before breakfast in spring, with her little daughter, seven or eight years old, by her side, hears a bird singing on a tree near by.  She points to the tree, and says, in a half-whisper, “Hark!”

When the sound ceases, she looks to the child with an expression of pleasure upon her countenance, and says,

“Suppose we give that bird some crumbs because he has been singing us such a pretty song.”

“Well!” says the child.