As a little boy I learned many lessons the hard way, as I’m sure many young children do even today. They say we are born into the world with absolutely nothing and that we spend the rest of our lives accumulating as much of the world’s goods as we can. Sometimes we start the process before we have the means to do it in an appropriate way. When I was about four years old I was in a dime store with my mother (also referred to as 5 & 10 stores). They don’t have dime stores anymore, but there was probably one in every town in the olden days. While mother was shopping for thread, needles and buttons (she was a seamstress), I was doing my own shopping in the toy area. They carried everything, it seemed, and most things they carried cost a dime or less. It so happened that I saw a little toy car that caught my eye and I put it in my pocket. I had not yet been taught the concept of stealing and the associated punishment for doing it. But inside my little head or heart I knew that I should not have taken it but my desire to have it was stronger. It wasn’t long after we arrived home that I was found playing with a new toy that had not been purchased. That afternoon when Dad arrived home from work he took his little boy by the hand and with the stolen toy in the other hand returned to the dime store.
He told the store owner what I had done and if he would not take the stolen object back that he would pay for it. Dad did not want to pay for it as that would reward me for what I had done. Fortunately, the owner took it back with a few warning words for a scared little boy. I was so embarrassed and thought for sure something terrible would happen to me for what I had done. I had heard of prisons and maybe even thought that I might be sent to one. This was one of those few times that I got the razor strap on my little behind and a verbal lesson about honesty later that evening. Honesty, for the most part, was portrayed as a positive characteristic in our home. The concept was not that we are all born with the tendency to steal and that we have to be watched and threatened from time to time to prevent it from happening.
A parent’s response to a child’s dishonest behavior is sometimes too extreme and that can end up being a lifetime scar on a child’s personality. I remember hearing about a grandmother who had accidentally torn a ten dollar bill in two that was inside of an envelope. As she was about to throw it in the fireplace to burn it, she happened to see a little of the ten dollar bill and caught herself. She saved the bill from the fire but it had been torn in two. She understood that it was against the law to destroy U.S. Currency and she told her daughter that she was afraid that the police would find out and put her in prison.
Why would an elderly grandmother have such an idea go through her head? Because while she was growing up everything she did wrong or ‘might’ do wrong, her parents threatened her with a statement: “If you do that the police will come and get you and put you in jail.” That poor woman never grew out of the fear that if you do something wrong the police would come and take you away.
Marco Polo said his father always taught him that “there is a peace that comes with being honest.” Honesty should be taught as a positive attribute not as a threat. The negative approach instills a constant fear in a child’s mind about being punished by the police and jail. The law should more appropriately be portrayed in a child’s mind as friends and protectors.
I don’t believe that I was really much different than many other little boys while learning the lifelong art of acquisition. As I later became a father, I went through a very similar situation with my first son. He came home with some apples one day, and when queried as to where they came from, he admitted that he had taken them from a nearby orchard. I, the well trained father in these matters, took him by the hand and went back to the orchard with the apples that were left and knocked on the door of the owner. It was a very similar teaching experience as the one that I had as a boy. It was an important teaching experience for my boy, as it had been for me.
Conscience is a powerful and inborn attribute but ideals taught by parents strengthen it. I am afraid that too many parents do not take the opportunity to return to the store to teach their children that all important lesson of honesty.
My mother was part Native American and she was raised on the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. I have read many historical documents describing the white man’s view of Indians, one can read everything from, ‘The only good Indian is a dead one,’ to statements about their being thieves and no-goods. Alvin H. Wilcox wrote a ‘Pioneer History of Becker County Minnesota’ and he stated that; “During my ten years’ experience in logging on the Otter Tail River, I have had many losses from theft by white men, but never lost the value of a penny through an Indian. The author went on to tell a story that Bishop Whipple once told of making a trip many years ago with a party of Indians. One morning, as they were about to start out on a hunt, the bishop asked the chief what he should do with his watch and pocketbook, as he did not like to carry them around through the brush and swamps. He was, also, afraid that they would be stolen if he left them in camp. The chief replied, “hang them up on a tree, they will be safe; there is not a white man within fifty miles of here.”
I imagine there are those who would be dishonest among every race and people. Fathers taking their little ones by the hand, back to the store or to the orchard owner, is probably the best deterrent to a life of dishonest behavior. Lessons learned in youth are those that are more enduring. May we be so blessed as to have and to be good parents. Good children and good men and women, are those that are more likely to come from goodly parents, parents who are willing to teach honesty by taking their children by the hand and leading them back to their first mistake.