CHILDHOOD CHILDREN OBSERVATIONS AND ADVICE In a child the goal of most importance should be being grown up L Ron Hubbard Based on the works of L Ron Hubbard Childhood Children OBSERVATIONS AND ADVICE BASED ON THE WORKS OF L RON HUBBARD APPLIED SCHOLASTICS INTERNATIONAL
Based on the works of L Ron Hubbard Childhood Children OBSERVATIONS AND ADVICE HERON BOOKS P U B L I S H I N G
Applied Scholastics International 11755 Riverview Dr St Louis MO 63138 USA appliedscholastics org HERON BOOKS P U B L I S H I N G Heron Books Inc 20950 SW Rock Creek Road Sheridan OR 97378 USA heronbooks com First Edition 2019 L Ron Hubbard Library All Rights Reserved ISBN 978 0 89739 160 3 This publication is part of the works of L Ron Hubbard It is presented to the reader as part of the record of his personal research into life and the application of same by others and should be construed only as a written report of such research and not as a statement of claims made by the author or organization Any verbal representations made to the contrary are not authorized No part of this publication may be produced without the permission of the copyright owner Any unauthorized copying translation duplication or distribution in whole or in part by any means including electronic copying storage or transmission is a violation of applicable laws Applied Scholastics International is a non profit educational organization and does not discriminate on the basis of race color religion sex disability age nationality or ethnic origin in administering student admissions or any of its policies programs or activities APPLIED SCHOLASTICS and the Applied Scholastics open book design are trademarks and service marks owned by Association for Better Living and Education International and are used with its permission Printed in the USA 14 October 2019
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Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way or always to have it Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden
Introduction How does one help children learn and grow into happy productive adults In research on study and learning L Ron Hubbard was a close observer of children viewing them as individuals of remarkable native dignity intelligence imagination and potential In the early 1950s when most authorities on children were focused on stages of physical development and the socialization of the child Hubbard spoke and wrote passionately on helping children develop their native abilities to learn to reason and to contribute Pulling together a selection of short essays Childhood Children Observations and Advice is offered primarily to teachers of young children who in turn may find it useful when working with parents We think you ll find that these ideas after more than half a century still represent a vibrant and refreshing advocacy for today s children the artists scientists entrepreneurs professionals teachers parents and leaders of tomorrow Editors vii
Table of Contents 1 THE BIG GOAL 2 LEARNING HOW THE WORLD WORKS 1 3 Missing Data 3 This Is a Steam Radiator 4 3 HELPING CHILDREN LEARN 5 A Simple Fundamental 5 Objectives and Emphasis 5 Being a Child s Friend 5 Learning and Goals 6 Mimicry 6 Teaching the Purpose of a Subject 7 Self Determinism in Learning 8 Reason 8 Parity 8 Extroversion and Learning 9 4 CONTROL DISCIPLINE AND GAMES 11 Control 11 Acknowledging the Good Points 12 Consulting a Child s Willingness 13 Games 13 Helping Children Build Self Discipline 14 Discipline 16 ix
5 ON RAISING CHILDREN Contribution 17 Understanding the Family 18 Giving a Child Wins 19 Control and Communication 20 Self Determinism 21 A Child s Independence of Action 21 A Child s Pride 22 Feed Them and Put Them to Bed 23 x 17
5 On Raising Children Editors note We all want children to have the best possible start on life Every child and family is unique and situations can arise in the course of raising or teaching children that require thoughtful address This final section contains observations and advices that might be useful when a school and a child s parents need to be aligned more fully in order to secure the child s educational progress CONTRIBUTION People feel able and competent only so long as they are permitted to contribute as much or more than they have contributed to them People can over contribute and feel secure in an environment They feel insecure the moment they under contribute which is to say give less than they receive If you don t believe this recall a time when everyone else brought something to the party but you didn t How did you feel People will tend to revolt against and distrust any source which contributes to them more than they contribute to it Children should be permitted to contribute to those around them But you can t order them to do so You can t command a child to mow the grass and then think that that s contribution The child has to figure out what the contribution is and then give it If the child hasn t selected it it isn t the child s but only more control A baby contributes by trying to make you smile The baby will show off A bit older little Suzy will dance for you bring you sticks try to repeat your work motions to help you If you don t accept those smiles those dances those sticks those work motions in the spirit they are given you have begun to interrupt the child s contribution She will start to get anxious She will do unthinking and strange things to your possessions in an effort to make them better for you You scold her That finishes her 17
ON RAISING CHILDREN It is needless to add that the child should not be threatened angrily The way to make children apathetic is to tear them up when they begin to have tantrums or to block all roads which if they followed them would give them pride in themselves UNDERSTANDING THE FAMILY Another important factor enters in here and that is the role of information How can children possibly know what to contribute to you or their family or home if they haven t any idea of the working principles on which it runs A family is a group with the common goal of survival and advancement Children not allowed to contribute or failing to understand the goals and working principles of family life are cast adrift from the family They are shown they are not part of the family because they can t contribute So they become anti family They spill milk annoy your guests and yell outside your window in play They ll even get sick just to make you work By being shown that they aren t powerful enough to contribute a child is shown to be nothing You can do nothing more than accept the smiles the dances the sticks of the very young But as soon as children can understand they should be given the whole story of the family operation What is the source of their allowance How come there is food Clothes A clean house A car A parent works and for this gets money The money handed over at a store buys food A car is cared for because of money scarcity A calm house and care of the parent means the parent works better and that means food and clothes and cars Education is necessary because one earns better after one has learned Play is necessary in order to give a reason for hard work Give them the whole picture If the child has been revolting he or she may keep right on revolting But they ll eventually come around First of all a child needs security Part of that security is understanding Part of it is a code of conduct which is invariable What is against the law today can t be ignored tomorrow 18
ON RAISING CHILDREN Children have a duty toward their parents They have to be able to take care of them not an illusion that they are but actually And parents have to have the patience to allow themselves to be cared for sloppily until by sheer experience itself not by the parents directions the child learns to do it well GIVING A CHILD WINS Parents often try to lead their child too far Nothing the child does anywhere is all right it has always got to be better Children are thus bred into an apathy a recognition that they cannot do anything to please their parents This could be described as never giving or allowing the child a win a win being simply an instance of winning a victory a success The parent says Talk better Get better educated Grow better Do this better Do that better Parents often handle children beautifully on the whole except this one little fault which if not spotted and isolated can actually make a child very unhappy The fault is they lead lead lead the child Now the idea of letting a child be a child once in a while is not the point here Parents can let a child be as adult as the child wants to be demand children be as much adult or as much children as they can be that isn t the point The point is simply this Give a child a win once in a while Here is this little boy growing up and all the time the parent is saying Well yes he s taken four steps but I want him taking five steps He needs to be better better better Well once in a while the parent could acknowledge the child s work in taking four steps The key is in living with children every now and then one should tell them to do something they can do not something one hopes they can do One aspect of this concerns the parents patience in letting the child work to the best of his or her ability A small child will actually try to work well but will mess things up If the parent is impatient and critical of these efforts all the time 19
ON RAISING CHILDREN the child by the age of five or six will have become somewhat disabused of the idea of working When adults forget that children are people too things become unworkable A little girl comes in maybe three or four years old and mother is mopping the floor The little girl takes a rag and bangs it into the wallpaper and so forth The impatient mother says Get out of here now You re messing things up The patient mother shows her how to wring it out and guides her hand a bit on the floor and lets her mop the floor a bit also The girl comes up smiling She thinks What do you know I could really maybe be of some use some day CONTROL AND COMMUNICATION When it comes to providing control with a child one doesn t have to use force Of course a child might say something like I want to stay up with you and insist on doing so But just letting children do what they are doing and not interfering with them and not controlling them in any way is not good for them However children respond very readily to good control and communication not persuasion but good communication People often think that persuasion works with children It s actually communication that does the trick You say to this little boy Well it s time for you to go to bed now and he says No Don t stay on the subject Leave it alone and just talk about something else What did you do today Where How Oh did you Is that a fact Well how about going to bed and the answer will be Okay Again one doesn t have to use force or persuasion Communicate with a child and control tends to follow as an inevitability On the other hand if you omit control from the beginning when bringing up children those who look to you for a lot of their direction and control are cheated They think you don t care about them 20
ON RAISING CHILDREN SELF DETERMINISM A child has a right to his or her self determinism You say that if the child is not restrained from pulling things down on him or herself running into the road etc he or she will be hurt Well consider it like this What are you as an adult doing to make that child live in rooms or an environment where he or she can be hurt The fault is yours not theirs if the child gets hurt or things get broken The sweetness and love of a child is preserved only so long as the child can exert his or her own self determinism You interrupt that to a degree you interrupt the child s life Also when a child is given something by an adult it s the child s not still the adult s Clothes toys books what they ve been given should remain under their exclusive control So the little boy tears up his shirt wrecks his bed breaks his fire engine It s none of the adult s business Children wreck on purpose the possession about which they are so often cautioned Why Because they are fighting for their own self determinism their own right to own and make their weight felt on their environment How would you like to have somebody give you a Christmas present and then tell you day after day thereafter what you are to do with it and even punish you if you failed to care for it the way the donor thinks A CHILD S INDEPENDENCE OF ACTION A child can be robbed of independence of action in different ways The first way is for the child s own good This is a method of preventing the child from making decisions by inflicting punishment when the child s decisions lead to trouble In other words there s no real thought about the value of the child having made his or her own decision about something just punishment for the result Another way is continually informing children how nice everybody is to them and how the world is all run for them and how ungrateful they are and so forth yet still giving them everything and telling them that this is all being done for them It s sort of buying them off so they don t dare act independently 21
ON RAISING CHILDREN Lastly there s giving them something and then depriving them of any pride of ownership and independence of action by telling them what to do with it You say Here are your nice new shoes Johnny I have bought you new shoes they are now your new shoes Johnny says Gee that s fine I think I ll go out and play with Rodger and he puts on his new shoes No Johnny those are your best shoes You are to wear those only on Sunday The way children are spoiled is to rob them of their independence of action No child ever was spoiled by affection by sympathy by kindness by understanding or even by indulgence If the things mentioned above are avoided you could give a child Cadillac roadsters or anything else that comes into your head and this child wouldn t be spoiled by them A CHILD S PRIDE It s important to give a child a feeling of pride in self and independence about a certain thing There must be at least one thing in a child s life about which he or she has the only say so This isn t hard to do but first let s look at how not to do it Take a little boy who s walking down the street and sees in a window of musical instruments a beautiful accordion He suddenly decides I want to play the accordion He pleads and begs and does anything he can do until finally his parents break down and say Well all right We ll see if we can t give you some accordion lessons So he acquires a small accordion plays the thing sees a teacher and finally learns to play something on it His family gradually realizes he can play the accordion Mother says Why there s Johnny playing on the accordion Well I always thought it was a good idea to start him on the accordion and I m glad I decided on that and got him to start it up Suddenly she s controlling Johnny s accordion playing She says Well now you must practice an hour and seventeen minutes every day it says so right here in the book You re not going to go out and play because you re going to stay in here and practice Now don t treat your accordion like that You hit the wrong note there try it again This is no longer Johnny s accordion and it s no longer Johnny s music Johnny will probably take that accordion and junk it 22
ON RAISING CHILDREN to which Mother says Well you know how flighty children are They change their minds all the time The child selected something he wanted to do then he was being forced to do it or was being interfered with in his doing it and found out this was not an independent sphere of action after all So he abandoned it You want to make sure children have reserved to themselves alone and exclusively at least one sphere of action in which they are completely independent and in which they can do some shining Because as children shine their own idea of their own importance will increase Working with children this way you can gain diamonds as far as their progress goes FEED THEM AND PUT THEM TO BED It is probably worth noting that some of the play you see children involved in is really just a kind of hysteria A group of children are running around in the yard and all of a sudden they become very hysterical and their eyes start staring around and their voices go up to high C Some people sit back and say Oh look at the little children playing No they re going nuts These children are probably too tired and they re probably hungry they re likely worn out And the thing to do is to get them inside and calm them down not just because you don t like to hear them yell but because they re going to get worse and worse and then somebody is going to get hurt If you take a child who is having a fight with some other child you can fairly safely assume that they are either tired or hungry Child is very cross child is upset Assume the child is tired or hungry or both Feed them and put them to bed 23
CHILDHOOD CHILDREN OBSERVATIONS AND ADVICE In a child the goal of most importance should be being grown up L Ron Hubbard Based on the works of L Ron Hubbard Childhood Children OBSERVATIONS AND ADVICE BASED ON THE WORKS OF L RON HUBBARD APPLIED SCHOLASTICS INTERNATIONAL
