Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (586) Child's play How to bring up children was tackled by Al-Ahram in a series of articles published in 1935. Professor Yunan Labib Rizk samples some of opinions child experts of the times lent the newspaper It is not difficult to imagine the surprise and curiosity that greeted an Al-Ahram article of 8 March 1935, listing the five types of lies children tell. The first of these was the whimsical lie, which sprang from a child's fertile imagination and budding verbal skills. Such lies were not to be condemned. Rather, they were a manifestation of a process of creativity akin to the way a poet or novelist weaves a fictional world. Thus, "what seems a type of lying is in fact a form of play or entertainment." However, when taken to the extreme, in which a child is unable to discern reality from fancy, this type of lie becomes a manifestation of such cognitive dissonance. The false boast was a way in which a child might seek to magnify his self-importance and attract attention. Generally, this second type of lie stemmed from a sense of insufficiency "resulting from a child's inability to satisfy his desires due to the confines of his environment or excessive repression and humiliation. The child, therefore, strives to delude himself and others into believing that he is someone greater and more powerful than he is. If left unchecked, this type of lie can develop perniciously so that as the child grows to adulthood he becomes exceedingly arrogant and deceitful." The "egotistical lie" -- the third type -- was a way in which the child attempted to achieve some personal end or gain. Often this recourse was sought by children whose trust in their parents had been eroded by excessive strictness or harsh punishment. The "retaliatory lie", on the other hand, aimed at getting a sibling or a servant, for example, into trouble with the parents. "This type of lie is often the recourse of children who feel oppressed in their domestic environment." The fifth and most common, however, was the "defensive lie". A panicked reaction to the threat of punishment, "this type of lie is a child's natural method of self- protection, especially if living in an excessively strict environment in which not even the smallest fault goes unpunished." , the author of this article, had recently acquired his PhD and would go on to become one of Egypt's most famous professors of psychology and education. The article itself was part of Al-Ahram 's series, "A week of childrearing with the pioneers". The "pioneers" were a group of recent graduates from European universities, most notable among whom were, in addition to El-Qosi, Abbas Ammar, William Salim Hanna, Fouad Galal and Abdel-Salam Othman. Founded in 1931, the group's members were dedicated Fabians and committed to the advancement of individual rights and higher moral principles through a process of gradual social change. The series, which lasted from 3 to 9 March 1935, consisted of nine articles: "The personality of the child", by Yaqoub Fam, "Children's fears" by Riad Askar, "Children's desires and how to fulfil them" by Mohamed Kamel El-Nahhas, "A child's curiosity" by Ihsan El-Qosi, "The mischievousness of children" by Zakiya Suleiman, "Children's lies" by , "How to raise children to tell the truth" by Izis El-Masri, "The relationship between a child and his peers" by Hanifa Hifni and "The parent-child relationship" by Saniya Azmi. Not surprisingly, most of the contributors were teachers, deans or inspectors of primary schools in particular or professors in the college of education. Their studies opened what must have been an entirely new world for readers. The world of the child, they revealed, was far more mysterious and complex than many parents had previously imagined. Evidently, the series proved highly successful, for Al-Ahram, in coordination with the pioneering group, repeated the experience in the spring of 1938, featuring an even greater, more diverse and perhaps more intriguing collection of subjects. Appearing in Al-Ahram between 7 and 23 April, the series included studies on children's tendency for self-assertion and hidden desires and on the child as victim of -- variously -- pampering, tyranny, repression or family discord. As many of these were contentious subjects, in order to provide its readers with a balanced picture Al-Ahram solicited the points of view of several experts. A survey of the ideas and arguments propounded in the Al- Ahram series on child psychology furnishes an excellent overview of how this relatively modern science stood in Egypt in the middle of the first half of the 20th century, which is not to say that many of the articles are not interesting in their own right. Resuming the 1935 series, which opened with El-Qosi's exposition on children's lies, we turn next to Yaqoub Fam on children's personality. According to this psychologist, children are more emotionally vulnerable to the shocks of life because they have not yet been hardened by experience. He goes on to enumerate circumstances conducive to child neurosis, one of the most important of which, in his opinion, was overprotective parents. "Parents can sometimes be so fearful of any harm coming to their child that even the slightest suspicion of danger provokes them to alarm and anger. Such reactions destroy the child's nerves and makes him fainthearted and timorous." Fam urges parents to show respect for their children's world and ground their relationship with them on mutual trust and confidence. On a related theme, Riad Mohamed Askar writes that what infants fear most are loud noises and the absence of physical support. "Many commit a grave error when they shout at their children to keep them from crying or to make them go to sleep. Not only is the alarm this causes harmful to the child's health, it becomes associated with the person who raises his voice, to the extent that the very sight of that person terrifies the child." Askar also maintains that infants have no laws or rules to guide their behaviour, apart from the dictates of instinct and wants. "Soon, however, they begin to clash with the interests of others, as well as with the laws of nature. At that point they become subject to the rules of society and there begins the chain of commands and prohibitions followed by punishment in the form of scolding, hitting or shouting. Such punishment causes pain and fear which become associated with the person who inflicted it. When such punishment is repeated by different individuals the child grows introverted and afraid to act." In "How to treat a child's desires" Mohamed Kamal El-Nahhas also warns against severity of parental punishment. Harsh disciplining, he holds, generates lassitude, confusion and weakness or stubbornness, recalcitrance and tyrannical behaviour. His advice is to "let our children pursue their simple ends by themselves while remaining vigilant in order to keep them out of harm's way and to keep them from a path of poor behaviour". On the other hand, El- Nahhas cautioned against allowing children too much freedom and letting them always have their way. Brought up this way, "the child grows spoiled, selfish and overly dependent on his parents, and no amount of rational appeals, shouting, ruses or orders will dissuade him from getting what he wants". The professor further urges parents to work together harmoniously in raising their children. Children should not be led to believe, for example, that when their father prohibits something they can always turn to their mother to solve the problem. The next three articles dealt with features of children's behaviour that have always caused parents an element of anxiety or dismay: lying, which we discussed above, mischievousness and curiosity. As Ihsan El-Qosi, teacher at Helwan Secondary School for Girls, wrote, everything that seems ordinary to adult arouses the rapt curiosity of the child. He has to know where water comes from, how a candle is lit or an electric light turned off, why the sun rises and sets. "In tandem with the thousands of questions that this age is prone to ask, there is the desire to inspect everything they get their hands on which drives them to take apart and sometimes destroy their games or gadgets around the house." El- Qosi urges parents to avail themselves of this opportunity when a child's curiosity is at its peak to provide it with the knowledge it is so eager to learn and with the means to help it acquire knowledge on its own. She simultaneously cautions parents to tailor their answers to their children's questions and the means of autonomous discovery to their children's age and abilities. Presenting children with too great or complex a challenge will only frustrate them and curb their curiosity. One suspects that Zakiya Abdel-Hamid Suleiman, headmistress of Qasr Al-Dubarra Nursery School, speaks from experience on the subject of children's mischief. She writes: "Mothers often call me to complain of the behaviour of their children at home and to ask my advice. These are the kinds of grievances I hear: "'I have to talk to you about Susu because he just doesn't listen. Yesterday he got hold of a razorblade. He thought he'd use it to sharpen a pencil and he cut himself, even though I told him a million times not to touch the razorblades.' "'Fifi has me at my wits end. She refuses to eat breakfast before going to school. Please reprimand her.' "'Mimi is always pestering the gardener. He keeps pulling out the plants and no matter how many times we smack him he won't stop. Please give him a stern warning.' "'Whenever Hamada wants a handkerchief or some socks he goes rummaging through the closet turning everything inside out and mixing up my clothes with my husband's with his. I can't tell you how many times I've told him that whenever he needs something all he has to do is ask.' "'Batta is always making a nuisance of herself in the kitchen, distracting the cook from her work and getting her own clothes filthy. Please get her to understand that she's a student and has no business in the kitchen.'" Mrs Suleiman responds to these grievances in turn. Poor Susu is not entirely to blame, she writes. He wanted to make his pencil suitable for work and got hold of the nearest available instrument. Fifi should not be punished for not eating in the morning. Perhaps her mother should consider that if her daughter were completely healthy she would have a heartier appetite. The solution to the Mimi problem was to set aside a little patch in the garden for him. When left to plant flowers to his heart's content, he will develop a sense of the beauty and sensitivity to plants and stop destroying them. Hamada should not have to turn to his mother whenever he needs a handkerchief. The best solution is to give him his own closet space in which to arrange his own clothes. As for Batta, the headmistress could not understand why the young girl should not be allowed to help the cook. "It is wrong to give her the impression that students should have nothing to do with the kitchen because this would kill a healthy interest." As its "week of the child" was so successful and as a single week could barely scratch the surface of that complex subject, Al-Ahram hosted a second week the following year, featuring 15 articles this time. Just as El-Qosi's article on the lies children tell grabbed readers' attention, so too would the article with which he opened the second series. "Children's tendency to self-assertion", as the article was called, was particularly evident in their role-playing games, in which they acted the mother or father, sometimes even dressing up as their parents, or played the part of teacher or other authority figures. In addition, according to this study, children love to assert themselves through games that test their strength and endurance. "The happiest times of a child's life are spent in walking and talking or roughhousing." Sometimes, however, a child's self-assertion can be taken to extremes that leave parents nerve-wracked and at a loss as to how to handle them. Among the examples El-Qosi cites of children's misbehaviour are when they deliberately smash things around the house, torture their pet by pulling its ears or cutting its whiskers, erupt into temper tantrums, refuse to obey orders and otherwise rebel against the customary rules of the home. There were many ways to handle this problem. What was crucial, according to El-Qosi, was to treat the child as a person and not as a source of amusement for adults. Parents should not put their child on the spot in front of guests and relatives, whether by bragging of his talents or demeaning him and deriding his fears, the result of which is only to ingrain them. Rather they should try to share his thoughts and feelings, laugh with him instead of at him, act as friends and advisers rather than as judges and punishers, and encourage him to do as much as he can on his own. Above all, however, "parents must let their children know they love them through sympathy, recognition of their abilities and reasonable admiration of their personalities." Under the headline, "Children's hidden desires", Mohamed Kamel El-Nahhas argues that as a child grows up he begins to face a gamut of rules and regulations that may conflict with his desires and inclinations. In coming to terms with the order in his environment he unconsciously suppresses some of these desires, but they remain latent in his subconscious and continue to haunt him even into adulthood. El-Nahhas warns of some of the adverse consequences suppression can have on an individual's health, such as asthma, insomnia, stuttering, chronic headaches and other ailments that defy ordinary medicine. "It is as though the desires that have been submerged into the subconscious compel the individual to concoct these illnesses as a way of justifying his inability to realise them," El-Nahhas remarks adding, "Pressures to inhibit a child's desires can cause emotional disturbances that may lead to insanity." To prevent neuroses or other disorders, El-Nahhas counsels parents to channel their children's more aggressive energies into games while instilling in them a sense of fair play, patience and consideration. Parents should also encourage their children's curiosity by answering their questions in a way they can comprehend. Above all, he tells parents, "Do not lie and do not tax their minds with ideas that are beyond their reach." The detrimental effects of pampering was the subject of two articles, one by Ahmed Zaki Mohamed and the other by Sofia Basim. Pampering begins in the cradle when a mother's automatic response to hearing her baby cry is to pick it up, cradle it and breastfeed it, even if it does not need milk, until it falls asleep. As this extemporaneous remedy becomes habit, the mother is deprived of rest and the child of proper sleep. The result is that the child grows frail, increasing his mother's anxiousness to protect him against the cold or heat. Such over-protectiveness, in turn, inhibits the development of the child's immune system and his consequent vulnerability to illness renders the parents even more careful not to upset him and more solicitous of his every wish. Such pampering affects his behaviour at school. Unable to find the attention he gets at home, he grows resentful of his teachers, resists instruction and ignores his homework. Invariably he ends up at the bottom of his class and eventually teachers stop expecting him to succeed or to participate in academic activities. "He thus remains ignored and excluded, praying for success which he can only achieve through determination and self-exertion." Before concluding his article, El-Nahhas cautions against the consequence of pampering daughters. The danger here is that when spoiled daughters grow up and marry they find it difficult to come to terms with the notion that they have certain obligations and duties towards their husbands. Even when their husbands try to rectify that situation, the wife proves unable to perform her duties having been coddled for so long. Worse yet, "if they bear children they are the worst possible persons to bring them up, and their attempts will be ultimately doomed to failure." Under the headline, "The victim of pampering", Sofia Basim censures mothers who are so overindulgent of their children that they never let them do things for themselves and refuse to let them do household chores on the grounds that these should be left to servants. "Such pampering is potentially very harmful to the child. How can a mother expect that creature whom she debilitated through misguided upbringing to overcome the difficulties it will one day have to contend with on its own? The child who has not learned how to face the challenges life presents when young will never be strong enough to face them as an adult." As such pampered children reach school age, Basim maintains, they become opinionated, arrogant and often impudent. "He expects his teachers to treat him as he is treated at home. If he cannot get their attention by virtue of his good looks, his sense of humour or his intelligence, he will turn to negligence, poor hygiene and disobedience. Frequently, he provokes his teachers and if they scold him he runs to his mother who then races to the schoolmaster to complain of the teachers' behaviour towards her son. How the child jubilates when he feels he avenged himself through his mother's protests on his behalf." In contrast to parental pampering, Yaqoub Fam and Zahiya Mitwalli discussed "the child as a victim of tyranny". Fam, too, maintains that in insulating their children from their environment, overprotective parents impede their children's natural acquisition of the arts of life. Although inspired by the finest sentiments, this he claims is a form of "disguised parental despotism" because it deprives the child of his right to experiment, to explore his environment independently and to develop a direct and immediate contact with life. Mitwalli attributes parental despotism to either ignorance or selfishness. By way of illustration she writes, "Sometimes a mother will brook no opposition to her opinion in order to demonstrate her control, out of the belief that raising children requires her total domination. For example, however ignorant of the principles of proper nourishment, she will insist that only she knows how to care for her child." False compassion has a part to play in a mother's domineering behaviour. "When a child shows initiative such as the desire to feed himself, his mother hovers over him and fusses about not getting his clothes soiled." According to Mitwalli, such domination can have two possible consequences: either the child will become timorous and lacking in self-confidence, or he will rebel and "the more he is punished for his refusal to obey orders the more confirmed he will become in his rebelliousness." Repression, the subject of the studies by Bahiga Bayoumi Suleiman and Zahiya Mitwalli, could have similar consequences. However insignificant or trivial children's activities may be to parents, they are of the utmost importance to the child and demand encouragement, writes Suleiman. If children do not receive this encouragement or worse, are ridiculed, they lapse into a state of despair and lassitude. "There children are so timid that they stop speaking. This is a result of inhibition. They have come to believe that everything they say or do will be met with derision." She continues: "Repression is a heinous crime against the child. It stunts its sensitivities, smothers its God-given talents and debilitates its behavioural development." Mitwalli observes that certain utterances of children may be indicative of ingrained fears and lack of self-confidence. For example, "should you ask them to do something, they will respond that they are unable." The reason for this, she writes, is that their parents had led them to believe this. Children whose parents have continuously demeaned their abilities grow up to become "incapable of managing their own affairs, hesitant and indecisive, lacking in initiative and drive". The sensible mother is one who "gives her child sufficient opportunity to try things on its own and to test its strength and courage and who encourages the child to keep trying even if he or she fails and never to despair." The last article in Al-Ahram 's 1936 "Week of the child" dealt with the effects of family discord on children. Its author, Ahmed Shahin, listed numerous causes: polygamy, autocratic husbands, licentious wives, mental disturbances and financial straits. The last of these, at least, is as prevalent today as it ever was, and the consequences of its effects on the family and the child are palpably evident all around us.
