Topic 40 
COLONEL ROOSEVELT ON BOYS

BETTER a boy you have to rescue from a police station because he whipped a cab driver or a 'cop' than a 'Miss Nancy'" — that was Colonel Roosevelt's idea of the kind of boy one should have.

This preference Colonel Roosevelt expressed to me one Sunday afternoon at Oyster Bay, following a question from him as to how my own boy was getting along.

"All right," I replied, "only a little too much football and swimming and not enough schoolwork — almost too much boy."

"That's all right," he replied.  "Don't let that worry you.  Do you know you are fortunate in having a real boy? Some of the most splendid fellows I know have boys that if they were mine I’d want to choke them — pretty boys who know all of the latest tango steps and the small talk, and the latest things in socks and ties — tame cats, mollycoddles, and their fathers real men, and their mothers most excellent women! Throw-backs, I suppose.  I’d feel disgraced beyond redemption had I such boys.

"Mine, thank God, have been good boys, a bit mischievous at times, all of them, but every boy is.  Honestly, if I had to take my choice, I’d rather have a boy that I’d have to go to the police station and bail out for beating a cab driver or a policeman, than one of the mollycoddle type.  He might worry me, but he wouldn't disgrace me."

On another occasion when he asked about my boy, I said he was in a bit of trouble.

"He has had his first real bump," I said.  "He flunked on his examinations, and probably will fail to get promotion.  Consequently he feels badly."

"Now, see here," advised the Colonel, "just don't be severe with him.  Tell him I said, as an indulgent grandparent, that it really is not such a serious thing.  You just tell him that for me and just make him feel more than ever that his father is his best friend and understands all about such things,."
"I have wired him as much," I said.

"That's fine," said he.  "You are on the right track.  Sometimes we fathers do not realize how important such things may be and we do not always do the right thing.  We can become excited about something and chastise or severely lecture a boy and make him afraid of us or we can sit down with him, man fashion, and reason the thing out.  Sometimes, I grant you, chastisement is exactly what a boy needs most.  Then he should have it.  But when a boy's in trouble as your lad is over something that really involves at most only carelessness, it often is a mistake to do anything more than point out to him what a foolish fellow he's been and try to plan out some way in which he, not you, can undo the mischief.

"In other words, every boy thinks his father is a pretty big man.  One of mine told a teacher once his father was 'it.' That confidence is something no man can afford to lose, and if he can make his boy see that the thing to do is to go to his father with his troubles, he has a pretty good guarantee that the boy won't get into any very serious messes.  On the other hand, if the boy knows that he is going to get a dressing down every time his parent hears of some venial sin of omission or commission, boy like, he's going to try and conceal as much as he can.  He will, however, get advice abroad if he does not get it at home, and he's mighty lucky if the kind he gets abroad is the kind he should have.

"That's why many a boy goes wrong who otherwise would in all probability have gone straight as H.

"Yes, sir, it's a mighty bad thing for a boy when he becomes afraid to go to his father with his troubles, and it's mighty bad for a father when he becomes so busy with other affairs, that he has no time for the affairs of his children.

"I had a friend lament to me once over the fact that his boy was wild and was constantly getting into scrapes.  He was absolutely out of control, the father said, and he could do nothing with him.  I knew the boy and liked him.  He was a clean cut, upstanding chap — the kind that looks you straight in the eye when he talks to you and shakes hands as though he meant it.  I did not believe there was anything very wrong about the boy, and said so.  Finally, the father asked me if I wouldn't talk to the boy.  I said I would.

'"I'll send him to you tomorrow,' he said.

'"No, you won't,' said I.  'You say the boy won't listen to you.  Let me handle him in my own way.'

"Well, I saw the boy, and asked him what all the reports I was hearing meant.  There was n't anything serious, anything involving meanness or unmanliness — the trouble was mainly misdirected energy.  We talked things over — the boy doing most of the talking — and, well, finally I advised him to make up with his father.  I forgot to say he had left home and gone to live with a maternal relative.

'"Not much, Colonel,' said he.  'If I go to the Governor, he’ll explode.  He explodes every time the least thing not on the schedule happens.  It's been that way ever since I was a kid.  He's never given me a chance to tell my story — no matter what happens, I'm always wrong, I'm always to blame.  It's always been that way.'

" I told him that might be so, that it probably was so, but that he should see his father anyway, and try and reach an understanding.' You may not agree with me,' I told him, 'but your father's your best friend.  You're more to him than all the rest of the world.'

'"You may be right, Colonel,' said the boy, 'but I wish he'd take some other way of showing it.'

"Then I sent for the father.  I told him what the boy had said.  I told him some things on my own account.  He did not like them and came back at me — exploded just as the boy said he did with him.  We were old friends and I did not mind that; in fact, as I look back, I rather enjoyed it.  At any rate, I let him blow off steam.  I knew he’d feel ashamed of himself when he paused for breath.  Then I said some things to him.

"'If you talk to your boy the way you've been talking here,' said I, ' I don't wonder he's left home.  I marvel that he did n't do it before he came of age, that he did n't run away or get into some scrape he’d never get over.  He's got more in him than I thought he had.  Now you go and get acquainted with him.  Don't think you Ve got to eat a lot of crow — the boy would n't like that.  Meet him halfway, and let him see you are his friend.  Go away for a week's fishing with him — it will do you both good.  Why, man, all this trouble you’ve brought on yourself —

you don't appreciate even now that your boy is a man — you 've been too busy making money to have paid much attention to him.'

"It was strong medicine and the old fellow did not like it, though he swallowed it.  He never referred to the matter again, but the boy did.

"'Colonel,' said he, one day after his father had sort of taken him into partnership, 'you must have talked turkey to the Governor — he has n't been the same man since.'

'"Young man,' said I, 'all I told him was to get acquainted with you, just as I told you to get acquainted with him.  You folks simply did not know one another.'

"That," he concluded, "is the advice I'd give every father of a boy — get acquainted with him."