p. 740 | SOME GOOD POINTS ON TRAINING CHILDREN

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, November 25, 1884

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 61, No. 47

SOME GOOD POINTS ON TRAINING CHILDREN.

By S. in Interior

AND now, dear Interior, you have started an experience meeting: Everybody will want to tell what she would do if her child climbed trees, and teased, and didn’t mind. Mrs. Starrett says that “when you have children of your own, all your fine theories vanish.” Not all, I hope. There are a few main theories that can be carried out; for instance: I used to say that I would not suffer disobedience, disrespect toward parents, or teasing in a child, and after bringing up four of my own, I say there is no need of it. Such evils, I believe, are the parents’ fault. In the family in which I grew up, I never saw these faults, though I do not remember ever seeing any one punished on account of them. I do not remember that I was made to obey, but I was expected to obey, and to be respectful, and I cannot recall ever thinking of being the contrary. None of us were teasing or whining, either. We had no temptation to be, and we knew it would not be tolerated. We strolled off day after day, in the woods and by the shore, picking winter-green, flowers, pennyroyal (children will pick anything), picking up shells and even pretty stones. Nobody worried us, and said, “What did you want to bring home all that stuff for?” They admired it all, and—when we forgot it, threw it away. We had a beautiful time every day. Why should we be disagreeable? No children in the world have happier or better times than my four. Whatever they can do for a good time, they are allowed to. Then when it is No, it is No, and they understand that there is a reason for it. Sometimes they know the reason, and sometimes not, but there is an end of it. Where is the trouble about that,—if you begin right? The nearest approach to a teaser is our youngest. For more than a year he was so sick that no one expected him to live. What could we do but “humor” him? Poor little sufferer! His own good sense and ours will soon set him right, now that he is well. He got his mind “set” on something that we did not think best, and was mourning over it a little to his sister, a little older. She set him straight by saying, “I s’pose you know you won’t get anything by teasing, when it isn’t ‘best,’ don’t you?” There it is in a nutshell. Years ago in some book, I got this idea, and it is effectual.—S. in Interior.