The Training of Children in the Home

THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN IN THE HOME. BY ALICE PEET BISHOP. TIRED MOTHERS. A little elbow leans upon your knee, Your tired knee that has so much to bear A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch, Or warm, moist fingers, folding yours so tight; You do not prize this blessing overmuch You almost are too tired to pray tonight. But it is blessedness! A year ago I did not see it as I do today We are so dull and thankless; and too slow To catch the sunshine till it slips away. And now it seems surpassing strange to me, That while I wore the badge of motherhood, I did not kiss more oft and tenderly The little child that brought me only good. And if, some night when you sit down to rest, You miss this elbow from your tired knee This restless, curling head from off your breast— This lisping tongue that chatters constantly; If from your own the dimpled hands had slipped, And ne'er would nestle in your palm again; If the white feet into their grave had tripped, I could not blame you for your heartache then. I wonder so that mothers ever fret At little children clinging to their gown;

THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN IN THE HOME. 43 Or that their footprints, when the days are wet, Are ever black enough to make them frown. If I could find a little muddy boot, Or cap, or jacket, on my chamber floor If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot, And hear it patter in my house once more If I could mend a broken cart today, Tomorrow make a kite to reach the sky, There is no woman in God's world could say She was more blissfully content than I. But ah! the dainty pillow next my own Is never rumpled by a shining head; My singing birdling from its nest is flown The little boy I used to kiss is dead! Mary Louise Riley Smith. The loneliness of this mother touches every maternal heart; and yet, not long ago, I stood with a mother, widowed at the birth of her second child and son, by the grave of one God had taken in childhood, and heard her say, "It seemed so hard to part with him when we laid him here, but I rejoice now, for I know where this one is. God knew my weakness, and took him away from my misguided training, and I am thankful." The living son, now twenty-five years of age, is a very hand- some man in face, figure and carriage, but the beauty stops there; drinking, gambling, carousing with his own kind, sporting and eating, are the only things worth living for, judging from his life. "What was the matter with his training?" you ask. "Want of study on the subject, 'The training of children in the home,' " is my answer. In the whole round of good women that I know, there is not one who is kinder, or leads a nobler life, —a life of sacrifice for others; and in this spirit of making others happy, indulged in the wrong way, without studying her child as she did her cook-book, lay the mischief which made her beloved son a leprous blotch to his family and community. "I felt, " she said, "when my boy was growing up that I wanted him to know that I loved him, and I gave him everything that I possibly could for his pleasure."

44 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Right there was the trouble. She served him, instead of training him to serve her. When he took his bath, she brought the tub, and the water, and the clean clothes — when he had fin- ished, he left all for her to remove. Breakfast was kept waiting for him, till he chose to arise — dinner and supper until he was ready to come; and there was never a reprimand, so that he might know his mother loved him. The mother or wife has no right, human or divine, to wear herself out. True, her life must be one of sacrifice, but she should aim to be looked up to as a queen in "the realm called home,'' and not down upon by the husband and children: as a "household drudge and slave." How many, many times has my heart been saddened by hear- ing misguided mothers say, ''Oh, my daughter cannot help at all; she is going to school." Mothers, if you have to work either constantly or temporarily, your child should give you substantial aid. With like ability, the pupil who works faithfully three hours each day at home, gets along faster, digests acquired knowledge better, is healthier and much better developed all around than the one whose mother un- wisely excuses him or her, from all duties. I have in mind the history of a boy whom I saw several times a day during his college preparatory life. This boy was kept so busy with horse and cow and lawn and housework, and keeping up the furnace fires at home, and in school and college work, that his mother remarked, "it is not miraculous that Will is not wild. We kept him so busy he never found time to learn to be bad." Will's parents, though wealthy, were far beyond average men and women in boy training wisdom. This, their only child, was the dearest object on earth to them, and they reasoned that if he did his part of the world's work when he reached manhood, he muse do what his years and strength would allow as he went along, and be taught to feel that "Labor, all labor is noble and holy." At the age of fifteen he had finished the high school course. At nineteen he graduated with honor from his home college, which matriculates with Harvard University. He entered Harvaid in 1898, with A. B. to his name, and at the end of two years that great school added A.M. to his titles. His record for perseverance,

THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN IN THE HOME. 45 scholarship and honor, easily won for him the position of teacher of Latin and Greek in the St. Paul and Minneapolis public schools, where he taught very acceptably for two years, and then secured one of the best situations in .the Kansas City, Mo., schools. Mind and body always kept pace, for while he was working the one, the other was resting, and at the age of twenty-seven, his healthy mind body gave him a relish for life and its duties, in his healthy which made living and service joyous. The mother of President Roosevelt saw to it that every day her boys should complete some piece of work, and the life of our chief executive and the marvelous amount and diversity of work he is able to accomplish, shows that the time devoted to her heart's dearest treasures, paid that mother well. Mothers, be wise and consider that all a boy or girl learns from his or her books, while you are overworking to give your child that time, is more than lost in the selfishness that they learn in feeling that anything can justify them in letting you thus over- work. She could swing a six-pound dumb-bell, She could fence, and she could box; She could row upon the river, She could clamber 'mong the rocks; She could do some heavy golfing, And play tennis all day long; But she couldn't help her mother, 'Cause she wasn't very strong. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," and again, "An idle brain is the devil's workshop," are as true today as they ever were, and the reverse is also true, "Jesus finds some service still for busy hands do do;" and again, "A brain busy under a Christian mother's training, is Christ's workshop." There is another error into which manv good mothers drift, that of nagging. Watch that. Set aside your children's part of the work, and see that it is done properly, if it has to be done sev- eral times, but all with a kind patience through which they can see it is for their good. Honesty in the home is of the greatest importance. "Buy the truth and sell it not," said Holy Writ; and if we, as teachers,

46 IMPROVEMENT ERA. mothers and members of society, could estimate the change for the better in strictly following the teachings of these seven words, we would be amazed. A child's eyes are quick to understand the subterfuge you think is all a mystery to him. "It's good medicine, "It won't hurt to have your tooth pulled," "The bad man will catch you," are no less falsehoods for a mother than the wrong stories for which she punishes her child. Then the social quibbles. I do not me'ar that we should be painfully plain in speech, but one can cultivate a habit of not speaking at all, when the truth would be unkind. An old Quaker reproved his hired man exaggerating, telling him it was a sin. "And do you never sin in the same way?" asked the man. "Thee must watch me, and if I do, thee must tell me." "I lived in that family seven years," said the man, and learned to know that dependence could be placed upon every statement the old Quaker made— and I loved him as a father." Be sure your child is human, just as much as your neighbor's child,therefore watch him closely, 'for you know not the day ' nor the hour when he may enter into and yield to temptation." One of the saddest things a teacher must contend with, is when she knows a pupil is doing wrong, and the mother believes the child's skilfully constructed story, and thinks the teacher is guided by prejudice, or that some guilty member of the school is trying to shirk his sins upon other shoulders. If the teacher is con- scientious, she sifts the matter to the bottom before approaching the mother. One mother whom I knew always took time to read some tender, suggestive story to her four children just at their bed time, and it became in that home, an hour for self-examination. The little ones were eager to tell mama of any good or helpful act, and very often she would hear contrite confessions of their yield- ing to the temptation to do wrong. When they were ten and twelve years old they would cry as if their hearts would break over some selfish, mean or cowardly act of the day. They could not sleep until they had made a clean breast of it to mama. I do not need to tell you that this was never a scolding time — nor that these talks urged the mother to live a perfectly consistent life a life so few, so very few of us, live.

THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN IN THE HOME. 47 This subject is inexhaustible, but I cannot leave it without urging mothers to read books on the training of children. I be- lieve most firmly that if women would study the books on child culture as assiduously as they do cook books or the Delineator — their eyes would be opened to the many errors in training children, and the results would be marvelous. A child is God's best gift to — man, and you love it more than your own self and yet that child goes to bed hungry for the companionship that you are lavishing on the company in the parlor. Your library?On the shelves do we see well read books on child training? Do you read Abbott, or Pestalozzi, or Froebel, because you love your child and want to learn how to train it? A bee-keeper reads books on bees, a swine breeder on swine, a horseman on horses, a butter maker on dairying, but how many parents have invested ten dollars in books on child culture ? A few Sundays ago I saw an eleven-year-old boy, an only child, on the public streets in bad company. The mother is a good woman, and, no doubt, thinks the wel- fare of her boy is enhanced by her labors for society, and her hold on the social life of her town; but I would take chances on the four boys of the woman, who, while burdened with all her housework, set aside every evening and every Sunday afternoon for her children. In Frances Willard and her brother and sister, we have ex- amples of what parental training in the woods of Wisconsin could do. I do not cry down society; the mingling of ourselves together is an express command of scripture, and our children must have companionship when they live within reach of it, and wise is that mother who gives her first and best companionship to these chil- dren whom God has called upon her to train. Let the children come first. "Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and contention therewith." In conclusion, I feel compelled to say to mothers that, like the good woman mentioned in the beginning of this paper, you can, by indulgence, become the worst enemy your child can have. This statement is proved by the fact that nearly all the boys and girls who go widely astray were brought up by their own mothers;

43 IMPROVEMENT ERA. and that a very large proportion of our criminals have living mothers, who, in their great love for their children, weakly in- dulged them in all they demanded, until the tyrant of selfish appe- tites held them so strongly in its grasp that they were unable to resist evil promptings. The mother of the great Spurgeon said, "If Charles goes astray it will have to be over his mother's prayers," and from the results, we may know that the prayers, accompanied by works, were constant. In an exchange the other day, something like this appeared: She was not an educated woman. She was not in society. She did not wear fashionable clothes, but she brought up three daughters to tell the truth. When she died she was not laid out in purple and fine linen. There were no hired car- riages, and the flowers were all from the gardens of her friends. There was no long funeral procession, and the write-up of her life in the home papers was not extensive, but in heaven, One whose face shone with the brightness of the Father's glory said, "A queen is coming. Get her throne ready." Salt Lake City, Utah.