Be of Good Cheer by Arthur W. Spaulding

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 17, 1912

Be of Good Cheer

By Arthur W. Spaulding

Come, Let Us Live With Our Children—No. 3

Be of Good Cheer

ARTHUR W. SPAULDING

To associate with children successfully it is necessary to be cheerful. No more certainly do plants grow sickly and die in darkness, than does the child’s nature become morose and enfeebled in an atmosphere of gloom. A leader must be a man or a woman of cheer. Pleasant words and happy songs must greet the morning, serene strength must bear the burdens of the noon, and thankful, genial communion must mark the close of the day. In this atmosphere the child’s nature thrives.

The normal child is happy; and like seeks like. It is altogether to the parent’s advantage that he give cheer for cheer, because the child will seek congenial company somewhere. The reason why many a boy selects the company of the stableman in town or the sportsman in the country, is because he finds in him a geniality that partly satisfies his starved nature. A stern and crabbed father who is thinking only of the saving of pennies and the hard work that gets them is denying himself the greatest wealth life can give him, in the joyous companionship of his children. The worried, fretful mother, dragging her pains out through her whining voice, is losing her chief remedy for the ills of life, in the loving caresses and ready help of her children.

But it is in the thought of training the child’s character that we must feel most heavily the responsibility of being cheerful. In the affairs of life only the cheerful man succeeds. Only the cheerful man can be a good loser, can be serene under disappointment, undismayed at obstacles, persistent to the end. Only the cheerful will be among that company who have the patience of the saints, who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. And it is chiefly our cheerfulness that will make our children cheerful.

Our children must be trained to be cheerful about wearing poor clothes and eating plain food, missing a cherished outing, or doing a disagreeable task. And to teach them so, we must ourselves be cheerful in our poverty, our privations, and our hard work.

Remember, parents, that God suits trouble to the age and experience: the breaking of a toy or the missing of a ride is as poignant a grief to the child as is the losing of a job to the adult. I recollect myself that there was a deeper grief at that age in being rejected from a blueberrying expedition because “You are too little,” than at a later age in being refused a privilege because “You are too radical.” If any one does not believe that, I venture to assert that it is because, like most grown-up people, he has forgotten what it is to be a child. But it is this very memory of the feelings of childhood that is essential in enabling us really to live with our children.

Cheerfulness is a result as well as a cause. Good health and confidence in God are its causes. What we studied last week in regard to the conservation of energy must be kept in mind, and must be put into practise, if we would have cheerfulness.

Then we must trust God concerning the things that naturally worry us. I know it is hard to maintain good spirits when our children are taking some course that distresses us. When it comes to dealing with the adolescent boy or girl, it is then that the average conscientious parent is most tempted to worry. But there never is a time when he needs more the absence of worry, the presence of cheer. Never does he need more the quality of whole-souled, joyous leadership. The worried, anxious father or mother is quickly discovered by the boy to be his subject, not his master.

And right here must be emphasized the necessity of knowledge. The father and the mother must, in their knowledge of how to deal with conditions, keep ahead of the growing child. Before the birth of their first child, the father and mother must be students of how to deal with the first requirements of the child’s nature; in his babyhood they must be students of the nature and needs of his boyhood; in his boyhood they must study the way to deal with his budding manhood; and in his adolescence they must learn how to keep up with his development, and guide him safely, cheerfully, joyously, into the maturity of the man. Knowledge gives the sense of mastery; the consciousness of mastery insures serenity.

You can not neglect this, you can not leave this to chance, and hope to be successful. With the helps that are given to-day in books, in magazines, in mothers’ meetings, and above all in the knowledge and grace God is offering us, there is no excuse for being ignorant parents. It is true enough that many authors’ theories are fantastic, that many of the counsels of mothers’ magazines are absurd and impracticable, and perhaps that advice to parents is forthcoming from more who are not successful as parents than from those who are successful; but these things can not excuse

us from study. In the Testimonies of the Spirit of God there is more dependable help for parents than any Seventh-day Adventist parents have yet received. In ‘Ministry of Healing’ alone there is enough material for a year’s studies in parents’ meetings. The trouble, indeed, is not so much that we do not read as that we fail to begin to practise. We stand aloof from our children; in timorous, anxious dismay; we need, prayerfully and courageously, to live with our children, and learn thereby, with the aid of God’s instruction, how to solve the problems.