Run Away Now; I Am Busy

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 25, 1912

Run Away Now; I Am Busy

ONE of the most serious mistakes that scores of mothers make in rearing their children is in allowing them to be lonesome or to have dreary hours at home. Too many mothers by far shut their children off from their personal work instead of teaching them to share it. “Run away now; I am busy” is a familiar mother’s sentence of banishment to a child who is seeking to take part in his mother’s world of work. Perhaps no other sentence in the category of the average mother has sent so many children out to seek wrong affinities with playmates, or to learn some idle form of amusement. Of course, it is true that the child’s part in the mother’s work may be more of a hindrance than a help, if the mother chooses to look at it from that standpoint. But what is the accomplishment of a “big morning’s work” in comparison to an empty hour in a child’s life? The years that our children spend with us are all too few, and no action of ours should banish them from our sides when their natures reach out to us. No mother can afford to let any chance pass to have her child get better acquainted with her. It benefits the child, and educates the mother.— Ladies’ Home Journal.