p. 18 | Parents Are Responsible by M. E. K.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 20, 1914

Parents Are Responsible

By M. E. K.

It has been said that if a person desires to make a success in life, he should be very careful in the selection of his ancestors. There is no question that the parental and home influences are by all odds the largest factor in the development of character. All other agencies for the betterment of young people are merely supplementary to the home.

This department in the REVIEW is conducted primarily for parents and church workers. The Missionary Volunteer Department endeavors to speak to our young people through the Instructor; but here we desire to speak to those who first and last are responsible, not only to supply food, clothing, and shelter to their children, but most of all to impart those moral and religious ideals which determine their destiny. That many parents seem, in a sense, to have surrendered their responsibility, makes it all the more important that this department should be filled with interesting discussions of problems vital in the lives of our youth, the solution of which requires their cooperation.

Those parents who have a keen sense of their responsibilities, and who are, by God’s blessing, making a success in the training of their children, are always the most alert to appropriate helpful ideas from any source. We want also to catch the eyes of those busy people who are quite content to trust to the day school, the Sabbath school, and young people’s society for the molding of their children’s lives.

First of all, as parents, we must come close to our children. “Parents, watch, watch and pray, and make your children your companions.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI, page 94.

Professor Coe has truly said: “If a choice must be made between living with one’s children and any competing interest, whether the increase of wealth, social enjoyments, even philanthropic and religious activities, there should be no hesitation in choosing in favor of one’s own children.”

After you have come close in interest and sympathy, you can lead (not drive) your boys and girls into just those fields of activity that will be for their best good. After you have studied their interests and inclinations, you will be able tactfully to make suggestions which the young people themselves will recognize as the very best.

Has your boy or girl been preparing for the Standard of Attainment examination? How many parents of boys and girls know that a Standard of Attainment has been set worthy of the ambitions of every Seventh-day Adventist, whether old or young? How many of you, I wonder, are endeavoring to beget in your children an ambition to pass the examinations in Bible doctrines and denominational history, and thus become members of Attainment? If you do not understand it, quietly inform yourself, from Missionary Volunteer Leaflet No. 21 or other sources, and lay your plans for advancing your children in this vital knowledge.

Then there are the Reading Courses, which have already become an important factor in the lives of many of our young people. Do you know what your young people are reading? Some of you think you do when you do not. Do you know that “the young are in great danger” through the evil which results from light reading? Do you realize what valuable information the young people who take the Reading Course are storing up, and what a tremendous power for good is the habit of reading such books as are outlined in these Reading Courses? Have you seen to it that a set of the Reading Course books is accessible to your boy or girl? If you have not, do you think you have done your duty? The courses begin in September, and I feel sure that with a little encouragement from parents or other interested persons, hundreds of our young people will enroll who otherwise would not. And who can estimate the importance of the first Missionary Volunteer Reading Course enrollment?

M. E. K.