p. 15 | Respect the Boys and Girls and They Will Respect You

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 21, 1915

Respect the Boys and Girls and They Will Respect You

By MRS. C. C. LEWIS

MRS. C. C. LEWIS

Sometimes parents fail to realize the importance of treating their boys and girls with due respect. We hear much said about respect being shown to parents by their children, but like most questions there are two sides to this one.

O. S. Marden, in American Motherhood, recently said: “If parents would treat their company as they sometimes do their boys and girls, how long would they retain their confidence and friendship?”

The boys and girls have rights as really and truly as their parents, and if the parents will recognize these it is quite likely they will receive the same treatment from their children. Certain it is that it will create in the hearts of the children a desire to live up to the position assigned them. Let a boy feel that his father honors his opinion about the work on the farm or in the shop, and you can almost see that boy square up his shoulders and stand a bit straighter. He will be more observing after that, and next time his father asks his opinion likely as not he will be prepared to give a more intelligent answer than before.

Mr. Marden in another paragraph says, “Sometimes parents will introduce their grown-up sons or daughters to guests, while the boys and girls are ignored or asked to leave the room without any ceremony.” Such treatment is well calculated to make a child appear awkward and self-conscious. While it is unwise to push a child forward and make him conspicuous, it is also a mistake to ignore him altogether. He should be treated with due courtesy.

Occasionally even yet you will find fathers who seem to feel that their children

belong to them to manage, and to dispose of as the old Romans did their children. If they enjoy their professions or trades, they think their sons must follow in their footsteps. Many of our splendid literary men would have been lost to the world if they had followed the paths marked out for them by their fathers.

Every child has an individuality of his own, and no one has a right to compel him to follow a calling for which he has no natural liking or talent. On this point Mr. Marden says:—

“Do not try to compel a boy to follow your chosen profession unless he has some natural taste for it himself.

“Fathers should not try to make their boys mere ‘juniors,’ mere second editions, but independent, self-reliant, individual beings. A copy, whether of a picture or of a man, always lacks the strength of the original. There may be an infinitely greater man in a man’s son than in the man himself.”