One Thing at a Time

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 17, 1916

One Thing at a Time

“But you told me to pick up my blocks, mother,” reproached a four-year-old whose mother had just insisted that he “come to luncheon right away.”

The mother’s sense of justice was at once appealed to. She realized that she had made two demands almost at the same time, and the child was doing his best to carry out that which he was first told to do.

“After that,” she said, in relating the experience to a friend, “I watched myself, and I found that often I was tempted to tell the children to do one thing right after I had told them to do something else. In my hurry I had forgotten about the first order, but the children had not. I tried to be careful after that, and, if possible, allow the children always to finish what they were first told to do before I gave another direction.”

How many times we mothers make this mistake when we are hurrying through our work or are preoccupied. The things we tell the children are such small, insignificant things compared to our own more important duties that we often overlook the fact that we have perhaps told them to do more than one thing at the same time, and that, in consequence, the little minds are perplexed and troubled.

The smallest thing a baby is told to do is of the greatest consequence in his eyes. He puts all his energies into it. If, while he is striving to accomplish one thing, some one tells him to do another he is bewildered. It is not fair to the child, as we shall realize if we stop to think about it.—Selected.