p. 13 | Teach the Children to be Careful

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 31, 1916

Teach the Children to be Careful

It is often a disastrous thing to take a child into a room where there is fragile bric-a-brac. Children have no appreciation of the breakableness of the pretty objects that they naturally want to take in their hands for play. They are attracted by color, delicacy, oddity of shape, or something of the sort.

But oh, how many broken pieces! How many mortified or exasperated mothers!

And yet the fault lies almost entirely with the mother of the child. It is quite natural for the child to want to touch an object, to finger it, to play with it.

A wise mother I know trained her child so that he never dropped objects. When he was a tiny little fellow, she began holding pretty objects up for him to look at, allowing him to run his little hands over them, pat them, and hold them for a moment. When he grew older, she played a game with him by pretending that he was an art dealer who wanted to sell pretty things to her. She pointed out the most fragile pieces in the house, and told him why they were so valuable, and so breakable. She showed him how to hold them, how to carry them, and then she allowed him to bring them to her. Not once—and she says this with a pardonable boast—not once has the little boy broken anything valuable.

The first time I visited her, I brought with me a lovely cup and saucer of fine ware for which I had paid a large sum when I was in France. Imagine my consternation when she called to her side her little boy of three, and pointed out to him the beauties of the gift, and then directed him to carry it over to the table and lay it down. I half rose from my seat to interfere, but she smiled me down.

“Little brother loves it as much as we do,” she said softly, with her eyes fixed proudly on the youngster.

The baby carried the cup and saucer over to the table, then came over to his mother and sidled up close.

“A sunny tup,” he announced.

“Not funny, dear,” answered his mother, “but very beautiful. See the wonderful color,” etc. Then she quickly pointed out the beauties of the cup and saucer again, and asked the baby to bring it to her.

Little Brother carried it over even more carefully. The dear little fellow brought it up to me, and said, in his quaint, babyish language, “Not a sunny tup, a beuffel tup.”

By deliberately encouraging handling of rare objects, that mother was training unconsciously the senses of her child. He walked more steadily, he held things more surely, he used his hands more efficiently. And he prided himself on doing those things well.—Selected.