Obedience by Della T. Lutes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 27, 1911

Obedience

By Della T. Lutes

“ORDER is heaven’s first law.” It must also be that of the home if there is to be any resemblance between the two places. Order is the law, and the law is order. . . .

Each home must have certain laws by which order, peace, and safety are maintained. These laws must be taught to the child, not only that he may cause no discord in the home, but that he may take his orderly part in the community in which he lives and in the world at large.

Children must be taught obedience in the first three years of life, and should be taught it from the very first day of life. If, on the second week after his birth, a child cries to be picked up and held because he was picked up and held yesterday, he must be made quite as comfortable in his bed as he would be in the arms, and allowed to cry until he finds it useless. It will not be for long.

Too often, however, the child is allowed to have his own sweet will for two or three years of his life, possibly longer, and then all at once, when disobedience and lawlessness are no longer “cunning,” he is suddenly told not to do thus and so, and is bruised upon the body, beaten and hurt, for doing the very things he has hitherto been allowed to

do, and has often been applauded for doing.

There is always some explanation for disobedience. It may be a lack of harmony in the home. Where discord reigns between father and mother, there can be no united, harmonious development for the child. One parent will tell him to do one thing, and the other will often countermand the order, and tell him to do something else. The child soon disrespects both parents and obeys neither.

Obedience is best taught by example. If parents will keep a close watch upon themselves, will constantly strive toward an ideal, will set a vigilant sentinel over their own self-control, self-restraint, and temperament, the development of the child will follow along natural lines. Everything in the training of the child depends upon the manner and attitude of the parent toward it. The fretful, irritable, complaining, scolding mother will develop a whining, irritable, nervous, saucy child.

Once we can make parents understand that they are responsible for what their children are, we shall have accomplished a beginning.

As you are, your child will be. If you want a quiet, lovable, obedient child, be these things, both before its birth and after. If you have “nerves,” don’t be irritable with your child because it is nervous. It may have inherited the tendency, and is sure to have imitated it. Control yourself, and you will find control of the child easy.

Obedience in early years is a necessary quality of character-development. All during life some requirement or other will be made upon this bending of the will to circumstance and necessity.

Upon obedience depends health and safety from danger; upon obedience to conscience depends future behavior, and protection against temptation by law-breaking, evil influences; upon obedience to law depends success in the material world; but obedience in all things must be taught with regard to justice, else it will be not obedience to law actuated by control of self, but obedience to law by virtue of superior might, to be broken how and whenever possible without discovery. And it lies with the parents, within the jurisdiction of the home, to teach this obedience.

Blind obedience should not be expected. “Because I say so,” is a poor reason to the child of ordinary intelligence. It is a slur upon his faculties, and he rightfully resents it. We might as well have little waxen automatons about us as docile children who go and come and fetch and carry unquestioningly, simply because they are told to do so. Fortunately for the race, such children are as rare as red peas.

It is unjust to a child’s reasoning faculties to prescribe his movements, to dictate his acts, and to give no reason for or against. Of course instances occur when instant obedience must be exacted; but such a command is much more likely to be recognized and obeyed where in usual cases reasons are given. If the child knows that, on general principles, he is requested to do or not to do certain things for a reason, he will respond to a quick and urgent summons from the very unusualness of the peremptory command.

In exacting obedience we must exact it from judgment, principle, conscience, rather than our own higher authority. — Della T. Lutes, in American Motherhood.