Parents by Whom the Offense Cometh by Lena Leonard Fisher

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 9, 1909

Parents by Whom the Offense Cometh

By Lena Leonard Fisher

One naturally associates the vice of untruthfulness—for it is a vice—with the uncivilized, the criminal, and him who cares nothing for morality, to say nothing of religion. But that this sinful habit should be found to prevail very widely among loving and intelligent American parents is a shocking surprise. One would as soon expect a death sting from the kiss of a rosy babe. And yet it is almost impossible to ride a few blocks on a street-car, to journey for an hour on a railroad train, or touch elbows with mothers accompanied by little children anywhere, without hearing from their lips statements made to the little ones which are without a semblance of truth. The majority of these parents love their children, too, and would gladly, if need be, lay down their lives to protect them from bodily injury.

To accomplish ends wholly desirable and beneficial to the child himself a recourse to untruthfulness on the part of parents may at times seem to be helpful and consequently justifiable. But not so.

A child was once for necessary reasons left by her mother for some weeks in the care of others. The mother, whose heart was wrung at parting with the little one, in order, no doubt, to soothe her grief, told her that she would come for her the next day. All the next day the eager little face peered wistfully out of the window, watching all passers-by in the hope that the loved figure of the mother would be among them. At evening time, after a day's hopeless vigil, the disappointed child said, in a hard tone and without tears, an expression of sullen despair on her face, “My mother lied to me. I will never believe her again.” Could this mother have seen her child in this crisis of justifiable, resentful bitterness, she would have clothed herself in sackcloth and bowed her head in the dust.

Again: untruthful statements are sometimes made to children from an entirely selfish standpoint on the part of the parent, and solely for the purpose of accommodating his own convenience. Glaring examples illustrative of this are of every-day occurrence.

More than once mothers traveling with young children on railway trains have been heard to threaten to “throw you out the window,” in order to keep a little tot from taking uncertain and perilous journeys through the aisle of the coach. But such a mother, settling back comfortably in the seat with her novel open before her, has paid dearly for her selfish time of quiet by the scared face and sobbing breath of the conquered child beside her, whom she should have loved too well to crush and frighten with a lie.

A most cruel and needless illustration of the point in mind was seen a short time since in a street-car in a large city. Two well-dressed and intelligent-looking women were sitting side by side, one of them with a lovely little girl of possibly three years of age in her lap. Although strangers, they fell into conversation, which naturally enough drifted in the direction of their families and children. The conversation in its entirety was an interesting study as to the ideas of the two participants in the rearing and training of children. The little girl, in the meantime, as it was at the close of the day, had become drowsy, and in spite of the periodic efforts of her mother to keep her awake, had at last dropped to sleep before the corner which was to be their destination had been reached. Just before it was necessary for the mother with her child to alight, she said to her neighbor: “Ruth is sound asleep, and she is so heavy to carry for two long blocks, I shall have to awaken her;” and leaning over the sleeping child in her arms, she said plainly and deliberately: “Wake up, Ruth, we must get off here. If you don’t, mother will get sick and die.” And turning to her neighbor with a smile on her face, this mother said: “O, I can make Ruth do anything if I only tell her that!” Ruth certainly was awake. She put one tiny arm up as if to protect her mother from some evil blow, and then sat very straight and very rigid with wide-open eyes full of terror. She no doubt walked the two long blocks home without any trouble whatever to her parent. But sad indeed the heartless falsehood told a credulous, trustful child by a selfish, untruthful mother. . . .

To preserve inviolate the confidence of their children should be the strenuous endeavor of all parents. The attainment of this end is worthy of the continuous effort of a lifetime. By no other agency is the absolutely unvarying, unchangeable

love and veracity of our Heavenly Father made so real to the child mind as to see it exemplified in the attitude of his own parents toward him. For a parent to tamper with the truth, even where the end sought is the child’s ultimate good, is not to be approved. That any parent would, from a purely selfish standpoint, and for the purpose of furthering his own convenience or comfort, deliberately lie to his child, is to be unequivocally condemned. But for a parent, for his own momentary amusement, by a deliberately concocted lie to cause a violent revulsion of feeling of fright and horror in his child, thus at once striking a death-blow to the natural fearlessness which a child has of the wonder world in which he lives, and to the sweet filial confidence in his parents which God has implanted in his heart, is a crime certainly but little less than the taking of life itself.—Lena Leonard Fisher.