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Lying to Children

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1903

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 80, No. 10.

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Lying to Children

WHAT an awful habit, and how common it is! How inefficient it is in all those things for which it is done! The nervous mother, all too unmindful of the teaching influence of what she is doing, calls out to her little four-year-old child that is wandering away too far, “Don’t go down there, or the big bears will eat you up. Come back quickly before they get you.” Now she knows there are no bears there, and that sooner or later the child will find it out; for, however scary the “Boogie Boos” may seem at first to the child, he will venture to peek around the corners farther and farther, and so will know there are none there. I have known parents after scaring their child away one day to try to send the same child the next day to the same place for something, and it would not be persuaded to go there for fear of bears. No, this does not work well. Besides, it is so wicked and such a trifling way of dealing with a child’s faith in us! Woebe to the mother who destroys a child’s faith! She is raising an infidel.—The Midland.