Parents Playing with Children
By Helen Raymond Wells
THERE are so many things that parents must care about in the proper maintenance of their families that they find it a necessity to abandon many of their youthful accomplishments and pleasures, rather taking credit to themselves for ‘settling down’ into staid and steady-going old folks. That is all very well for them, but there is danger of their ‘settling down’ too far into deep ruts that disqualify them from entering into the lives of their own children. They have ‘put away childish things’ so far into their past that they have nothing whatever in common with children. ‘One is no older than he feels,’ it is said, and by that standard of measurement many people we know never grow old. They keep a young heart—a heart that consequently draws the young. An interest may not be feigned, either. It must be genuine, or a child will surely detect the false ring. I know no better way for the parents to establish this true sympathy for their children than to be children with them. You have no idea, until you try, what a rejuvenating effect it will have to play with them. The happiest homes I know are those in which the habit prevails of having a play after the evening meal before the smallest children go to bed and the older ones to their studies, and where in consequence the very highest opinion and greatest love prevail among these happy young folks for their parents, frequently thus expressed: ‘Mamma’s just like a girl, and papa is as good as any boy;’ and the children are just as ready to confide in the parents as if they were children. The sympathy acquired by the parent in entering into the child’s interests may be sustained by admitting the child in his larger growth into the parents’ interests. Almost any boy or girl will feel complimented to be admitted into the parents’ confidence. He will appreciate confidential talks in which he is made acquainted with the aims and plans of his parents, and by which means an interest on the child’s part in the occupations and efforts of the parents is established that means comradeship of a most enjoyable and beneficial nature. The sympathy engendered by this exchange of confidences serves as a bond that holds young men and women to their homes and from detrimental outside influences. A correct knowledge of the family finances will keep them from extravagant expenditures, inspire them with a wish to aid the parents in their efforts to accumulate, and, if necessary, to economize means, and also induce them to make the most of their opportunities in acquiring an education and choosing an avocation; and, more than all, fire them with a noble ambition that their lives be well and worthily spent.—Helen Raymond Wells, in the New Crusade.