A WORD WITH PARENTS by Mrs. W. S. Larkin

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1900

A WORD WITH PARENTS.

By Mrs. W. S. Larkin

MRS. W. S. LARKIN. (Winchester, Idaho.)

PARENTS, have you ever asked yourselves the question, Am I teaching my child, day by day, truths which will lead him in the right course through life, or am I teaching him lessons to be forgotten, impressions to be erased?

Are you guarding your language and striving to speak with correctness, that the first words from baby's lips may be framed in their proper order? Or have you drifted into a careless, unthoughtful, haphazard way of speaking, teaching your children the same improper language, which in later years will cause them days of hard struggle, endeavoring to break the chain of habit, which is contrary to the Text-book in their hands?

Habits formed in the early years of life fix themselves so firmly in the mind that to forget them is almost impossible; and your child will be mortified, time after time, by the unconscious use of errors learned in childhood.

If you wish to see your child advance with great rapidity to a person of knowledge, and wish to clear the stones from the path of life for him, you can find no better time than while he is learning his first baby words; and no better way than in correcting your own ways before him.

In this effort you not only teach lessons of advancement, but you have a purpose in mind for which you are daily preparing yourself, and, therefore, parent and child advance together.

Parents so often forget the Lord's words, “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

When you place your child in school, you want to be assured that the teacher is qualified to teach him truth, and not error. If he is a musical instructor, you want his methods to be the latest and best. Do you not suppose that God is equally interested in the welfare of his little ones, and is pained to see the minds of his pure, innocent children filled with the careless, unthoughtful impressions, made by those whom he has appointed to be their shepherd, teacher, and loving parent? Every parent has some knowledge of right and wrong, and it is unjust to withhold from your child the best which you possess.