Rights of Children

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 3, 1874

Rights of Children.

The first right of every child is to be well born; and by this I mean that it has a right to the best conditions, physical, mental, and moral, that is in the power of the parents to secure. Without this, the child is defrauded of his rights at the outset, and his life can hardly fail of being a pitiful protest against nature’s broken laws. Good health, good habits, sound mentality, and reverent love should form the basis of every new life that is invoked. The mother who gives herself up to morbid fancies, who considers her health an excuse for petulance and non-exercise of self-control, proves herself unworthy of the holy office of mother, and ought not to be surprised if she reap, at a later day, the bitter harvest of her unwise sowing.

Second in importance to none, as a means of securing the happiness and best good of childhood and youth, is the right to be taught obedience. It is easy to submit to what we know is inevitable, and, to the little child, the requirement of the parent should be law without appeal. The tender, immature being shut in by the unknown, where every relation is a mystery, and every advance an experiment, has a right to find itself everywhere sustained and directed by the parent. It should not be tempted to resistance by laws that are imperfectly enforced, nor subjected to the injurious friction of discussion by having a long list of reasons given for every requirement. The habit of obedience to the parents may be formed before the child is two years old; and this is a necessary precedent of obedience to law, the next stage of a true development.

The child has a right to employment and the free use of its faculties. “What shall I do?” is the plaintive wail of many a little one imprisoned in rooms where everything is too nice to be played with, and among grown-up people who cannot endure noise. “Sit down and keep quiet,” is too often the impatient answer—an answer which I never hear without an indignant mental protest. I admonish you, father, mother, guardian, into whose hands God has committed the sacred trust of a child’s life, be careful how you betray it! Beware how you hinder a soul’s development by a selfish seeking of your own convenience!

Absolute reliance on the love of the parents, faith in their wisdom that forbids doubt, are indispensable conditions of a healthy and happy development. They constitute the fertile soil and genial atmosphere in which all beautiful human affections bud and blossom. “Father does what is right,” “Mother knows better than I,” are the instinctive utterances of a child whose life and education have been rightly begun. That these utterances are not oftener heard, is a severe commentary upon our methods, a sad indication how much the rights of children have been neglected.

The child has a right to ask questions and to be fairly answered; not to be snubbed as if he were guilty of an impertinence, nor ignored as though his desire for information were of no consequence, nor misled as if it did not signify whether true or false impressions were made upon his mind. He has a right to be taught everything which he desires to learn, and to be made certain, when any asked-for information is withheld, that it is only deferred till he is older and better prepared to receive it. Answering a child’s questions is sowing the seeds of its future character. The slight impression of to-day may have become a rule of life twenty years hence. A youth in crossing the fields dropped cherry-stones from his mouth, and at old age retraced his steps by the trees laden with luscious fruit. But many a parent whose heart is lacerated by a child’s ingratitude might say:

“The thorns I bleed withal are of the tree I planted.”

To answer rightly a child’s questions would give scope for the wisdom of all the ancients; and to illustrate needed precept by example would require the exercise of every Christian virtue.—Victoria Magazine.