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LITTLE PETITIONERS

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 28, 1902

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 79, No. 4.

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LITTLE PETITIONERS.

By Eleanor Ingraham

Eleanor Ingraham, in American Mother.
How few mothers realize the importance of intelligently answering a child's questions! It is a matter of surprise and regret to those who are interested in children and their mental and moral welfare, that very many of them learn so little of what is best worth knowing of the world around them from their mothers, and so much that is not worth knowing from other sources.
How many mothers—loving mothers—feel that childish questions and comment are “stuff and nonsense,” unworthy of any one's attention; fit only to be silenced with, “Do keep still, and don't bother me,” or a piece of cake, and a dismissal to play in the yard or street. How often the writer has heard the conversation of older persons (frequently more vapid than child's talk ever is) interrupted by incessant questions on subjects of universal interest, not one of which was answered intelligently or even civilly by the mother.
If it be permission to do something that is craved, how frequently the response is an impatient “No,” without regard to the reasonableness of the request, simply because “no” dismisses the case, when “yes” might imply a moment's attention and thought. If it be a request for aid with school work, forgetfulness or ignorance of the subject often impels her to say, “The teacher ought to tell you, and not expect me to know;” a sad admission of her own deficiency, and a most unfortunate thwarting of the teacher's highest purpose.
If, as most often occurs, it is a matter of general knowledge that has aroused the child's curiosity, it is positively astonishing to note the utter disregard for truth and reason that many parents display. Partly through ignorance and partly through indifference, the most misleading and outlandish answers are given—because, forsooth! the questioner is “only a child,”—only the most sacred charge that Heaven could have bestowed upon you,—only the most dependent of all beings, yearning for your sympathy, thirsting for the knowledge that you seem to him to have possessed from the beginning, and looking up to you with a fullness of trust and faith more sublime than he is yet able to conceive for Divinity itself.
“Mama, what are the stars made of?”
“Mercy! I don't know.”
“Does anybody know?”
“No; God just put them up there for us to look at. Don't annoy me.”
And thus the door to the most beautiful realm of God's great fairyland is slammed in the little one's face.
“Papa, what makes the locomotive go?”
“Steam, of course.”
“But how?”
“Why, the engine inside does it.”
“What makes the engine do it?”
“Steam, I told you. The man in there fixes it, and he'll turn it on you and burn you if you don't keep still.”
In a very few words the scientific principle could have been clearly and simply given, and a train of thought and observation started that would have been infinitely more beneficial than the hopeless silence and discontent that follow such senseless threats.
If the child be timid or dull, he will gradually withdraw from the field of constant defeat, and wonder on idly for years at the mysteries around him, failing often, when later opportunities for enlightenment come, to take advantage of them. If, on the other hand, he be bold and inquisitive, it will not be long before he will discover the errors and deceptions of which he has been made the victim, and the lessening of his respect for his elders will be far greater than they realize. To give your child grounds for believing that “mama doesn't know anything,” or worse, that “she does not tell the truth,” is to thrust a gulf between yourself and him that years of toil and sacrifice cannot bridge.
Note the difference in the schoolroom between the child who has nothing but his text-book to depend upon for the preparation of his lesson, and the one who has a fund of general information at his command, gleaned in part, no doubt, from wisely directed supplementary reading, but more largely from intelligent conversation at home. This knowledge serves not merely as an addition to his recitation, but, in its acquisition, as a stimulus to his mental powers, which are thus the better trained for receiving and comprehending new ideas along any line. The former child, even when naturally industrious and thorough, misses point after point of the incidental allusions, and often fails in his conception of the objective truth which the teacher is striving to impress. His ambition may be just as high, his power of concentration just as great, his method of preparation just as painstaking, as that of his more fortunate classmates, and there is sometimes a pathos in his surprise and perplexity at being so notably outdone, so emphatically impressed with a consciousness of inferiority, by this lucky comrade. If his mother could only know!
Do not encourage children to be selfish and rude in their demands, importuning your guests, and perpetually monopolizing your attention regardless of your duties to yourself and to others, but give them to understand that their questions will be heeded, and at the proper time rationally answered. If you do not know a given thing, acknowledge the fact frankly, but tell them as much as you can, and help them to find out the rest. In this era of widely diffused learning, cheap and good periodicals, and free libraries, one need not go far to secure information on almost any subject, and it will richly repay you to make the effort to supplement your own knowledge for the children's sake.
A prominent woman once told me that the one dread of her young motherhood had been that her children might outgrow her ability to teach them—that perhaps some day they would ask her something that she could not tell them anything about. The thought was so humiliating that she resolved never to let slip an opportunity for improving herself and enlightening them. She became their comrade, and by living in their world, and taking them into hers, she lost no whit of their respect or obedience. On the contrary, their babyhood's faith that “mother knew everything and was just right,” was strengthened with the years, and they were ever ready to champion her cause and to defer to her judgment.
In the entire Bible there is no more encouraging command, no more beautiful promise, than “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The mother is the child's first deity, and surely it is she who must respond not only to the needs of the body, but to the yearnings of the little heart, and the myriad questionings of the aspiring young mind.