Why Some Children are Childish

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 27, 1906

Why Some Children are Childish

If we want children to tell the truth, we must tell the truth to them. If we want them to behave seriously, we must behave seriously toward them. Two women sat in a railroad station with two little girls. “How does the man know when the train is ready, and when the train that is ready is going?” asked one of the little girls, as the man who called out the trains from a platform in the corner of the station began to shout through his megaphone. “Oh, he knows by instinct, or by revelation,” said one of the women. That was a lie, and a lie bound to have large and evil educational results, alike on the child’s confidence in truth and in others as tellers of the truth, and on the child’s thoughts about revelation. Then the other woman began to nag the children. She exchanged their hats, greatly to their distress, pulled them about playfully, and otherwise affronted their childish but just ideals of propriety. Under her educating influence, one of the children soon began to be as childish as the woman was, and threw one of the woman’s possessions on the floor. That brought things to an end, and the woman reproved the child for what the child would not have done except for the woman’s example and influence. There is a great deal of latent foolishness in children. But from whom do they inherit it? Doubtless some of it will work out in any case, but if grown people would be a little less foolish, the children would stand more chance of growing up as wise and sensible children.—Sunday School Times.