HOME LIFE | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 1, 1868

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 32, No. 11.

HOME LIFE.

If home life is well ordered, the children having, according to age, work-time, play-time, books, games, and household sympathies, they will love home and find pleasure there. Give the little ones slates and pencils, and encourage their attempts to make pictures. Drawing will amuse them when noisy plays have lost their zest, or are unseasonable; and the art will be useful in after-life. Having them read to each other stories and paragraphs of your selection, and save the funny things, and the pleasant ones you see in papers to read to them at your leisure. You cannot imagine how it will bind them to you. But choose well for them, for the impressions made upon their minds now will last while the hills crumble. Have them sing together, and sing with them, teaching songs and hymns. Let them sing all day like birds—at all proper times. Have them mutually interested in the same things, amusements and occupations, having specified times for each, so that their habits will be orderly. Let them work together in the garden—boys and girls both need out-of-door work—while the parents’ eyes direct and sympathize, and the loud voices blend in the loving accord.