Bedtime Talks with the Children by Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 12, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 19.

Bedtime Talks with the Children

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

The other day as I walked down the street, my way led me across a new cement sidewalk. It was very nice and smooth, and I thought, What an addition to the city are these nice walks! But as I looked, I noticed several large, unsightly footprints deeply sunken into the great cement slabs, which were now as hard as stone. Ah, said I, some one has been stepping on the walk while it was still soft and plastic, and now it is too late to smooth out the footprints; they must remain as long as the walk endures,—a standing monument to somebody’s heedlessness. Why?—Because the cement has hardened now, and the mischief can not be repaired by never so skilful a workman.

Then I said, There is a lesson in all this, which it would be wise for parents and teachers and any one else who has anything to do with the molding of the minds of young children to remember. The minds of the little folks are like the cement blocks before they have hardened. When once they receive impressions, they are there to stay. Ah, how many times the careless, thoughtless mother or teacher leaves unlovely impressions upon the plastic minds of the little ones.

The bedtime hour ought to be the sweetest, happiest hour of the whole day to the children. Instead of this, it is to many of them a time to be dreaded and postponed as long as childish ingenuity can accomplish it. Many timid and nervous little ones are afraid of darkness and shadows. The morbidly imaginative and sensitive child is to be pitied; and the parent or guardian of such an one needs heavenly wisdom and divine patience. To such a child, every shadow is peopled with horrible shapes and dreadful goblins, and every dark nook and corner becomes in his imagination the lurking-places of “bogy men” who only await an opportunity to destroy him. It can not be the wise mother who insists upon putting such little ones into a lonely, dark bedroom, with the parting admonition to “go right to sleep,” while she closes the door upon the sobbing child and leaves him alone to the horrors of his childish imagination.

The loving mother—the truly wise one—is never cruel. She will reserve the sweetest stories, the most loving kisses, and the most dreamy lullabies for the twilight hour. Then, with these upon her lips, she will soothe the weary, restless, nervous little body into the quiet slumbers of dreamland.

Put the little ones to bed with dimples upon their soft cheeks instead of tears. Tell them some sweet story of your own childhood, or, better still, go to that inexhaustible storehouse, the Bible. This is a story-book that never grows old. Where is the little child who ever tired of listening to the “sweet story of old,” of the wonderful Babe whose birthplace was a manger; of the beautiful star of Bethlehem; of the wise men who brought the rich treasures of the far away East, and poured them at the feet of the sinless Child? What little one ever wearied of hearing the story of young Samuel, or of Ruth, the beautiful gleaner, or of Esther, or of Sampson, or of young David and the giant, or of Noah and his wonderful ark?

With such a rich and varied storehouse as this from which to draw, it is an astonishment to me that foolish mothers can think of nothing more profitable for mental or for spiritual food for their children than some silly nursery rhyme about the “cat and the fiddle,” and “hi-diddle diddle, the cow jumped over the moon.”

Pitiful, isn’t it? Especially does this apply to those of us who ought to know better,—to those whose own minds ought to be so filled and impregnated with the all-glorious truths of the Gospel, that they want nothing else for their children. Not that they are to be taught nothing but the Bible; but O there is plenty of good, sound, sensible literature, without dabbling in folly.

A child who is fed on cake and candy and pastry and sweetmeats, soon learns to relish nothing else; but he grows to be a weakling—an unhappy and miserable dyspeptic. In like manner, children who are taught nothing but folly and silly, senseless jingles from earliest infancy are apt to become spiritual and mental dyspeptics. Of what conceivable benefit will it ever be to your little girl or boy to be able to repeat page after page from “Mother Goose,” or “Mother Hubbard” or “Simple Simon”? Will such bedtime stories as these add one whit to their knowledge? Will it brighten their intellects or add to their intelligence to be able to tell how many “black-birds” were baked in the pie that the king was said to have eaten? And more serious than all, is this the kind of foundation upon which to build well-rounded, symmetrical characters, such as we desire our children to possess?

“But,” protests some anxious mother, “I think it is a good thing to develop the imagination of our children. Don’t you think these old-fashioned nursery rhymes help to do that?”

Yes, if it is desirable to train the imagination to dwell upon things which never existed nor ever can exist. But O how much better to allow the imagination to revel in the unseen glories and dazzling beauties of those mansions which “eye hath not seen,” and before whose indescribable splendors, even the pen of inspiration hesitates and stands still!

Do you think it possible for human language fully to describe the wonderful journey which the redeemed will soon take? Are you able perfectly to describe the shining convoy of angels which will escort the saved of earth—parents and children—even to the everlasting gates of the city of our God? Can you describe the meeting of loved ones long separated by death? Is your tongue able to recount the wonders which will pass before them while on their upward flight,—the whirling suns and planets and worlds and systems which will be passed by the mighty excursion train on its way to the glory land?

If you feel unable to describe these things perfectly, then assuredly there is plenty of room for the play of the most vivid imagination.

Then, do you not think that, if the last waking moments of our little ones are trained to dwell upon such themes, their sleep will be calm and sweet, and their dreams be of the beautiful angels whose holy presence is continually invited?