Employment for Children.
By Anna Holyoke Howard
Anna Holyoke Howard, in the Household, says: Nothing is more injurious, not to say ruinous, than a constant system of repression with children. "Don't do this," "You must not go there," "You cannot have that," etc. It is chilling to the youthful enthusiasm, cramping and dwarfing to all his faculties. Children who daily and hourly listen to such injunctions, who are checked in all their efforts and aspirations after what seems to them as glorious and worthy as seem to us our higher aims, feel like exclaiming in despair, "What may we do?" and if we do not open to them ways of pleasant employment, we are guilty of exercising toward them real cruelty. Active children are generally healthy and intelligent. The disposition to incessant movement, noise, mischief, or frolic, which is often so trying to weary mothers, is only the expenditure of a superabundant nervous force in the child, which, if rightly directed, may in time make him a powerful agent for good in the world. But what is to be done? We must have peace and quiet in the evening or we shall be unfitted for the duties of the morrow. Keep them happily employed for a little while and then send them to bed early, and so take your rest and recreation after they are asleep. Some place their bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure and content them these. Children certainly place their bliss in action, and we who enjoy rest after labor must be patient with them. I know a mother who always has a little play or story-telling or reading with her children the hour before bedtime. On Sabbath she and their father each devote part of the day in walking with them and reading to them in books suited to their entertainment and improvement. I need hardly say they are among the most intelligent and promising children of my acquaintance. Give children something pleasant to do or think about, a block-house to build, a puzzle to put together, paper to cut, bubbles to blow, a stick to whittle, a picture to paint, or to look at, a top to spin, dough to make into cakes to bake for them-47selves, a little broom to sweep the doorsteps, a wheelbarrow and a little shovel to dig sand, anything to keep them busy and happy; for a busy child is a happy child, a healthy child, and if you have rightly managed his employments, a good child. Let us not repress any God-given faculties, but endeavor to turn them into such good and healthful channels as will enable them to do best service for God and humanity. It is not a waste of time for parents to stop their work long enough to pet a child, to tell him a story, or play a rollicking game. When parents take time from worldly thoughts and plans to cultivate a sympathetic friendship with their children, and each other, they are doing a good work, and sowing seed that will spring up and bring forth abundant fruit that will amply repay the effort, time, patience, or self-sacrifice involved.