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Deceiving Children

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 12.

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Deceiving Children.

WHILE passing along the streets one day, I heard two little boys, apparently about seven years of age, conversing very earnestly. "My mother says," one was saying, and I lost the rest of the sentence; but the other replied, "Your mother is different from my mother." I could but wonder if those mothers mistrusted the notes their children were daily taking of their ways and words.
Parents are often ignorant or thoughtless of the keen observation of children. A little girl was once visiting me, and at night, before I put her in bed, I heard her say her prayers, and prayed with her. One day she told me an untruth. I called her to me and told her that it was wicked to tell what was not true, and that in that beautiful home the Lord is preparing for his children, whoever "loveth and maketh a lie" can never enter.
She listened intelligently, and with intense interest, and asked many questions while I told her about the celestial city as it is described in the word of God. After awhile she asked very earnestly:—
"Won't folks that lie go there?"
"Not unless they repent and ask God to forgive them," I answered.
"Then my mother won't go there!" she exclaimed, "for she tells lies."
I was astonished and shocked, for I knew her mother did say things "in fun" that were not strictly true, but I had no idea that the child noticed it.
It recalled to my mind the first lesson in deception I ever learned. When I was a little more than two years old I went with friends to sit for my daguerreotype, and as it was next to impossible to keep me still long enough to have it taken, they told me that if I sat perfectly still and looked steadily at the camera for two minutes, a little bird would come out, which I might have.
I sat still and looked until I ached all over.
At last I was told that I might move, and I jumped from the chair and called for the bird. After awhile they showed me the picture and told me that was the bird; and I distinctly remember to-day how angry I was when I realized that I had been deceived. They led me home between them; I screamed at the top of my voice, not so much at the disappointment of not receiving the bird, as in anger at the deception practiced upon me. I remember, too, that for a long time afterward when those who had deceived me would tell me anything, I did not believe it.
It is a sad thing when the simple trust of childhood is destroyed, and upon the impressible little heart is stamped doubt, suspicion, and deceit.
Parents stand to the child in the place of God. The child looks up to them as the embodiment of wisdom and truth, and will in all things have implicit confidence in them until it is betrayed. Perhaps some Christian parents who tearfully and with deep groanings wonder why their sons and daughters have forsaken their mother's God and rejected their father's Bible, if they could trace effect to cause, would see that the first seeds of skepticism, and guile, and willfulness were sown by their own thoughtless hands in the days of the trusting childhood of their children.
"I never yet deceived my child," said the mother of a bright, inquisitive little girl, who wanted to know the whys and wherefores of everything she saw or thought of.
"How do you get along when she asks questions that you cannot with propriety answer?" I inquired.
"I tell her all I can conscientiously," replied the mother, "and tell her to wait till she is older, and then, perhaps, she will understand all about it."
"Do you never tell her that it is improper to ask so many questions?" I asked.
"Seldom," replied the good woman, "for I'd rather she would come to me for information than to go to any one else, as I fear she might be tempted to do."
How happy will that mother be in years to come, if, as the fruit of her own truthfulness, she can say, My child never deceived me.—Sel.