QUESTION-ASKING CHILDREN.
Several people were at the dinner table last evening, and the conversation turned upon the treatment of young children in matters pertaining to truthfulness and other things. The memory of that conversation leads the writer to say that the question-asking age of childhood is of vital importance to the child, and places great responsibility upon the parents. To every bright child the question-asking age must come. We fear that too many parents do not regard this age as a natural stage in the intellectual and moral development of the child. Too many persons look upon children's questions as a matter of annoyance or amusement, and think that no great pains need be taken to give proper and instructive answers. Parents often retort by telling the child that its question is foolish. It is too common a thing for parents to turn the child away without making any serious effort to answer questions or to make judicious use of the opportunity presented for instructing the child. Such a course on the part of the parent is inexcusable. The interrogative stage in a child's development is as significant and as necessary as are the various stages in the child's physical development. Parents and teachers ought to be more eager to furnish food for the hunger which the questioning of children indicates than to furnish food for their growing bodies. The questioning age is to the developing intellectual and spiritual life of the child what incessant activity is to physical development. Still more lamentable is the tendency on the part of some parents not only to make light of the child's questions, but to deceive and confuse the child by indirect or false answers. This is wickedness and not wit. Such treatment of children degrades the parent, wrongs the11child, and insults the Creator, who has implanted the question-asking faculty in every child. Few things mark a man or woman as unworthy of parenthood more strongly than such wrong treatment of children at the questioning age. Sincerity of Such Questions.
Improper treatment of children at this stage of their development is the more unkind and mischievous in view of the sincerity with which children put their questions. They are eager to know; and if it seems that their eagerness is from curiosity alone, the case is not altered, for curiosity is a God-given faculty which leads us to seek knowledge. This is as true in matters pertaining to right-doing as in other things. Unless the child has received such inheritance as makes him dull touching right-doing, the sense of right and wrong may be developed and cultivated at an early age. This is done by interchanging views and giving information when questions are asked much more than by any set of rules. That children do not understand what is right and wrong is often due to the bungling way in which such questions are treated by parents and teachers. Rightly understood, the question-asking age on the part of an intelligent child is the most favorable opportunity the parent can have for aiding in the intellectual and moral development of the child. The questioning mood is the receptive mood, and the parent who is indifferent, frivolous, or impatient because a child heaps up questions, is hardly worthy to be a parent. If the mind of the child be directed properly, the questions he will ask open the way for imparting the richest and best lessons possible touching duty and conduct as well as facts. It may be a troublesome age, and you may be inclined to wish the child would keep quiet; but the tendency to seek information through questions is not only a laudable one, but it is in keeping with the divine order that childhood should thus grow and develop in all matters pertaining to its highest good.—Sabbath Recorder.