AMERICAN CHILDREN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 31.

AMERICAN CHILDREN.

The following from Lucia Ames Mead in the Congregationalist presents a feature in the training of American children that parents would do well to consider:—

“In many American homes lack of manners is fast becoming something akin to lack of morals. The grandmother and guest are frequently forced into a secondary position in conversation, the tea-table talk being monopolized by children’s chatter and clamor. Deference to age is conspicuous by its absence. The child is encouraged to think of himself first and others last, for fear that his ‘spontaneity’ will be checked. Among well-bred Europeans the American child is usually considered a nuisance, to be held up as a warning. Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer tells a good story of her experience in a German railway train, when a tiny Karl, who had committed some little rudeness, was reproved in a shocked tone by his mother. ‘My son,’ said she, ‘what shall I do with you? You behave just like an American child.’ Evidently nothing more crushing could have been said. The traveler who has once lived with foreign children and observed their sweet courtesies and absence of pertness, and has seen how happy children are in considering others, may well desire that our active, vigorous American children should add a new grace to the other charms which make them the light and joy of our homes.”