TRAINING THE BOY by James Morse

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 26.

TRAINING THE BOY.

By James Morse

An Understanding between Father and Mother the First Essential.

THE first essential in this true home-building I take to be an agreement by the father and mother as to what are the inherited virtues and deformities in the child-mind; and the next, as to which parent is best fitted to take the leading part in his training, and how the other parent may rightly supplement the work. A contributory acquaintance, first of all, with the problem, and then agreement as to the best method of treating it. A single-headed police force in the family is a prime requisite.

Absolute knowledge and perfect agreement are both out of the question in this premillennial stage of the world, yet some approach to both is always possible. In the absence of the perfect in knowledge and the frictionlessness in agreement, good temper and hopefulness are the essentials to be struggled for with prayer and with considerable fasting and other self-restraint.

But the one to whom is eventually assigned the task of guiding the child, may take courage in the thought that no complete plan of training, or theory of training, is required against the morrow.

A dozen systems of education will be offered before breakfast—all to be set aside courteously, but firmly; all to be put away on a high shelf. By and by there may be some use for them.

As I look up from my desk and take an occasional glance into the homes of my boys, my first thought is, How far have the parents got hold of the primary fact that this particular child is their child, with the health of mind and body which they have given it, with the peculiarities of a temperament which is a combination of theirs? If the mother is of high mood and the father low, or the reverse, neither parent will at first quite understand certain moral eruptions which will presently appear

in the child. Until they have with some care compared notes, neither will be quite competent to say what mixture of repairing bitter juices is needed. If it is the mother, for instance, who is of the strict Pilgrim conscience, and whose ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock, while the father comes of ancestors on whom Plymouth Rock should have landed, but did not; then, in the clash of misunderstandings at the family fireside, the little fellow with a roguish, tender, wistful face, who is standing at the school-house door, is likely to be to me the subject of much thought and anxiety. I may never know quite what is the inheritance in the child-brain and nerves that I am wrestling with. Too often I do know that father and mother are taking turns in the training of the child, and that a confusion exists in the little mind as to what it should do: that between two standards of correct action at home the boy has set up a standard of his own.—Prof. James Morse, in Harpers' Bazar.