HIRING CHILDREN TO DO RIGHT.
As a general thing we do not believe in hiring children to do right, or to do those things which it is their duty to do. All children, even the very little ones, ought to have some part in the home-making, some special duties which they should be taught to render freely and gladly because it is the right thing to do, and is expected of them. To hire them to do such things destroys all the spontaneity of it, and it does not take long for the child to get the idea that he ought to be paid for every service he renders. Also, as a general thing, we deprecate the giving of prizes for good behavior or good scholarship or excelling others in any way. In such cases the motive for studying or for “being good” is not the right one; and it is often, indeed almost always, the case that the most deserving, the one that has striven hardest, does not get the prize, while the exultation of the winner is no compensation at all for the hurts and disappointments and bad feelings of those who fail. But all this is not saying that the child may not be rewarded for doing well. He often should be, but there is a wide difference between his doing well for the sake of the reward, and being unexpectedly rewarded after he has done well. Appreciation and encouragement judiciously administered are the very breath of a child’s life, and neither of them should be stinted. Give him his regular weekly or monthly allowance of pocket money, and then expect that he will do all that he is required to do at home willingly and obediently without asking or expecting to be paid except in approval and love. But lately we came upon an instance which was so original and unique it seemed it might rightly be made an exception to the general rule. A mother, last fall, called her five little ones around her, and explained to11them some simple hygienic laws about taking cold—such as sitting in drafts, getting the feet wet, going suddenly from a heated room into the cold; about diet, overeating, eating improper food and at improper times; about the reason for going to bed early and getting sufficient sleep, etc. Then she told them that she would, when warm weather came, give a nice present to each one who had succeeded in going through the winter without getting sick. The children—not stimulated wholly by the prospect of the reward either—entered enthusiastically into the plan, and have been their mother’s warm supporters in all the hygienic rules she has made. They have willingly denied themselves many things which they liked and liked to do, and have willingly done things which they did not like to do; and at last accounts there was no healthier or happier set of children to be found than these five. So perhaps this instance may be the exception which proves the rule that, as a general thing, it is not wise to pay a child for doing right.—The Advance.