p. 10 | HAVING FUN by Motherhood

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1896

HAVING FUN.

By Motherhood

[TO MOTHERS.]

SCHOOL was over for the week, and Bess was at home. Bess is my ten-year-old right-hand man in running the household machinery. My girl, for a variety of reasons, had left me unexpectedly the week before, and a half-cleaned pantry was her memento.

“Bess,” I said, “let’s finish that pantry as soon as we get the breakfast dishes done.”

“All right,” said Bess, and we were soon at it. While we were deep in the mysteries, a sound of sawing, hammering, dropping, crashing came from the interior of the house. It wasn’t that the house was tumbling down, neither did the uproar create any excitement or hinder our work even momentarily, for we knew what it meant. The “paterfamilias,” with the help of the oldest boy, was tearing down the partition between two small rooms, in order to convert them into one commodious sleeping room, which might serve as a downstairs sick-room when any of the numerous brood were “laid by” for a day or two. So Bess and I worked on placidly, I washing the window, she scrubbing the broad shelf.

Wallie, his father’s helper, as she is mine, came through into the kitchen with a great basket of plaster. “We’re having fun,” said he, “tearing the house down.”

“And we’re having fun,” rejoined Bess, “cleaning the house up.”

Fun of both sorts lasted for some time, but not monotonously enough to transform it into drudgery, until we, in the kitchen, adjourned to prepare a hasty dinner, to which they, in the next room, together with the little ones from their play, did ample justice.

And the simple incident made me think about children’s fun, and about the mistake made by parents who plan it for their children as something entirely extraneous to ordinary living. Mere play in unlimited quantities does the children as much good as Huyler’s candy administered after the same rule.

I knew a little girl, not quite seven years old, whose mother picked out the coarse things from a washing and allowed her to iron them. Fun!—No amount of dollies and tea dishes could have inspired the proud glow of eye and tone of voice with which she told me what a “big pile” she had ironed.

Mothers, the more your children’s play can approach to real work without being tiresome, the more “fun” they will have. I speak whereof I know. Try it, won’t you?—Motherhood.