INHUMANITY OF PARENTS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 13, 1872

INHUMANITY OF PARENTS.

As a little boy came into the breakfast-room one morning, his father said to him, Will you ever learn to shut that door after you? And a few seconds later, as the child was rather sulkily sitting down in his chair, the father says, And do you mean to bid anybody good morning, or not? I don’t think you gave me a nice good morning, replied the lad. Was the breakfast-room door more likely to be shut next morning? No. The lesson was pushed aside by the pain of the father’s words. The motive to remember in the child was dulled. If that father had called his son, and, putting his arm around him, said, Good morning, my little man, and then, in a confidential whisper in his ear, said, What shall we do to make this forgetful little boy remember not to leave the door open, through which the wind blows on all of us? Who can measure the difference of effect?

More than half the cases where family life is marred in peace, these little rudenesses are the cause, and the parents are unconscious of it. It has become a custom to be less courteous to children on small occasions and minor matters. We see this in the cars, stores, schools, and everywhere.

The child may outgrow this rudeness of the parent (especially if it be healthy) and have better manners than the father; but the pain we give little children, when we wound their tenderness, for that there is no atoning. Over that they can never triumph. Why do we dare to be so sure that they are not grieved when we treat them as if they were continually in the way? I know a little girl ten years old, of nervous temperament, whose whole physical condition is seriously disordered by her mother’s habitual atmosphere of fault-finding. She is a sickly, fretful and unhappy child. If she lives to grow up, she will be a sickly, fretful, unhappy, and hateful woman. But her mother is just as much responsible for the whole as if she had deranged her system by poisonous drugs. Yet she is a conscientious mother. She does not know there is any better way than hers. She does not see that her child is mortified and harmed when she says to her in the presence of strangers: How do you suppose you look with your mouth open like that? Do you want me to show you how you are sitting? and then a grotesque imitation of her stooping shoulders. Will you sit still for a minute? Do take your hands off my dress! Was there ever such an awkward child? When the child replies fretfully and disagreeably, she does not see it is only an exact reflection of her own voice and manners. She does not understand what would make for her own peace as well as that of her child. Matters grow worse instead of better, and as the child grows older and has more will, the chances are, the poor little soul will be worried into the grave.

Most parents would be startled at the assertion, that a child should never be reproved in the presence of others. This is so constant an occurrence, that nobody thinks of noticing it. No one thinks of considering whether it is right and best, or not. But it is a great rudeness to a child. I am entirely sure it ought never to be done. Mortification is a condition as much unwholesome as it is uncomfortable. When the wound is inflicted by the hand of a parent, it is all the more certain to rankle and do harm. Let a child see that his mother is so anxious that he should have the approbation and good will of her friends that she will not call their attention to his faults, and then while she never, under any circumstances, allows herself to forget to tell him afterward, alone, if he has behaved improperly, she will spare him the pain of public reproof; and while that child will lay these secret reproofs to heart, he will still be happy.

I know a mother who made it a rule not to reprove a child in the presence of others. She said sometimes to her little boy after callers had left the parlor, “Now, dear, I am going to be your little girl, and you are to be my papa, and we will play that a gentleman has come in to see you; and I will show you how you have been behaving while this lady has been calling. And you can see if you do not feel sorry to have our little girl behave so.”

Once I saw this little boy behave so boisterously and rudely at the dinner table in the presence of guests, that I said to myself: Surely, this time she will have to break her rule and reprove him publicly. I saw several signals of rebuke and warning flash from her gentle eyes, to his; but nothing did any good. Nature was too much for him. He could not force himself to be quiet. Presently she said in an easy, natural tone, O Charlie, come here a minute; I want to tell you something. No one at the table supposed it had anything to do with his bad behavior. She did not intend that any one should. As she whispered to him, I, alone, saw that tears were almost in her eyes. In a few moments after he went back to his seat, he laid down his knife and fork, and said, “Mamma, will you please excuse me?” Certainly, my dear, said she. Nobody but I understood it, or observed that the little fellow had to run very fast to get out of the room without crying. That was the only way she sent a child away from the table, she told me afterward. But what would you do, if he refused to ask to be excused? Then the tears stood full in her eyes, Do you think he could, she replied, when he sees I am only trying to save from pain?

In the evening, Charlie sat in my lap, and was very sober. At last he whispered to me, “I’ll tell you an awful secret if you won’t tell? Did you think I had done my dinner this afternoon when I got excused? Well, I hadn’t; Mamma made me, because I acted so. That’s the way she always does. But I haven’t had to have it done to me before, ever so long, not since I was a little fellow (he was then eight years), and I don’t believe I ever shall again. Mary brought the rest of my dinner up stairs to me, but I would not take only a little bit of it. I don’t think I deserved any at all, do you?”

To this day, the old, tingling pain burns my cheeks, as I recall certain rude and contemptuous words which were said to me when I was very young. Once, my father called me a stupid child in the presence of strangers. I had brought him the wrong book from his study. Nothing could be said to me to-day that could give me a tenth part of the hopeless sense of degradation that came from those words.

At another time, on the arrival of an unexpected guest to dinner, I was sent away from the table, with the remark that it was not of the least consequence about the child; she can just as well have her dinner afterward. The child would have been happy to help on the hospitality, if the thing had been differently put; but the sting of having it put in that way, I never forgot. Such instances of rudeness in parents would be too small to mention, were it not from the fact, the pain they gave lasted till now.

When we consider what ought to be the nature of a reproof from a parent to a child, the answer is simple enough. It should be nothing but superior wisdom and strength, explaining to inexperience and feebleness, where they have made mistakes, to the end they may avoid such mistakes in future. If personal impatience and annoyance enter in, the relation is marred, and the end endangered. If we give our counsel and protection in a churlish and unkind manner, even to the stranger within our gates, we are no Christian, and deserve to be stripped of what wisdom we have: but no words can express what we deserve if we do thus to the little children, whom we have dared to bring into the peril of this life, and whose future way may be blighted by our careless hands.—Independent.