Parent and Child | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 39.

Parent and Child.

HERE is a relation which is the very fountain-head of society, "the root and bond of all creation;" a relation of infinite moment, of eternal consequence; the relation in which God himself stands to man. We forget its greatness in its familiarity. Fatherhood and motherhood are the most common thing in life—alas! the most sorely abused. That any thinking creature should enter lightly upon such a relation! Fatherhood and motherhood being entered upon, the child being born into the world, and parents and child living together, certain things follow inevitably. The parents educate the child. Not by any mere code of duty, but by a law of necessity, the parents develop and train the child's nature. They form his character. It is not a matter of choice or deliberation; it is a matter of fact. The parents train the child whether they will or not. It is a solemn duty. It is a heaven-endowed privilege. But, back of these, it is an inevitable necessity. "Oh! we are not training our children; we are just growing up with them," a mother says. All very well, if you can grow as fast as the children grow. And it is one very beautiful and true aspect of the case, of which more hereafter. Nevertheless, are you not mistaken, my dear mother? You are training your children. By the very fact of growing with them you are training them. When you lie down and when you rise up, at times when you are least conscious of it, you are educating your child. Sleeping or waking, the child is breathing the atmosphere of the home, the atmosphere you furnish him; and his blood is enriched by it, or it is vitiated by it. Your tones are ringing in his ear. Your look, your smile, or your frown, is impressing itself indelibly on his mental retina. Your principles of action are becoming his principles of action. The forces which affect the child's character are the forces of the home. Teacher, pastor, friend, may introduce other forces. They may modify, or they may in time overthrow, the principles in the child's mind. But the foundation principles are the principles of the home, the principles of the father and mother. A gloss may be put on from the outside, but it is the home that fixes the grain of the wood. The original tendency of growth is given in the home. There is no getting away from this fact. It is evident, and needs no proof. How unerringly the child's voice echoes the family tone! Father and mother, the whole world may read your secret souls through your child's eyes.

And let it be remembered that father and mother share alike in this education of the child. Neither can make over this responsibility to the other. As certainly as they share the responsibility of the child's being they share the responsibility of its training. "This life that they have dared invoke" is in their hands. They develop it. They both develop it whether they will or not. The father cannot leave the child's soul in the mother's hands and go his way. Not only must he not—he cannot. The very fact of his omission will affect the child's whole life. By what he does, by what he leaves undone, he is developing his child. The mother may not leave the discipline to the father, and give herself to the matters of food and raiment. The whole child, body, soul, and spirit, is to be fed—is fed—by both. Such as they have to give they are giving every day. And the child is growing thereby to symmetrical manhood, or he is becoming dwarfed, misshapen, or diseased.

This is one inevitable consequence of the relation. The parents train the child. Another is this: The child trains the parents. No discipline sent by the heavenly Father is more beautifully adapted to its end than this which he sends to men and women through their children. Taken aright, how the character grows and rounds into symmetry and fullness under this most gracious discipline! Call to your mind the characters you have known most remarkable for rounded grace. Were they not those of some aged mother, or of some old man grown wise with years of loving service to the young? God's best and highest course of education in this world comes through the children's hands. Yet there are those—is it possible?—who, when God would grant them this promotion, refuse it. They lose the crown of their life. They choose to themselves arid wastes where they might have blooming gardens. They choose stunted incompleteness where they might have vital growth toward noble stature. The child trains the parents unconsciously but inevitably. The bringing out of certain faculties of mind and heart and soul in the education of the child is the parent's own highest education. You send your boy to the gymnasium to develop his muscle. By your care and study and labor for him you are developing your own noblest powers. The parent who has most nearly attained his child's development has most nearly attained his own development.

To come to some details of this mutual development. The child has certain rights, in studying which and deferring to which the parents find noble discipline. By virtue of his existence the child has these rights. The child, to begin with, has the right to be treated as an individual. The parents are not the proprietors of the child. They have no right to trespass on that young identity. They will find in time that they cannot do it if they try. Wiser to guide and mould, to so infuse into the child's mind motive and principle that his growth in the desired direction will be assured. This is a point too imperfectly apprehended by parents—the separateness of the child's nature, however sweet and close the bond of love. A child has a right to be treated with politeness. There are parents—conscientious, Christian parents—who do not show common civility to their children. The child may not feel its absence, but he quickly recognizes its presence, and lays it up in his warm and yielding heart. How easy and sure a way to teach that consideration for others which we all require and expect of our children!

Respect your child's confidence. Remember that that young soul has its own experiences, distinct from yours, its own struggles and failures and triumphs, its loves and its hates. If, won by love for you and trust in you, it chooses to bring to you some portion of its own little secret history, the disclosure should be treated with sacred confidence. It may be a trivial matter. But it is no trivial question whether your child shall trust you another time or shall shrink from you.

There is a certain magnanimity which may be shown by a parent, very winning to the child and very inspiring. "I shall always remember it of my mother," a friend says, "her generous treatment of me when I had done some childish mischief,—broken a choice dish, or something of that sort. She saw what some parents overlook, that the accident itself was a punishment, and, while not making light of it, and often inflicting some suitable penalty, she yet gave me to feel her sympathy in such a way that I was doubly careful afterward." In all these ways the child's rights as an individual should be respected.

Another of the child's rights is the right to honor his parents. The late Dr. Leonard Bacon once preached a sermon on what he called the obverse side of the fifth commandment,—the duty of parents to be worthy of honor. The child is born into the world with this right. His pure eyes look to his elders for example. His soul waits for impulse and inspiration from them. Woe unto that parent who by unworthy character causes one of these little ones to stumble; it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea!

And, last—perhaps it should have been first—the child has a right to be taught obedience; obedience not to the parents' caprice or self-will, but obedience to principle, obedience guarded by penalty and encouraged by reward, obedience inspired by love of that which is right, by love of God. "For this is right," says Paul, when he bids children obey their parents. Engrave the law of right deeply on your child's mind, and there will be less trouble about technical obedience. The parent may not exact obedience as to himself. He is in duty bound to exact it as to God. He is verily guilty if he does not do his utmost to create in his child the habit of obedience, the regard to law and to right, the love of law and of right, which is the soul's greatest safeguard in this world of temptation. It is a habit, it is a temper of mind, which all parents know is most easily induced in the early years of the child's life. God give them grace to implant it before it is too late!

Father and mother, does this work seem too great, this responsibility too heavy to be borne? There are two things which make it easy. The first is the help, the sympathy, the magnanimity, the forgiveness, of our own Father in Heaven. When we are faint, he gives strength. When we mistake, he overrules. When we fail, he forgives. He recognizes the right endeavor. He understands us all, parents and children, and includes us all in his wise and loving discipline. And the second thing is the children themselves. They bring their hands full of rewards—these little ones. No parent need be told the hourly compensation, the hourly refreshment and delight they bring. They come, marvels of grace and brightness, into the dullness of our middle life, and make us young again. What is like a child's love—so pure, so unquestioning? They overlook our faults. They see only our love and our deep intent of good to them. The young creatures shame us sometimes with their trustful eyes. The rather, let them inspire us. Father and mother, with God's help, let us be more worthy of our children!—Christian Union.