RULES FOR SPOILING A CHILD by Christian Intelligencer

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 28, 1880

RULES FOR SPOILING A CHILD.

By Christian Intelligencer

BEGIN by giving him whatever he cries for.
Talk freely before the child about his smartness as incomparable.
Tell him he is too much for you, that you can do nothing with him.
Have divided counsels as between father and mother.
Let him learn to regard his father as a creature of unlimited power, capricious and tyrannical; or as a mere whipping machine.
Let him learn (from his father's example) to despise his mother.
Do not know or care who his companions may be.
Let him read whatever he likes.
Let the child, whether boy or girl, rove the streets in the evenings—a good school for both sexes.
Devote yourself to making money, remembering always that wealth is a better legacy for your child than principles in the heart and habits in the life; and let him have plenty of money to spend.
Be not with him in hours of recreation.
Strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; chastise severely for a foible, and laugh at a vice.
Let him run about from church to church. Eclecticism is the order of the day.
Whatever burdens of virtuous requirements you lay on his shoulders, touch not one with one of your fingers.

These rules are not untried. Many parents have proved them, with substantial uniformity of results. If a faithful observance of them does not spoil your child, you will at least have the comfortable reflection that you have done what you could.—Christian Intelligencer.