POINTS FOR PARENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3, 3 January 1903, Page 3

POINTS FOR PARENTS.

A HOME YOUR CHILDREN. WILL

REMEMBER.

"I don't live in my neighbour's pocket." This is how President .Roosevelt puts it when he expresses his liking for a house standing alone and free, without another house in sight. Such is his house at Sagamore Hill.

The children — the President has six—can run about barefoot, they can do what they please, and there are no neighbours to object or criticise. There is an open space all around the house, so that it is always bathed in plenty of light and air and sunshine; behind it are great trees, oaks, and chestnut and hickory.

Mr Roosevelt's house, its interior, is exactly what one would imagine it to be. The exterior creates the impression of genuine comfort, of a place in which people live and not merely spend a fragment of their lives, and the interior shows at a glance the purpose of the place and bears the marked individuality of its distinguished owner. It is the President's only house, his home. It is full of things that have histories and interesting associations. The President says he wants the house to have distinctive memories for his children; he wants them to remember it when in after yeara they go out into the world. It is quite certain that Sagamore Hill will always be to the Roosevelt children the one spot that will be quite different to them from any other. No matter what houses they may build for themselves, Sagamore Hill will hold in their memories an affection that can never be effaced.

FOOLISHLY INDULGENT PARENTS.

It is the home indulgence of earlylife that is responsible for so manyspecimens of what we may, for the want of a better -word, call backboneless humanity.

There are many mothers of the indulgent kind who have it not in ther hearts to maJte their children do anything that is unpleasant to them. The frequent "school headaches" are accepted ■ seriously, and the lessons are set aside for that coveted run in the garden or that jolly play in the house. If music be unpleasant for the little girl still in the grinding drudgery of scales and fingering, music is dropped because she has no taste 1 for it, and it is cruel to force her inclinations. So with her brother's Latin and arithmetic, geography, and history. The mother maintains the abnormality of her children ell through, and makes that childish petulance and childish dislike of initial drudgery the measure of their mature requirements. Nor can she correct them when they do wrong. She makes kindly excuses to them, and for them, and puts excuses into their own mouths, to sate them the pain of a frank confession, and herself the anguish of inflicting a welldeserved punishment. A COMMON ERROR. We must beware of protecting our children too much from the action of the simple laws Of Nature, Parents who have had to struggle and have been successful are apt to say that they do not want their children to have such a hard time. Thus they are apt to shield their children so completely from the pressure of natural laws that the strengthening and health-giving effect of Nature is lost. After struggling and conquering, one knows how to value opportunity and to use it well when it comes. But it is difficult to -possess what one has not earned. And the effort to keep away from our children the in* fltiences that have done us most good Is one of the strangest tendencies in human life. WHEN CHILDREN QUESTION OBEDIENCE. Little children obey largely from emotional reasons; because they love us, respect us, or fear us. They like to respond to personal authority, and cannot be expected to understand the deeper principles of life, It is only gradually, as the reason of the child develops, that we can hope to cultivate the free response to lair. But it is surprising how soon and how rapidly this possibility comes. As early as five or six years of age children begin to question why they should obey. And as questioning concerning intellectual problems we regard as our educational opportunity, so the, "why" of childrenin the moral world Is tiw arterial we have to work with. Instead of suppressing the question and striving to keep tfle blind submission to personal will, we should help the child to a recognition o* the sound reason for his obedience and thus transform his snbmiseion to personal authority into a voluntary obedience to consciously reverenced law. . Obedience first, then rational and free obedience as fast as possible— this is the whole process of moral education under the influence of organised environment.