BRINGING UP A FAMILY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 123, 27 May 1933, Page 3

BRINGING UP A FAMILY

He is only 10, and every time tho doorbell rings ho gets there first. If there is a car accident in the avenue be is there before the skidding isover. No matter who or what comes to the house, he wants to know all about it. He sneaks out in the dawn to get the newpaper. He dives for the telephone.. And then, to cap all, he talks. lu season and out. He is forever the victim of an intense desire to tell somebody something. And if you don’t listen he looks you in the eye and says: “Hey, I’ll tell you again. You didn’t hear it all.” We cannot see why there need be so much emotion about it all, and wonder if the lad is, after all, strictly normal. In these days of free and open discussion, one begins to suspect almost anything. But take heart. What makes our forceful writers and speakers? What makes a good salesman, a good advertiser. a good preacher? It’s this same passion to tell somebody something and to be listened to. It’s an inner demand. And it would be just as cruel to crtish this in tho lad as would bo to make a left-handed child write right-handed. Many fine men, when small, were spanked for talking too much. Now they get paid for it. Ho have patience with the budding lecturer. Let him read tho newspapei to you. He’ll love it. It’s fresh. It’s to-day. Take time out from the dusting and sweeping to hold conferences with him. Direct his energies, don’t destroy them. | Why be so shy of good language? Ono of the pleasant things one can leave with one’s children is the memory of ennobling thoughts put in beautiful words. Read tho Bible and tho poets. It doesn’t matter whether tho children understand completely or not. Explain enough so that they gut the idea. But do give them beautiful words, the music that cbmes from beauty-loving hearts. It will often find echoes in very unexpected places, years after you think the readings have been utterly forgotten. And this reminds me of a very oldfashioned and beloved friend of my mother. The old dear had a lively temper, and whenever she gave way to temptation she squared things by reading a chapter from tile Good Book. She started with the first chapter, and her children—iu moments of great love and family teasing—made her believe that she had gone through the whole book three times! And there arc 1189 chapters in the Bible. The children said they didn’t, know which had done them the more good, their mother’s wholesome anger or her repentances! Hho was 13 years old, our little visitor, and she stated plainly at the beginning of her stay that she did not like to wash dishes or make beds. The girls made eyebrows at me, and the world went on as usual. On the third day tnc youngster sat on the edge of the bed and cried. “I want to go homo,” she said. ‘‘lt isn’t any fun to do just what 1 want to, all the time.” Incidentally, this makes me think of u little article I read not long ago on the value of rebellion—that it isn’t wise to get'along too easily with children; that we ought to go across the grain a trifle, so as to cultivate resistance and toughness in the offspring! Now, if some manufacturer will get busy and cultivate resistance and toughness in the knees of the offspring’s pants, I’ll join in the rebellion movement with a will.—Ladies’ Home Journal.