Parenting: How shall we order the child?
1. Guidance for children begins in the home and children should be judiciously and carefully trained. It is to begin with the infant stage. The mind of an infant is most impressionable and lessons are the most easiest to remember. It may become harder to correct behavior as a child gets older. Wrong habits cling to them for an entire life experience! Training should begin as soon as the child is able to understand, as soon as a child has the ability of forming an idea. Home training is also the first act a child must learn. It is never to be put behind anything else! Never neglect home care!
2. Never leave children to their own devising! You cannot keep them from behaving improperly is left out of your care for too long! You are never to get a break from this work! Child rearing is a principle of self-giving. To improve the behavior of children, one must ensure that the child understands that they are an important part of your life! You cannot put yourself before the child because child training comes first in all things concerning home! We should make child
educating our business and not the business of others!
3. The work of a parent is seldom done as it should be. Understand your responsibility. Children do not understand the roots of their actions. Be very particular. Educate them on how to use their gifts of speech, thought, means and activities for a useful existence. These steps will allow them to do good to them they will associate with. As fathers and mothers, we should train and
discipline ourselves.
4. Parents are to give children physical, mental and spiritual education. Education means to mold and shape the character of a child. Children generally reflect the characters and behaviors of their parents. What you speak, think, and do all are called character. Your words should be tender and carefully chosen to help to reduce the effects of negativism. Kindness and courtesy should be used to show respect to each other. This will help to produce a character that will house pleasant actions. Our actions should never differ from the character we want our children to obtain.
a. Parental work helps to fashion character.
b. A right foundation. (Lay a strong firm groundwork then build off of it.) c. Patient, persevering effort.
d. Teach them to be kind, patient and thoughtful toward others.
5. Children should be trained in a quiet place free from distraction. This will give a child room to listen to the words flowing from the parent. Always speak according to the environment to allow for assertiveness but not aggressiveness. Environment must match character to influence
behavior. If either is off balance; the results will not prove beneficial. A calm character in a loud environment will produce anxious and fearful behavior in the child and impulsive and aggressive behavior in parents; a rowdy character in a calm environment will create impulsive and
aggressive behavior in a child and anxious and fearful behavior in parents. A rowdy character in a loud environment may match but will produce impulsive and aggressive behavior; we want just the opposite. A calm character in a calm environment will produce relaxed, non-aggressive behavior. Children are influenced by those who surround them, like siblings or neighbors. If they are noisy boisterous, the child will become noisy and intolerable. Make time so that these influences will not distract or dictate the character of the child.
6. Prepare children for reality. Through symbols and illustrations a child may become associated with the realism of the world around them and become better well prepared for the life of adulthood. They will be better guided into a way of thinking, feeling and anticipating the future.
a. Involve the child in your personal life affairs. They will gain a sense of duty. They are to gain habits of industry, neatness, and order.
c. Teach them to see that the small things need to be done and how important it is to be helpful in the house.
7. Study the laws which govern our existence; i.e., the foods that will prevent disease, the activities that will occupy the mind and give rest and ample exercise to the body, the material that will educate the mind. Children will obtain sound minds and sound bodies if parents will give attention to these things. Many behavioral problems are due to poor nutrition, neglect of exercise, impure thinking, etc.
