Not enough real work for the children, in which the whole family can take an interest.
Children sitting up too late nights.
Children allowed to go away from home at too early an age, without permission from parents.
Young girls graduating from school and college, and spending their time in reading novels.
Parents loading the plates of their children with a variety of dishes, and then doctoring them for some trouble of the stomach.
Laughing at children’s big stories, thus teaching them to be untruthful as they grow older. We should not punish a child for having told a big story of something he saw, without the most careful examination of the case. The child lives in the domain of the imagination; and many a time a child has been flogged and cruelly treated for telling a thing while he honestly believed that which he told was true.
Fretting. There is an immense amount of misery caused in the household by fretting; and children brought up in a fretting atmosphere grow up to make other people miserable by fretting themselves.
Failure to train the daughters in the art of cookery. [Applause.]
Infidelity on the subject of children’s conversion. This is partly because of some soft, silly and irrational processes which are sometimes resorted to for what is called “Getting the children converted.” [That is true.]
The idea of usefulness in the world is not sufficiently appreciated. In families there is too much selfishness in “living for ourselves,” for our furniture, our table, our comforts and our society; and not enough thinking about how we may live as a center of influence for the good of others.