Too little restriction in the matter of association between boys and girls at that period of life when they are called the “after boy” and the “after girl.” When they are neither boys nor girls, neither men nor women. We put away dolls too early from the arms of our girls as they grow up.
Saying “don’t” forty times a day.
Giving sympathy to the girls, and neglecting the boys in the home. There should be not less sympathy to the girls, but more sympathy to the boys.
Dr. Vincent: Taking for granted that boys ought always to be rough, and girls always to be gentle—and so girls should, and boys too; but at the same time there is a roughness which is fitting to a boy that you can not endure in a girl. I love to see a boy grow up, full of manhood, and yet never ashamed to kiss his mother or his father when they meet. I take great pride in any boy, who growing up to be a man, gives expression as a man to that tender feeling of love with which he regards mother and father.
Parents forget that the little child’s troubles are just as serious things to it, as the greater troubles of grown people are to them. The little waves of the bay are as hard on the little boats as the big waves of the sea are on the big ships; and many a child at four or five years of age—younger or older—suffers acutely from sorrows that come, in which it finds no sympathy. We should remember this; and blessed is the minister and blessed is the teacher who has it in his heart to sympathize with and comfort the little people in their sorrows.
The foolish emphasis placed by parents upon the intellectual attainments of their children, while the moral qualities are regarded as of no consequence. It is frightful to contemplate the standards which prevail in our public schools and generally in our educational institutions of to-day, by which memory is taxed, and knowledge of science, knowledge of literature and of mathematics emphasized, and scarcely any attention whatever paid to the moral foundations. We can not regard this with too great solicitude, nor labor as parents too carefully for governing the development of the moral element.
Father and mother should read to and with their children, while the children are small. Then they will be likely to form habits of reading in later years.
Homes lack well-considered purpose and systematic effort. People plan for their business; they plan for their summer tours; they plan in every line, except that of the home training, the home spirit, and the home life.
Too little frankness and too little genuine simplicity encouraged among young girls. It is a bad thing if, through shame or fear of being laughed at, a girl fails to tell the sweetest and deepest and richest things of her heart’s life to her own mother. Blessed is the home where the girl is trained never to keep anything from her mother, and where the boy is trained always to confide in father. Boys and girls who are brought up with that confidence never go to ruin.
Illiteracy in the home:—Resulting from so many people not joining the C. L. S. C.