What a Young Wife Ought to Know

by Emma F. Angell Drake

Does this seem too ideal to our young mothers, and not at all practical? It should not, and I believe will not when it is carefully considered. If any who reads these pages is already anticipating early motherhood they need not be discouraged, for every succeeding child should be better than the one before. Every lesson she learns in the care and training of the first children should but make her the stronger for the duties of future mothering. The trouble too often is that she allows her time and attention to be taken up with less important things, and the fixing of the earlier lessons and learning new and better ones are neglected. In other words, motherhood is not to-day considered her all-important calling, and the little ones suffer from the mothers having fallen too deeply in love with other and less noble things.

All will agree with me, when I say, that we can only with great difficulty train in our children, what we do not know as a part of ourselves. Are you calm and self-possessed? Then you can with little effort teach your children this valuable and telling characteristic. Are you governed by reason and judgment, not impulse? Then you can train your child to this same strength. Are you of even temper? Then you will have little trouble with a stormy-tempered boy or girl. Are you charitable and careful in your speech, and kindly in your judgment of others? Your children are easily led in the same direction.

It is safe to say that only so far as we have travelled ourselves, can we lead our children. True we can point them onward, and tell them of the desirableness of that way to travel in, but their little feet are reluctant to try new paths, unless the parent has tried them before them.

The story of the little son who had without permission followed his father up a steep and dangerous mountain climb, and who at a particularly difficult point in the path, made his presence known, by calling out, “Step carefully, papa, for I am coming in your footsteps,” illustrates just what our example is to our children. Hence I say, Mrs. Wesley did not put the time of her beginning to train her baby, back far enough by many years. Every step in the onward path which she had made in all the years of her own training was but a page in the training she was to give her boys and girls in the after years. “As is the mother so is her daughter,” is God’s truth, although it is many times hard to face.

We desire to train our children to our ideals, and they are ever reaching up to us as their ideals. True, this should spur us on to better things that our example shall be a more worthy copy, but we waste much precious time when we must go to school in mature life to learn the lessons that should have been fixed in our youth.

First, let us remember that a child can be taught more bad habits in its early months than years of training can undo. A methodical, well taught baby becomes a tractable child, as a rule; while a haphazard baby, humored in every whim, becomes a child and adult of the same demands. Have you not often met grown men and women that were just great overgrown spoiled babies? You can read the history of their training, or the lack of it, in their habits, their whims, and their selfishness, through the unmistakable lines these have written on their faces.

Again we must remember that children have rights that we are bound to respect; and unless we do respect them, we can hardly expect them to regard our rights. Another fact is this; that no two children can be trained alike. Each is a study by itself, and each must be studied, if we desire to attain success in the individual case. But few absolute rules can be made; for there must ever be a certain degree of flexibility about every law laid down in the home.

A request is far better than a command, but from the parent it should be regarded with such respect that it equals a command. Also there is a wide difference between a criticism and a kindly correction of a fault. Criticism antagonizes, and arouses the anger of the child, though he may not be old enough to analyze his feelings, yet the spirit of rebellion is there, and leaves its unpleasant results. On the other hand the kindly correction, with love shining all through it, awakens a sorrow for the wrong, and a determination never to repeat it.

“Johnnie, what makes you do so? It does seem to me that you are always doing something you ought not to do.” See the angry flash in little Johnnie’s eye, and the sullen silence as he turns away, with resentment at the wrong done him, written all over his quivering form.

“Johnnie dear, mamma does not like to have her son do so, it is wrong and such things spoil boys and make them grow up in the wrong way. Think of it, son, and see if you would like your life to go in the way that action would lead you.” A tender, sorrowful light comes into the little face and a regret for the sin is expressed and forgiveness sought.