Observe your children when they are at play, for it is then that they throw off their reserve and show themselves as they are. Some children, for instance, will not join a game unless they can be leaders; is not that a sign of character? Some children will take an unfair advantage at play, and justify themselves by saying, "It is only in play." Some are persistent in a game while others tire of any game after a little while. Others are sticklers for a strict observance of the rules. Observe how your sons or daughters are regarded by their companions; children are often wonderfully quick to detect one another's faults.
Try to find out what the favorite pursuits and studies of your child are, by what it is repelled, by what attracted, and to what it is indifferent. Above all, keep a record of your child's development. Do not shun the labor involved in this. You know very well that nothing worth having can be obtained without labor, yet most parents are unwilling to give sufficient time and attention to the education of their children. Keep a record of the most significant words and acts of the child. Thus after a while you may have a picture of the child's inward condition before you, an assemblage of characteristic traits, and by comparing one trait with another, you may find the clue to a deeper understanding of its nature.
What I have said about children applies equally to ourselves. I started out by saying that not one parent in a thousand knows his child's character. I conclude by saying that not one man or woman in a thousand knows his or her own character. We go through life cherishing an unreal conception of ourselves which is often inspired by vanity.
I am well aware that it is difficult to know oneself, but there are helps in this direction also. We can look over our own past record, we can honestly examine how we have acted in the leading crises of our lives, we can summon our own characteristic traits before our minds—the things that we like to dwell upon, and the things which we would gladly blot out of our memories if we could—and by comparing this trait with that, we may discover the springs by which we have been moved. It is difficult to attain self-knowledge, but it is imperative that we should try to attain it. The aim of our existence is to improve our characters, and clearly we cannot improve them unless we know them.
I have undertaken to grapple with a most difficult subject, but I shall have accomplished the purpose which I had in mind if I have awakened in you a deeper desire to ask yourselves, first, "What is the character of my child?" and, second, "What is my own character?" The most serious business of our lives is to try to find the answers to these two questions.
THE AMERICAN HOME SERIES
NORMAN B. RICHARDSON, Editor