You enter one home, and, mingling with the family there, you feel the balmy air of love and sympathy. Parents and children seem to live for one another, and to be in complete accord in all their enjoyments and occupations; and all is restful in the peace that abides there. You are sure that everything in the moral and social atmosphere of that home tends to the fostering and growth of whatever is best in the child-nature. It is obvious that it is easier for a child to be good, and to do well, in such a home as that, than in many another home.
You enter another home, and the chill of the household air strikes you unpleasantly, at the first greeting given to you by any member of the family. There is a side of the child-nature that you know needs more warmth than that for its developing. Again it is the burning heat of an excited and ever-driving household life that you are confident is withering the more delicate and sensitive tendrils of the young hearts being trained there. Yet again, it is the explosive storm-bursts of passion which tear through the air, that make a home a place of peril to the young for the time being, however it may seem in the lulls between tempests. In the one case as in the others, it is the home atmosphere that settles the question of the final tendency of the home training.
In view of the importance of the home atmosphere, parents ought to recognize their responsibility for the atmosphere of the home they make and control. It is not enough for parents to have a lofty ideal for their children, and to instruct and train those children in the direction of that ideal. They must see to it that the atmosphere of their home is such as to foster and develop in their children those traits of character which their loftiest ideal embodies. That atmosphere must be full of the pure oxygen of love to God and love to man. It must be neither too hot in its intensity of social activities, nor too cold in its expressions of family affection, but balmy and refreshing in its uniform temperature of household living and being. It must be gentle and peaceful in its manner and movement of sympathetic intercourse. All this it may be. All this it ought to be.
Every home has its atmosphere, good or bad, health-promoting or disease-breeding. And parents are, in every case, directly responsible for the nature of the atmosphere in their home; whether they have acted in recognition of this fact, or have gone on without a thought of it. In order to secure a right home atmosphere for their children, parents must themselves be right. They must guard against poisoning the air of the home with unloving words or thoughts; against chilling it with unsympathetic manners, or overheating it with exciting ways; against disturbing its peaceful flow with restlessness, with fault-findings, or with bursts of temper.
Parents must, as it were, keep their eyes on the barometer and the thermometer of the social life of the home, and see to it that its temperature is safely moderated, and that it is guarded against the effect of sudden storms. Only as such care is taken by wise parents, can the atmosphere in their home be what the needs of their children require it to be.
XXVII.
THE POWER OF A MOTHER’S LOVE.
In estimating the agencies which combine for child-shaping through child-training, the power of a mother’s love cannot be overestimated. There is no human love like a mother’s love. There is no human tenderness like a mother’s tenderness. And there is no such time for a mother’s impressive display of her love and tenderness toward her child as in the child’s earliest years of his life. That time neglected, and no future can make good the loss to either mother or child. That time improved, and all the years that follow it shall give added proof of its improvement.