Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

A man ought to look back upon the home of his childhood as the Eden of his life, where love reigned, instead of as a place where a long-faced severity and harshness ruled, where he was suppressed and his fun-loving spirits snuffed out.

Every mother, whether she realizes it or not, is constantly using the power of suggestion in rearing her children, healing all their little hurts. She kisses the bumps and bruises and tells the child all is well again, and he is not only comforted, but really believes that the kiss and caress have magic to cure the injury. The mother is constantly antidoting and neutralizing the child's little troubles and discords by giving the opposite thought and applying the love-elixir.

It is possible, through the power of suggestion, to develop in children faculties upon which health, success, and happiness depend. Most of us know how dependent our efficiency is upon our moods, our courage, hope. If the cheerful, optimistic faculties were brought out and largely developed in childhood, it would change our whole outlook upon life, and we would not drag through years of half-heartedness, discouragement, and mental anguish, our steps dogged by fear, apprehension, anxiety, and disappointment.

One reason why we have such poor health is because we have been steeped in poor-health thought from infancy. We have been saturated with the idea that pain, physical suffering, and disease, are a part of life; necessary evils which can not be avoided. We have had it so instilled into us that robust health is the exception and could not be expected to be the rule that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition of things as a sort of fate from which we can not hope to get away.

The child hears so much sick talk, is cautioned so much about the dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that he grows up with the conviction that physical discords, aches, pains, all discomfort and suffering, are a necessary part of his existence, that at any time disease is liable to overtake him and ruin his happiness and thwart his career.

Think of what the opposite training would do for the child; if he were taught that health is the ever-lasting fact and that disease is but the manifestation of the absence of harmony! Think what it would mean to him if he were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full, complete, instead of sickness, that certainty instead of uncertainty were his birthright! Think what it would mean for him to expect this during all his growing years, instead of building into his consciousness the opposite, instead of being saturated with the sick thought and constantly being cautioned against disease and the danger of contracting it!

The child should be taught that God never created disease, and never intended that we should suffer; that we were made for abounding health and happiness, made for enjoyment not for pain—made to be happy, not miserable, to express harmony, not discord.

Children are extremely credulous. They are inclined to believe everything that an adult tells them, especially the nurse, the father and mother, and their older brothers and sisters. Even the things that are told them in jest they take very seriously; and their imaginations are so vivid and their little minds so impressionable that they magnify everything. They are often punished for telling falsehoods, when the fault is really due to their excessively active imagination.

Many ignorant or thoughtless parents and nurses constantly use fear as a means of governing children. They fill their little minds full of all sorts of fear stories and terror pictures which may mar their whole lives. They often buy soothing syrups and all sorts of sleeping potions to prevent the little ones from disturbing their rest at night, or to keep them quiet and from annoying them in the day time, and thus are liable to stunt their brain development.

Even if children were not seriously injured by fear, it would be wicked to frighten them, for it is wrong to deceive them. If there is anything in the world that is sacred to the parent or teacher, it is the unquestioned confidence of children.