(American Contemporary. From “Your Child To-day and To-morrow.”)
We should make a special effort to discover our children’s ideals, for several reasons. First of all, by knowing what the girl or boy has nearest the heart we shall be able to enter into closer sympathy with the child, we shall be able to understand much of the conduct that would otherwise baffle as well as annoy us....
It is very easy to ridicule the ideals and ambitions of children when they seem to us too high flown or futile. But a person’s ideals stand too close to the center of his character to be treated so rudely. It is better to ignore the many trifling flights of fancy that are not likely to have any permanent effect, and to throw the child into circumstances that will force the emergence of more deep-seated or far-reaching ambitions.
The Child and Parental Youth
By Elizabeth McCracken
(American contemporary. From “The American Child.”)
A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked, “But does that not make the children old before their time?”
So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer and fewer grandmothers who are “sweet old ladies,” and more and more who are “charming elderly women.” We hear less and less about the “older” and the “younger” generations; increasingly we merge two, and even three, generations into one.
Consideration for Others
By Mrs. R. P. Alexander