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CHILDREN AND THEIR TRAINING.
What wonderful provision has God made for the happiness, safety, and well-being of infants. He has implanted in the human breast a natural love of offspring, and has provided for each child parents, who should be of mature age, and who should have been so trained by their parents, that by combined wisdom, sagacity and experience, it may be duly watched over and cared for, and so trained as to answer life's great end, viz., "To glorify God and enjoy him forever."
Then how wisely is the body framed, and most wonderfully adapted to answer all the purposes of life, and especially during the period of infancy and childhood, when the body must be more or less exposed to accidents; while therefore it is destitute of experience, and cannot take care of itself, its bones are all soft and yielding, and more particularly of the skull which incloses and protects the brain, and those of the limbs are made flexible, so that if it falls they may bend and not break.
We see daily some new development of wonderful powers and faculties in every new-born infant. An infant has a natural and instinctive desire to exercise its limbs, its voice, and indeed all its bodily functions. How soon it begins to laugh and coo like a little dove, to show you that it is social in its disposition, asking for your sympathy in return.
It is curious and interesting to watch a young child when it first opens its eyes upon the light of day or the light of a candle. With what evident satisfaction does it slowly open and close its eyelids, so adapted—to say nothing of the wonderful mechanism of the eye itself—to let in sufficient light to gratify desire, or to shut out every ray that would prove injurious to the untried organs.
What incipient efforts are first made to feel and examine different objects, and how very soon even infants become possessed of some of the elementary principles of the most abstruse sciences, and that without a teacher. How many thousands of times will you see it endeavor to put up its little hands before its face, before it is able to control its movements so as to be able to examine them critically.
We propose to dwell, hereafter, somewhat minutely upon the all-important subject of infant training, and in a way to show the care and attention which both parents should bestow upon each child, so as to provide proper food, clothing, and the means of self-culture and amusement, and absolute control over it at the earliest possible period—the earlier the better, so as to secure "a sound mind in a sound body."
It is really pitiable to find so large a proportion of young parents who seem to think that but little instruction can be imparted, and in fact that but little is needed in the care and management of infants, whereas their education commences, in very many respects, and in a very important sense, as soon as they are born.