Chapter 49—Attitude of Relatives
Indulgent Relatives Are a Problem—Be careful how you relin-
quish the government of your children to others. No one can properly
relieve you of your God-given responsibility. Many children have
been utterly ruined by the interference of relatives or friends in their
home government. Mothers should never allow their sisters or mothers
to interfere with the wise management of their children. Though the
mother may have received the very best training at the hands of her
mother, yet, in nine cases out of ten, as a grandmother she would
spoil her daughter’s children, by indulgence and injudicious praise.
All the patient effort of the mother may be undone by this course of
treatment. It is proverbial that grandparents, as a rule, are unfit to bring
up their grandchildren. Men and women should pay all the respect and
deference due to their parents; but in the matter of the management
of their own children, they should allow no interference, but hold the
reins of government in their own hands
When They Laugh at Disrespect and Passion—Wherever I go,
I am pained by the neglect of proper home discipline and restraint.
Little children are allowed to answer back, to manifest disrespect and
impertinence, using language that no child should ever be permitted to
address to its superiors. Parents who permit the use of unbecoming
language are more worthy of blame than their children. Impertinence
should not be tolerated in a child even once. But fathers and mothers,
uncles and aunts and grandparents laugh at the exhibition of passion
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in the little creature of a year old. Its imperfect utterance of disrespect,
its childish stubbornness, are thought cunning. Thus wrong habits
are confirmed, and the child grows up to be an object of dislike to all
around him
When They Discourage Proper Correction—I tremble espe-
cially for mothers, as I see them so blind, and feeling so little the
responsibilities that devolve upon a mother. They see Satan working
1
Pacific Health Journal, January, 1890
.
2
The Signs of the Times, February 9, 1882
.
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