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Safeguarding the Young
101
that corrupt good manners. Truth will protect the soul from the
endless temptations that must be encountered.
Let the youth be taught to give close study to the word of God.
Received into the soul, it will prove a mighty barricade against
temptation. “Thy word,” the psalmist declares, “have I hid in mine
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heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” “By the word of Thy lips I
have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.”
Psalm 119:11
;
17:4
.
Teaching Children to Be Useful
One of the surest safeguards of the young is useful occupation.
Children who are trained to industrious habits, so that all their hours
are usefully and pleasantly employed, have no inclination to repine
at their lot and no time for ideal daydreaming. They are in little
danger of forming vicious habits or associations.
In the home school the children should be taught how to perform
the practical duties of everyday life. While they are still young, the
mother should give them some simple task to do each day. It will
take longer for her to teach them how than it would to do it herself;
but let her remember that she is to lay for their character building
the foundation of helpfulness. Let her remember that the home is
a school in which she is the head teacher. It is hers to teach her
children how to perform the duties of the household quickly and
skillfully. As early in life as possible they should be trained to share
the burdens of the home. From childhood, boys and girls should be
taught to bear heavier and still heavier burdens, intelligently helping
in the work of the family firm.
When children reach a suitable age, they should be provided
with tools. They will be found to be apt pupils. If the father is a
carpenter, he should give his boys lessons in carpentry.
From the mother the children are to learn habits of neatness,
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thoroughness, and dispatch. To allow a child to take an hour or
two in doing a piece of work that could easily be done in half an
hour is to allow it to form dilatory habits. Habits of industry and
thoroughness will be an untold blessing to the youth in the larger
school of life, upon which they must enter as they grow older.
Children are not to be allowed to think that everything in the
house is their plaything, to do with as they please. Instruction in this