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Medical Ministry
disadvantage to work against. There are many who in the homelife
have received an imperfect training. Often the mother makes herself
the slave of her children, and in so doing neglects her most important
work—the training of her children to wait on themselves, to follow
habits of neatness, order, and thoroughness in the little things of
life....
When such children reach the age of responsibility and caretak-
ing, they are unsubdued and undisciplined. It may be that they have
a desire to enter one of our sanitariums to take a nurse’s training.
They come, but the defects of their home training make their stay at
the institution hard for themselves and for those who have charge of
their education.
Overcoming Parental Neglect
Let there be in the institution no continuation of the spoiling
received in the home. There will be no hope for these poor youth—
wronged from childhood by unwise indulgence—if the policy fol-
lowed in the home is followed in the institution. Let them be wisely
and kindly disciplined, and when it is seen that they are trying to im-
prove, trying to make themselves what they ought to be, let words of
encouragement be spoken to them. But let them plainly understand
that they cannot follow in the institution the course of self-pleasing
that they followed in the home. If they are willing to begin at the
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beginning, if they are determined to master every problem, they will
improve....
Their parents’ neglect has made their training much harder than
it otherwise would have been. Do not pass by any slighted work
unnoticed; but do not blame or scold them. This will not overcome
the difficulty, but will embarrass and discourage them. In the most
kindly way tell them that the neglect of the past must be remedied, or
they cannot be retained in the institution. The need for a reformation
must be pointed out. They must be encouraged to change wrong
habits and establish right ones.
Those who sympathize with the one who is causing great per-
plexity by his lack of determination to remedy the defects of his
training are in need of being labored with. Show them that it is
their duty to help those who have so much to overcome. Those in