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Counsels for the Church
with sternness, forgetting your own childhood, and forgetting that they
are but children. Do not expect them to be perfect or try to make them
men and women in their acts at once. By so doing, you will close the
door of access which you might otherwise have to them, and will drive
them to open a door for injurious influences, for others to poison their
young minds before you awake to their danger
Never Correct a Child When Angry
If your children are disobedient, they should be corrected. Before
correcting them, go by yourself, and ask the Lord to soften and subdue
the hearts of your children and to give you wisdom in dealing with
them. Never in a single instance have I known this method to fail. You
cannot make a child understand spiritual things when the heart [the
parent’s heart] is stirred with passion.
You should correct your children in love. Do not let them have their
own way until you get angry, and then punish them. Such correction
only helps on the evil, instead of remedying it.
To manifest passion toward an erring child is to increase the evil.
It arouses the worst passions of the child and leads him to feel that you
do not care for him. He reasons with himself that you could not treat
him so if you cared.
And think you that God takes no cognizance of the way in which
these children are corrected? He knows, and He knows also what
might be the blessed results if the work of correction were done in a
way to win rather than to repel
The Importance of Strict Honesty With Children
Parents should be models of truthfulness, for this is the daily lesson
to be impressed upon the heart of the child. Undeviating principle
should govern parents in all the affairs of life, especially in the edu-
cation and training of their children. “Even a child is known by his
doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.”
A mother who lacks discernment, and who does not follow the
guidance of the Lord, may educate her children to be deceivers and
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Testimonies for the Church 1:384-387
303
Child Guidance, 244, 245