Watch Over Your Children With Ceaseless Vigilance

Maintain Your God-appointed Leadership

Help Your Children to Find God for Themselves as Early as Possible

Keep Your Children Busy

Lay Responsibilities Upon Your Children and See That They Carry Them Out

Open the Treasure House of New Ideas

Home the Central Attraction

The rapid growth of juvenile delinquency affords tragic evidence that bringing up children has well-nigh become a lost art. All too many are not “brought up” at all, but largely left to do as they please. As a result, in some States more than 60 per cent of persons arrested for crimes of violence are juveniles.

Yet it is not necessary that boys and girls should be so troublesome. They don’t have to be rude, insolent, disobedient, sadistic little vandals. Right upbringing will make them the nicest youngsters in the world. With proper care and training they can be like little angels. “Train up a child in the way he should go,” says your Bible, “and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Train is the essential word. It embraces thoughtful planning, unwearying determination, and infinite patience. It is no job for weaklings. The most vital task ever committed to men and women, it demands the utmost and best of them.

The trouble is that many parents have never learned how to train their children. They are at their wits’ end to know what to do with them. In their hearts they long to bring them up aright, but how to go about it is beyond them. They stand by helpless as their boys and girls get out of hand and joint he lost generation of cynical, rebellious youth.

Some of these disappointed parents have poured out their troubles to me. They have expressed consternation that their beautiful plans have gone awry. They are certain that they have had a streak of bad luck. They want to know how it happens that all our six children have chosen Christian service for their lifework. “You are so fortunate,” they say. “You must have had a lot of luck.”

Luck indeed! Just as though bringing up a family for God is a matter of luck! Luck hasn’t anything to do with it. It’s just plain hard work, plus the blessing of God, of course. It means being everlastingly on the job day and night, from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood and womanhood.

Then we tell them our seven secrets of child training. They may not work in every case. Parents are so different. Children are so different. So are circumstances and environments. But these suggestions seem to help some people. Maybe, if you are parent, they will help you. You will find them strongly supported in your Bible.

If you want to bring up your children aright, you cannot leave them half time with the neighbors. The best baby sitter in the world is no substitute for mother.

“But,” you say, “in our family mother has to go out to work.” More’s the pity. If at all possible – and sometimes it is impossible – she should stay home with the children.

“But,” you argue, “How else would we make our monthly payments on the car, the refrigerator, the freezer, the radio, the television set?”

That is a problem. Maybe you will have to choose between these gadgets and your children. You could end up with a lot of machinery and a broken heart.

“What did you do?” you ask. We decided that the interests of the children should come first. The last time mother went out to work was some months before our first baby arrived. That was a long time ago. But all these years she has spent guiding, training, and helping the children in ways without number.

“You must have had a lot of money then.” On the contrary, when the children were small we had very little. We had no refrigerator, no washing machine, no freezer, no disposal, and, of course, no radio or television. We didn’t get out first secondhand car until our oldest girl was almost in her teens.

Mother was always there when the children came home from school. Whenever they entered the house there was always that radiant welcome that only a mother can give. Always she was interested in all that concerned the, being ready to meet their needs, answer their questions, help them to make right decisions, and warn them against temptations. No woman worn out from a hard day’s work, with all the family chores still to do, can do a job like this properly.

God intends that parents, not the children, shall direct the household. See Genesis 18:19. As you value the peace and happiness of your home, don’t surrender this leadership. There was a time when some educators advocated leaving children free to do just about what they like, lest they develop a complex, but experience has proved that such ideas are unsound. After all, what are parents for if not to plan the program of their homes and give direction to their children’s lives? Upon the is laid the responsibility to guide, to counsel, to lead, and if they fail to live up to this responsibility, they invite only calamity and sorrow.

A colt, a lamb, a calf, a puppy, stays with its mother but a few days or weeks, but boys and girls, under normal circumstances, remain with their parents for years. Why? By accident or design? Surely it is because God planned it so. He meant this precious time to be used by parents to lead their little ones in the way they should go, to bring them up to be obedient, unselfish, and reverent; noble in all their thinking, gracious in all their ways. Parents have a long-term job on their hands, for they are preparing their children not only for this present life, but also for the life to come.

This means discipline – that word which nobody likes to use any more. But discipline is necessary. It’s part of the job of parenthood. It involves setting the right pattern and holding to it. It means saying what is to be done and seeing it is done. It calls for the application of gentle but determined pressure when – when and where – necessary.

The apostle Paul had something to say on this subject. First to children.

“Children,” he said, “obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth’” (Ephesians 6:1-3, R.S.V.0.

This may sound like old-fashioned advice, but it has lost no value or virtue with the passing years. Equally timely is his counsel to parents.

“Fathers,” he said, “do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (verse 4).

Discipline takes time, thought, care, judgment, but it makes all the difference between an orderly home and a bedlam. Dispense with it for fear of some complex and you will pay for your slackness the rest of your life. So will the children. They will never know the kind of home God planned for them. And they will escape from the confusion as soon as they can.

This is vital. Let their earliest thoughts be about Jesus and His love. As soon as they can read, teach them to study their weekly Bible lesson by themselves. Make sure they know by heart the Ten Commandments, the twenty-third psalm, the Beatitudes, and other great passages of Scripture. Urge them to say their prayers by their own bedsides every night before they go to sleep and every morning when they get up. Thus they will develop priceless habits, which will stay with them through life.

What about family worship? By all means have it as often as you can. Gather the children around you and read to them the grand old Bible stores. Have them all pray aloud and repeat the Lord’s Prayer together at the close. It’s a glorious thing to do, and will be a precious memory in the children’s minds in years to come. But even more important is the personal Bible study, the private praying, whereby each individual child builds up his or her own connection with God.

Children will pray for all sorts of strange and wonderful things. Never mind. Let them. All of their prayer may not be answered, but many of them will be. I have come to believe that God takes special delight in answering children’s prayers and that He does so in order to strengthen their faith in Him. And children who come to regard Jesus as their firm, true Friend in their earliest days will turn to Him in periods of stress and strain in years to come. In youth they will “storm the battlements of heaven” in His name and give their lives to His service.

The old saying that “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do” has a lot of truth in it. Children are normally so full of life that if they are not engaged in something good they will surely be up to mischief.

This doesn’t mean that parents should be slave drivers, thinking up one task after another for their children to do. That doesn’t make for a happy family. Children must have time to play. But they should be led to understand that it is their responsibility to help keep the home going. Just as soon as they are old enough to do little jobs around the place they should be taught to do them. It isn’t right that mother should always be the one to get supper ready and wash the dishes while John and Mary watch a television program or play tiddlywinks on the living room floor.

Children can be a marvelous help around the place if they are taught to do their part when they are very young. Once you get across the idea that it is their duty and privilege to keep the home running and looking nice because it is their home, they will stop at nothing in their desire to help. They will do the dusting and the floor washing and the lawn cutting without your having to ask them, and without holding out their hands to be paid for every little service.

This will teach them self-reliance and make them trustworthy in day to come. Of course, this will take time too. It’s easy enough to give a child a job; but considerably more difficult to see that it’s done. And it takes real perseverance to insist that it be done over and over until it is done right. Yet only so can one build character.

One of the curses of the present age is passing the buck, otherwise known as “Let Bill do it.” Work is regarded as something to be by-passed if possible, or hurried through no matter how slipshod the way in which the task is carried out. The remedy for this disease of irresponsibility must be applied in childhood. Little Tommy must be made to understand that when mother or father gives him a job he must do it to the best of his ability. Little Marjorie must learn that she cannot escape her responsibilities even with the most subtle excuses.

Children trained like this will grow into dependable youth. It will be natural for them to be faithful to every trust. And when at last they leave home to take up their lifework, the world will welcome them.

When the children are old enough to read by themselves, introduce them to good books and magazines. This will take more time. For you will have to read the books and magazines yourself to find out which are good and which are not. Remember that one bad book or “comic” can poison a child’s mind for life. So keep strong control on all reading matter coming into your home. And when opportunity offers, explain why some things are good and others are bad.

The same applies to television programs. Keep control of the knob. As the divinely appointed leaders of the home, parents have the right and the duty to decide on the kind of program the children shall look at. And they should take time to explain why they turn one program off and another one on. If the explanation is given wisely, kindly, and firmly, the children will see the correctness of the decision and will make the same right choice when there is no grownup to tell them what to do.

Plan things to make the children happy. Take time to play with them. Make them feel that they are wanted. Let them know you love them. Tell them to invite their friends – at the proper times, or course. Above all, read to them. Children love to be read to; and there’s no music like the sound of mother’s voice. When our children come home – though they are all grown up now – they still beg mother to read them a story as she used to do when they were young.

The result of all this will be that the children will look upon home as the most beautiful place in the world. They won’t be forever running off to the neighbor’s or to the movies or the skating rink or the ball game. For them there will be no joy quite like just being at home.

In years to come such a home will prove an anchor amid the storms of life, and the most treasured memory they will carry with them to the home eternal.