Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1881 — Advice to Mothers. [ARTICLE]

Advice to Mothers.

Bring your child up to work. Buy a broom and a dust-pan suited to its size, and tell it to sweep and take up the dust, and see if you can find where they took it jip. Teach them how you place your chairs and many little things, and you will be astonished how soon they will imitate you. Go with them to their bed-rooms and let them help you there. Have an inspection day. Set some day once a month, say the first Wednesday in every month, and let them go with you all over the house —every room, closet, drawer, and box, and see that all is in order. What is to be done make a note of, and set a time for it. If all the children’s things, which they are to care for, are in perfect order, reward them for it. This will encourage them to be ready for inspection day. Teach your boys as well as girls to sew. Cut good-fitting patterns and let them cut, fit and make. In these days of knitting, crochet, and fancy work, there is much they can do—crochet dishcloths, make holders, etc. Playthings that have been broken or tired of can be gathered up and carefully mended. Make a box, call it the “convalescence box,” cover it with pictures, lay in the cast-off toys and paste on the following rules: 1. This box must not be opened unless sick enough to take medicine. 2. It must be locked again when well enough to go out doors. 3. The playthings and books must always be put back in good order, and the key given to mamma. It will be of interest for years. Make scrap-books of colored cambric, notch the edges, paste in pictures and selected reading matter, within their years, but try to elevate aud cultivate the taste. In summer give them a piece of ground to cultivate, not too big for them to keep clean and in order themselves. Show them thS little black seed, seeming so dead, and by putting in the g ound a few days it will rise and grow in beauty. In the winter make flannel gardens by laying flannel or cotton in a glass of water, or a sponge kept damp and seeds sprinkled on, and see, day by day, how they grow. Never mind your own aches and pains —you are laying up treasures. When old enough, if you have begun right, they can easily be taught to allow mamma to rest.