Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1884 — Some Facts in Raising Children. [ARTICLE]

Some Facts in Raising Children.

In the first place, it need not be expected to give children a proper training without paying particular attention to the subject, and taking considerable pains. It won’t do to let children run their own course, and only take notice of their faults when they do something particularly bad. However, this is about the extent of the training which many children receive. They are allowed to run on, undirected and ungarded, in whatever direction their tendencies or circumstances lead them; then when they become thoroughly saturated with badness, and consequently troublesome, the parents begin the hopeless task of beating it out of them. When the children have to be whipped a great deal, it is generally pretty good evidence that the parents are to blame as well as the children, and are really as deserving of punishment. It is especially true with regard to raising children, that “an ounce of prevention is “worth a pound of cure.” It should be borne in mind that children are altogether incapable or judging what is good for them, and what is not. It is little less than a miracle for a child to grow up and have a good disposition, without any directing or restraining influence. Their young minds are constantly acquiring false impressions and mistaken ideas. Their views of many things are just the opposite of what they would be if they were older. They strive to become accomplished in little vices of which a few more years would make them ashamed: —Most any one can look back to his youth and recall many of these mistaken notions; and some of tllem there is no need to recall, as their consequences are still too plainly felt every day. Who does not look back with regret on some of these errors of youth, and wish over and over again he had known better, or that his parents at least had known enough to teach him better? It is not much wonder that some children do not remember their parents with any too much love and affection, while constantly suffering from their neglect in training, and smarting from the effects of the vices they were allowed to acquire and were never warned against. It is the duty of parents to root out these bad tendencies and false impressions, just as fast as they spring up. And the way to do this is to- continually watch and study children, and as soon as a bad quality is observed, to try every means of banishing it. But bad tendencies will not be removed by merely punishing a child whenever it commits a wrong act. It should be made to understand the kind of disposition the act indicates, and every time this disposition is displayed by an act the child should he reminded that it is its pld failing and the same thing for which it was corrected before. It will thus see some connection between the different corrections or punishments. It will also lerrn what its fault is, and become impressed with its wrongfulness, and therefore likely to guard against it. But it is a matter of common observation how little effect any number of corrections have in overcoming bad dispositions in children, without letting them know what the acts indicate and what the corrections are for.

Barbers have their likes and dislikes, the same as the rest of us. The particular barber referred to was pressing himself freely in regard to things in general “I’m a pretty good judge of human nature," he said to his suffering customer, “and can size up a man about as quick as anybody. There is one class of men that I never have anything to do with.” “What class of men is that?" asked the victim in the chair. “Baldheaded men who wear, fullbe.irds. I despite ’em."