Children are a Public Trust
Now, that work which is of most importance to society is the bringing up and instruction of the children––in the school, certainly, but far more in the home, because it is more than anything else the home influences brought to bear upon the child that determine the character and career of the future man or woman.
I love this statement. It really makes me feel good with our decision for me to stay at home to raise and educate out children. I do feel there is no greater job than raising my children.
The children are, in truth, to be regarded less as personal property than as public trusts, put into the hands of parents that they may make the very most of them for the good of society. And this responsibility is not equally divided between the parents: it is upon the mothers of the present that the future of the world depends, in even a greater degree than upon the fathers, because it is the mothers who have the sole direction of the children's early, most impressible years.
Unlike other families, we believe this whole hearted. Finances are usually blamed on the husband and child issues on the mother, even in today society.
Mothers owe a 'thinking love' to their Children
"The mother is qualified," says Pestalozzi, "and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; ... and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love ... God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education."
Gods wants us to think about what is best for each of our children. Treat them as individuals with individual needs. I know that God chose my children just for me. They are so much like their father and I in so many ways. I'm feel truly blessed that God chose me as their mother.
We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own.
I feel that I will always question my ability to education my children properly. I think that is the sin in me that I need to pray about. I continue and will continue to educate myself of giving my children the best education that I can.
The training of Children
"The training of children, says Mr. Herbert Spencer––"physical, moral and intellectual––is dreadfully defective. And in great measure it is so, because parents are devoid of that knowledge by which this training alone can be rightly guided. What is to be expected when one of the most intricate of problems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought to the principle on which its solution depends? Here are the indisputable facts: that the development of children in mind and body follows certain laws; that unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree conformed to, and that only when they are completely conformed to, can a perfect maturity be reached.
I think parents do need to have some education in order to educate their children. As for myself, I have a college degree and have worked in the corporate world. I believe I have the skills needed to educated my children, although I am always learning myself.
How Parents Usually Proceed.
The parent begins instinctively by regarding his child as an unwritten tablet, and is filled with great resolves as to what he shall write thereon. By-and-by, traits of disposition appear, the child has little ways of his own; and, at first, every new display of personality is a delightful surprise. The parents' chief care is, that that which they supply shall be wholesome and nourishing, whether in the way of picture books, lessons, playmates, bread and milk, or mother's love. This is education as most parents understand it, with more of meat, more of love, more of culture, according to their kind and degree.
I also believe that we should raise our children individually. We should allow them to use their strengths to learn and grow. I love that all of my children are very different.
Here is the link for A Method of Education
(Wednesday, March 16)
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