Pomeroy weekly telegraph. [volume] (Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio) 1860-1866, 1862-05-30
Sympathy with Children,

The following article, relative to the
management of children, which we clip
from a late number of aFieH Notes, y is
we'll worth the attention of teachers and
PARENTS, r.s
One of the great secrets Of success in
managing the young is sympathy with
them as children. Nothing but this will
lead to proper understanding and ap.
preciationsof the motives by which they
are governed, or enable us rightly to
estimate the efforts they make for i'm
provement. The follow .ng indicates
that the writer had taken one valuable
lesson as a teacher:
cat one period of my life, when in
strueting two or three young people to
write, l found them, as [ thought, un-
usually stupid. happened about this
time to look over the contents of an old
copy-book, written by me when [ was a
boy. The thich upstrokes, the crooked
down strokes, the awkward joining of
the letters, and the blots in the book,
made ne completely ashamed ofmyself,
and l could, at that moment, have
burned the book in the FIRE. The worse
however | thought of myself, the better
] thought of backward scholars; l was
cured Of my unreasonable expectations,
and became in future doubly patient
and forbearing. In teaching youth, re-
member that you once was young, and
in reproving their youthful errors, en-
deavor to cali to mind your own"
1t was as true of US, as Of Paul, that
when we were children we spoke, un9er
stood, and thought, as children, it will be
true of all other children. If then we
would influence them, would control
them entirely, we must remember that
they are Children. e.
The young act from impulse rather
than reflection; many of their acts, troub-
lesome though they may be, and appar
entity designed TO annoy US, are merely
the result of momentary impulse-en-
tirely harmless in itself-acted out, not
from deliberate intention, but merely
from the absence Of that consideration
or reflection from which alone self-con-
troll results. A child whispers to seat
mate or class mate, because he happens
to think of something too good not to
be told. The boy, full of life, with
healthful blood coursing through his
frame, does not sing or whistle, ''it whis-
ties ITSELF 4 child often laughs be-
cause it sees something, or thinks Of
something really laughable. Who of
US has not felt an irresistible inclination
to do the same even under circums stances
in themselves the most solemn.
Happy is the teacher, or the parent,
who can really enter into the feelings
and motives of childhood; and fortunate
is the teacher who can discriminate be-
tween the apparently wrong actions
which are caused by such sudden i'm
pulses, and those which are the result
Of deliberate intention to do wrong.
The true teacher, or the judicious par
ent, will always aim to pursue such a
course as will enable him to secure from
a child true statement of the cause or
causes which produced any act for which
he is called in question, and will be
ready to receive with good grace, a
frank statement Of the case.
The way in which this may be done
is well illustrated by the story of the
boy who laughed during prayers in a
school l-room where the bell-rope came
down near the teachers desk. When
asked why he made the disturbance, he
replied: