The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1879-10-02
OUR BOYS AND Girls.
some Timely Hints to Parents ON BONES
tic Rearing

Some Timely Hints to Parents on DOmes-
tic Rearing.
Many parents literally permit their sons
and daughters to run wild as soon as, and
frequently before, they are outof their teens.
They think then that they are old enough
to take care of themselves, and that any
degree of supervision, any acquaintance
with their daily lives and daily concerns,
does more harm than good-that they
should learn to be independent, and that to
be so, they must enjoy unlimited liberty
Otherwise. they Will come to look npon their
parents as tyrants and be in constant peril
from vicious courses. Unquestionably,
great harm has been and is still done to
children, even in this land by severity, by
watchfulness, by eeaseless interference;
but here the general tendency is exactly
in the opposite direction. Where harm
comes to one American child from undue
rigor, harm comes to twenty, yea, fifty, from
gross neglect.
Europeans have often noticed that Amer
lean boys and girls are particularly intr2ct-
able; that they are singularly impatient Of
advice and restraint of any sort. And 80
they are, but the fault lies less with them
selves than with their parents, who
are either weakly indulgent or
strangely remiss in what should be solemn
obligation. Early training seems to have
almost, if not fully, as much formative in
fiuence on young persons as temperament and
heredity. Our boys and girls, are not
materially different from other boys and
girls, except in rearing, which is,as a rule, a
little worse in this than in any other coun-
try where education is general and civiliza-
ton complete. They are intractable and
uncomfortable because they are indirectly,
if not directly, taught from childhood that
| they can be SO. They are not properly gov
erned until they are incapable of government.
Parents see their mistake, if they see it at
all, only when it is too late.
The number of American parents, intelli-
gent, well-intentioned, comfortably circum-
stanced, who have very little knowledge of,
and no kind of intimacy with, their boys
and girls after they begin to go to more adj
vanced schools, until they enter upon prac-
teal life or marriage, is very much larger
than is generally supposed. This lamenta-
! BILE ignorance might not be so strange III
case of fathers, absorbed in business, and
seldom in the house except to eat and sleep
the more to be regretted-but it is start
| lingly strange in case of mothers, who are
| the natural guardians and protectors of
home. Even these, too, often have the no.
ton that American boys and girls are ex-
captions to humanity; that they must be
permitted to do pretty much as they choose
and that they will be all the better for it.
Although they and their husbands may
hold theoretically that all parents should,
from the beginning, carefully instruct their
| children that they are their best friends, and
that all confidence and counsel should be
given to and sought of them, they very
rarely act upon the sound opinion. They
are strangers to their children; their chi
dren are strangers to them. Consequently
they have no power to shield them from the
dangers which always beset inexperienced
youth. They too often lament their error
bitterly, (the domestic tragedies ever occur
ring, though seldom made public, are hard
| ly suspected, Jail the more bitterly because
at its discovery it is irretrievable.
The newspapers frequently contain ac-
counts of boys and girls of respectable pa
rentage suddenly detected in acts of dishon-
honesty or shame, and the intelligence falls
like thunderbolt upon those who should
have kept them from evil by jealous solicit
tude, by active sympathy, by gentle, yet
firm discipline. But such instances are
nothing compared with those that are mex
pressibly distressing, but rarely known be-
yond the circle of few mourning homes
Parents generally are criminally careless in
this country in this respect. They have nc
right to expect that all will be we'll they
cannot absolve themselves from response.
bility by so poor plea. 1t is their duty tc
know what books their children read, what
their habits are, what associates they have
what hours they keep. If they do not per.
form the duty, they are reckless and un.
worthy of the high Office they have assumed
Even if their boys and girls clearly escape
thew are still culpable, :or their escape is in
nowise owing to them.
The manner of rearing young people, es
pecially girls, in the republic. the absolute
freedom granted them after certain age
and age full of peril-is as bad as bad car
be. Few of them out of the great number
may suffer actual moral detriment; and vel
they are apt to lose the freshness, the bloom
the spiritual purity which can never be re
stored. Youth is a precarious, hazardous
period. Those who mean best, whose i'm
pulses are all honest, are often the least safe
Opportunity and temptation, before which
the purCst and strongest my give way ,shoulC
so far as possible, never be allowed, or wher,
they have been allowed, should, on Dissolve
nv, be inhexibiy removed. We are wont t.
laugh at the restrictions put upon the yount
! in the Old World, and at the narrowness o
their rearing; bat it Is, on the whole, pre-
ferable to the Indifference we feel, and IN
over-freedom accord. 1t there by an,
: one place in which, more than another, W,
] need curtailment of extraordinary liberty,
e Is in respect TO young people within on