The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1908-02-05
TRAINING OF PARENTS.
Mr.. Abbott Advises Them to cuItl-
vate Persistence and SeIf-Restralnt.

THE only alternative | know to gov
ernment by collision is government by
habit" says Earnest Hamlin Abbott
in The Outlook" in the opening pa
per of a series ION the Training of Par
ents." The paper is about the bringing
up of children, but the briefest perusal
will show that the final word in the
title is quite correct. Every collision
with a child is confession of weak
ness, says Mr.. Abbott. For while 1t
may sometimes be better to let child
collide with you than with the COM
munity, it is never anything but a dis
aster, and proof that government by
habit is not fully established.
The process of training children is
the process of forming habits, and the
time to begin is when the child is
babe. That is the time for the parents
to learn self-restraint. The mothers
impulse is to rush to her baby the mo-
ment he cries, take him up, fondle him.
A little care, says Mr.. Abbott, will en-
able that mother to distinguish be-
tween the cry of pain, the cry of ner-
vous irritability and the plain cry"
If it is cry of pain she looks for the
cause. If it is q cry of irritability she
"blames herself for having rocked the
child few moments before, and steels
herself against repeating the indul-
gence." 1t is plain cry" she exer-
cises her self-restraint and lets him cry
on. She knows that, sad as it may
seem to hear baby cry, he has got
10 cry to exercise his lungs until he is
old enuogh to go out and play with
the other children.
When the baby has had all the food
that is good for him, she gently with
draws the food supply. Thus she es-
tablishes in herself the good habit OF
not indulging him foolishly. And the
child learns to go to sleep without
the whole family dancing attendance
on him, to stop eating when he has
had enough-learns, in short dignity
and self command and sweet reason
ableness.
OF course Mr. Abbott points out, the
spiiS; of adventure leads normal chill
dren sometimes to sample things not
good for them, and explore places
where they ought not to be. But
this" he says, is tribute to regular
life, and is ioGled to those children
whose whole life consists in a series
of parental experiments"
Mrs. Ewing, in her STORY of Short
ifa nioturec Tho hnwilderment of q
little lad under the caprices of fond
father whose government was a gov
ernment of moods. Sometimes, by
some curious and fortunate alchemy,
beautiful characters are evolved under
such conditions, but not often. Bad
habits are easily acquired, and likely to
cling, but happily, Mr.. Abbott says,
good habits are as hard TO break up
as bad ones are. People who consider
pertrHss in child 80 cunning" and
who enjoy "encountering the child as
an adversary and breaking down his
opposition" will have no trouble in de-
veloping in the malleable little beings
in their care habitual pertness and dis
obedience. But those who desire their
children to grow up with "contented
acquiescence in regular life can do
1t; it requires no qualities on the part
of the parents but persistence and self
restraint; and it means for the child,
when he grows up, all the difference
between being blessing or nuisance
to himself and others.