TRAINING OF CHILDBEN. 715 



weal or woe. Anger, irritability, nervousness, peevishness, pugnacity 

 and other kindred evils, or on the other hand, courage, even temper or 

 happy dispositions are awakened in the child's mind and stimulated, 

 from the mother's inner life through the life-giving fluid flowing from 

 her breasts. 



Paramount Influence of the Mother. There can be no ques- 

 tion but what the mother's influence and therefore her responsibility is 

 paramount, at least during the earlier years of the child's life. No one 

 can possibly be as close to the child as she of whose life, of whose very 

 flesh and blood, the child is a part. No one can ever be to the child 

 what the mother is, and any child that is deprived of a mother's tender, 

 loving, constant care or is consigned to the more or less frigid atten- 

 tion of a nurse or a relative, is robbed of its legitimate birth-right, is 

 denied what Heaven intended it should have, and no possible excuse of 

 expediency can absolve the mother from this plain God-given respons- 

 ibility. The father is perforce absent during all or the greater part of 

 the day. For the mother to be absent is a sin. If she absents herself 

 voluntarily it is her own sin. If force of circumstances necessitate her 

 absence it is the sin of others. During the tender years of infancy the 

 child has the first and the greatest claim upon the mother to which all 

 other claims should yield. 



Essential Points in Deciding What to Do. All true parents 

 feel more or less anxiety over the proper rearing and training of the 

 children that come to them. They often feel their inability to decide 

 just what to do to secure what every parent desires, intelligeut, healthy 

 well-behaved children, capable of holding their own among their fel- 

 lows. And if the suggestions that follow, pointing out a few funda- 

 mental principles and repeating the results of many years practical ex- 

 perience and observation, prove helpful to any parents they will have 

 accomplished the purpose intended. It would be absolutely impossible 

 to lay down a set of rules to govern the management of children, for a 

 rule that applies to one will not necessarily apply to another. The es- 

 sential thing is for the parent to have a clear understanding of the child 

 mind, of the objects he desires to accomplish in the rearing of the child 

 and of the general principles that underlie his personal relations to that 

 child. 



First Principles in Child Culture. The first essential thing 

 for the parent, and especially for the mother, to do is to place himself 

 or herself in perfect harmony with the child. The child cannot be ex- 

 pected to approach the parent. The child's mind and soul are simply 

 open to impressions. The relations of grown people require mutual 

 concessions to obtain harmony, but with the child this is obviously im 

 possible. The approaches must all be from the parent's side. The 

 parent must make all the advances in the most loving spirit, and when 

 this is done honestly and unreservedly the child will always respond. 

 This "bond of sympathy" is really the first requisite to the successful 

 training of the child under any and all circumstances. It must be re- 

 membered that the child does not reason, it feels. And if there is any 



