Читать книгу The Physical Training of Children онлайн

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2. Then you consider it important that I should be made acquainted with, and be well informed upon, the subjects you have just named?

Certainly. I deem it to be your imperative duty to study the subject well. The proper management of children is a vital question,—a mother’s question,—and the most important that can be brought under the consideration of a parent; and, strange to say, it is one that has been more neglected than any other. How many mothers undertake the responsible management of children without previous instruction, or without forethought; they undertake it as though it may be learned either by intuition or by instinct or by affection! The consequence is, that frequently they are in a sea of trouble and uncertainty, tossing about without either rule or compass; until, too often, their hopes and treasures are shipwrecked and lost!

The care and management, and consequently the health and future well-doing of the child, principally devolve upon the mother; “for it is the mother after all that has most to do with the making or the marring of the man.” Dr. Guthrie justly remarks that—“Moses might never have been the man he was unless he had been nursed by his own mother. How many celebrated men have owed their greatness and their goodness to a mother’s training!” Napoleon owed much to his mother. “‘The fate of a child,’ said Napoleon, ‘is always the work of his mother;’ and this extraordinary man took pleasure in repeating, that to his mother he owed his elevation. All history confirms this opinion.... The character of the mother influences the children more than that of the father, because it is more exposed to their daily, hourly observation.”