Recognizing If or Where My Child Needs Training
This really struck a chord with me today.
In his book Hints on Child Training, H. Clay Trumbull (who I believe is the great-great grandfather of Elisabeth Elliott) wrote:
Child training is, in many a case, the bringing of a child into purely conventional ways, instead of bringing out into freest play, in the child, those qualities and characteristics which mark him as a unique and individual personality among the sons of men. How to learn wherein it needs curbing or changing, is a question of questions in child training.”
This is really making me think. So often I think I train my children with an eye for making them look good instead of allowing them to be just them. If I dont like a certain characteristic Im always after them about it. Its like Im trying to make them into my idea of a perfect human being.
He continues. “Yet it is not the easiest thing in the world to say what are a childs peculiar faults, and what is, therefore, that childs peculiar need of training. Many a parent is disturbed by a childs best traits, while he underestimates or overlooks that childs chief failings. And many another parent who knows that his child is full of faults cannot say just what they are, or classify them according to their relative prominence and their power for evil.
if a boy has a bright mind and positive preferences, and is ready to study or to work untiringly in the line of his own tastes, and in no other line, it does not always occur to his parents that just here – in this reluctance to apply himself in the line of wise expediency rather than of personal fancy – there is a failing which, if not trained out of that boy will stand as a barrier to his truest manhood, and will make him a second-rate man when he might be a first-rate one; a one-sided man instead of a well proportioned man. Such a boy is quite likely to be looked upon as one who must be permitted to have his own way, since that way is evidently not a bad way, and he shows unusual power in its direction. So that boy may be left untrained in this particular until he is hopelessly past training, merely because his chief fault is unrecognized by those who could correct it, and who would gladly do so if they saw it in its due proportions.”
I have seen this problem in my own home and have been confused about whether it really was something to be avoided or encouraged. It has not been until lately that Ive realized that letting them be just one-sided might not be in the childs best interests.
Mr. Trumbull goes on to say that criticisms and suggestions from friends and family can be helpful because we do not always see clearly the different qualities (good or bad) in our children.
I think I would like to sit down and write down all the positive characteristics I see in each child and then write down other traits that could use improvement. Maybe I should ask someone close how they view each child. It might be a real eye-opener. I then might have a clearer picture of what things I should work on with each child and encourage them in the things they're already doing right.
Anybody have any thoughts on this?
One Comment
bubbebobbie
I love the idea of writig down their traits good and bad. Perhaps instead of asking other adults you can ask the children what they admire in their siblings and what gets on their nerves thus bringing them into the challenge and seeing things from their little eyes. Then find scriptures that go with the traits, good or bad. One of my favorite for children (okay, for Matthew 🙂 was Psalm 101:7