As a Farm Woman Thinks

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder

Some small boys went into my neighbor’s yard this spring and with sling shots, killed the wild birds that were nesting there. Only the other day, I read in my daily paper of several murders committed by a 19 year old boy.

At once there was formed a connection in my mind between the two crimes, for both were crimes of the same kind, tho perhaps in differing degree, the breaking of laws and the taking of life cruelly.

For a cruel child to become a hard hearted boy and then a brutal man is only stepping along the road on which he has started. A child allowed to disobey without punishment is not likely to have much respect for law as he grows older. Not that every child who kills birds becomes a murderer nor that everyone who is not taught to obey goes to prison.

The Bible says, if we “train up a child in the way he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from in.” The opposite is also true and if a child is started in the way he should not go, he will go at least some way along that road as he grows older. It will always be more difficult for him to travel the right way even tho he finds it.

The first laws with which children come in contact are the commands of their parents. Few fathers and mothers are wise in giving these, for we are all so busy and thoughtless. But I am sure we will all agree that these laws of ours should be as wise and as few as possible, and, once given, children should be made to obey or shown that to disobey brings punishment. Thus they will learn the lessons every good citizen and every good man and woman learn sooner or later, that breaking a law brings suffering.

If we break a law of nature we are punished physically: when we disobey God’s law we suffer spiritually, mentally and usually in our bodies also: man’s laws, being founded on the ten commandments are really mankind’s poor attempt at interpreting the laws of God and for disobeying them there is a penalty. The commands we give our children should be our translation of these laws of God and man, founded on justice and the law of love, which is the Golden Rule. And these things enter into such small deeds. Even insisting that children pick up and put away their playthings is teaching them order, the law of the universe, and helpfulness, the expression of love.

The responsibility for starting the child in the right way is the parents’, it can not be delegated to the schools nor the state, for the little feet start on life’s journey from the home.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "As a Farm Woman Thinks." Missouri Ruralist (May 1, 1921): page unknown. CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

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