One of the surest safeguards of the young is useful occupation. Children who are trained to industrious habits, so that all their hours are usefully and pleasantly employed, have no inclination to repine at their lot and no time for ideal daydreaming. They are in little danger of forming vicious habits or associations.
(CT 122.1)
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In the home school the children should be taught how to perform the practical duties of everyday life. While they are still young, the mother should give them some simple task to do each day. It will take longer for her to teach them how than it would to do it herself; but let her remember that she is to lay for their character building the foundation of helpfulness. Let her remember that the home is a school in which she is the head teacher. It is hers to teach her children how to perform the duties of the household quickly and skillfully. As early in life as possible they should be trained to share the burdens of the home. From childhood, boys and girls should be taught to bear heavier and still heavier burdens, intelligently helping in the work of the family firm.
(CT 122.2)
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When children reach a suitable age, they should be provided with tools. They will be found to be apt pupils. If the father is a carpenter, he should give his boys lessons in carpentry.
(CT 122.3)
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From the mother the children are to learn habits of neatness, thoroughness, and dispatch. To allow a child to take an hour or two in doing a piece of work that could easily be done in half an hour is to allow it to form dilatory habits. Habits of industry and thoroughness will be an untold blessing to the youth in the larger school of life, upon which they must enter as they grow older.
(CT 122.4)
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As we go forward in establishing church schools we shall find a work to be done for the children in places where it has been thought a school could not be maintained. As far as possible, all our children should have the privilege of a Christian education. To provide this we must sometimes establish home church schools. It would be well if several families in a neighborhood would unite to employ a humble, God-fearing teacher to give to the parents that help that is needed in educating their children. This will be a great blessing to many isolated groups of Sabbathkeepers, and a plan more pleasing to the Lord than that which has been sometimes followed, of sending young children away from their homes to attend one of our larger schools.
(CT 158.1)
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Our small companies of Sabbathkeepers are needed to hold up the light before their neighbors; and the children are needed in their homes, where they may be a help to their parents when the hours of study are ended. The well-ordered Christian home, where young children can have parental discipline that is after the Lord’s order, is the best place for them.
(CT 158.2)
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The tender years of childhood are years of heavy responsibility for fathers and mothers. Parents have a sacred duty to perform in teaching their children to help bear the burdens of the home, to be content with plain, simple food, and neat, inexpensive dress. The requirements of the parents should always be reasonable; kindness should be expressed, not by foolish indulgence, but by wise direction. Parents are to teach their children pleasantly, without scolding or faultfinding, seeking to bind the hearts of the little ones to them by silken cords of love. Let all, fathers and mothers, teachers, elder brothers and sisters, become an educating force to strengthen every spiritual interest and to bring into the home and the school life a wholesome atmosphere, which will help the younger children to grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
(CT 158.3)
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VC