Editorial September 8, 1951 Issue

A PARENT'S OPPORTUNITY

Robert Ellis Key

Much has been written recently upon the subject of child delinquency. According to some observers, the trouble is traceable to lack of parental discipline, the inability to make a happy home for the child, or an indifferent interest in family welfare. A distinguished judge of juvenile crime notices "a growing, cynical contempt among children for the authority of parent, teacher, and police." He considered the social change in large urban centers to be caused by the loosening of family ties. The family was formerly a well-knit organization. Schools, he thought, might well teach more of how one human being can get along with another, instead of so much algebra and geometry.

Mary Baker Eddy considered the education of children from a metaphysical, and therefore from a practical, standpoint. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 62), "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease." She goes on to say, "If parents create in their babes a desire for incessant amusement, to be always fed, rocked, tossed, or talked to, those parents should not, in after years, complain of their children's fretfulness or frivolity, which the parents themselves have occasioned."

Mrs. Eddy with spiritual discernment understood the responsibility for a child's behavior to be largely in the hands of the parents, and in placing the responsibility primarily on their shoulders she lifted undue blame from the child. Christian Scientists who are parents learn from their Leader's writings of the opportunities and responsibilities awaiting them in connection with the education and upbringing of their offspring. They realize that Christian Science must be lived in the home, and that a spiritual atmosphere makes for happiness. A child should not be made afraid of discipline, but led by the spirit of true discipline, or discipleship, for discipline and discipleship are akin.

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