Article March 6, 1989 Issue

When our children were growing up: a conversation between two mothers

Joanna, Emily

There's something to be said for experience. In fact, a Chinese proverb says, "To know the road ahead, ask those who have traveled it." The two mothers who recorded this conversation about teaching spiritual values also happen to be grandmothers, so it may be a twice-traveled road they are reporting on.

Joanna: I've talked with so many young mothers who wonder about how to give their children spiritual values. The phrase itself seems a little awesome—as if the values were separate from who we are and what we do from day to day.

Emily: I know I felt sure God was the power in our home, and the daily rules we followed—the important ones—came through the Bible and Christ Jesus' life and teachings. I remember wanting to raise and care for our children the way Jesus loved children. I got that idea from a point Mrs. Eddy makes in Science and Health: "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right."^{Science and Health, p. 236.} Not that our children always behaved well—they were ordinary kids. But I knew that if I loved them from the standpoint of their natural goodness, their behavior and well-being would at least have a better pattern to follow. You remember the story of the schoolteacher who was given a class of underachievers but told that they were gifted? The teacher treated those children as being gifted, and the kids' performances soared. Well, similarly, to love children as free from wrong and receptive to right has an effect of releasing them to do what they spiritually are.