Tiffany > Recent Status Updates

Oh my goodness, Jaron and I were just talking about how I struggle with feeling like the care of my body is as important as thinking the right thoughts/the care of my mind. I’m so excited for this book (and actually, this gives a lot of context to Habits of the Household, which I read and left behind, for the most part).

“Are we, by the things that concern us and the way we solve problems, demonstrating the opposite of what we say we believe? Are our own lives consistent with what we say that we would like to produce in our teenagers?”

“Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously, and to be treated with tenderness and respect.”

“When I approach a child, I have two feelings: Affection for what he is today and respect for what he can become.”

“Is a nervous child the way she is because her parents are nervous, or because of the way she was brought up by them?…’Tell me who your parents are and I will tell you who you are.’
But not always.
‘Tell me who brought you up, and I will tell you who you are.’
This is also not quite true.”

I wish I’d have read this when Vern was a baby!!

“As a parent you say: ‘The child cries very little, she sleeps through the night.’ She is good-natured; she is a good child. A bad one is one who makes a fuss and a lot of noise and one who, for no apparent reason, evokes more unpleasant than pleasant emotions in her parents.

One must be careful not to confuse a good child with an easy one.”

“Be an example of reverence for the Word of God, reverence in prayer, reverence for means of grace, reverence for the Lord’s day. Be an example in words, in temper, in diligence, in temperance, in faith, in charity, in kindness, in humility…You are their model picture, and they will copy what you are.”

“Archbishop Tillotson made a wise remark when he said, ‘To give children good instruction, and a bad example, is but beckoning to them with the head to show them the way to heaven, while we take them by the hand and lead them in the way to hell.’”

“Instruction, and advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel.”

“As to the best way of punishing a child, no general rule can be laid down. The characters of children are so exceedingly different, that what would be severe punishment to one child, would be no punishment at all to another.”

I appreciate this so much, because it’s true, and I don’t feel like this type of statement shows up in modern Christian parenting books.

“I know well that punishment and correction are disagreeable things…But so long as hearts are what hearts are, it is vain to suppose as a general rule, that children can ever be brought up without correction.”

“It is natural to be tender & affectionate towards your own flesh and blood, & it is the excess of this very tenderness and affection which you have to fear. Take heed that it does not make you blind to your children’s faults, and deaf to all advice about them. Take heed lest it mar you overlook bad conduct, rather than the pain of inflicting punishment and correction…

This, this, this!
“See that they read it regularly (the Bible). Train them to regard it as their soul’s daily food, as a thing essential to their soul’s daily health. I know well you cannot make this anything more than a form; but there is no telling the amount of sin which a mere form may indirectly restrain.”
Yes. I think this is what modern parenting books refuse to say, and I so appreciate seeing it here.

“You cannot make your child love the Bible, I allow. None but the Holy Ghost can give us a heart to delight in the Word. But you can make your children acquainted with the Bible; and be sure they cannot be acquainted with that blessed book too soon, or too well.”

“I know that you cannot convert your child. I know well that they who are born again are born, not of the will of man, but of God. But I also know that God says expressly, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go,’ and that He never laid a command in a man which He would not give man the grace to perform.”

“We depend on those who bring us up. We get from them a color, a taste, a bias which clings to us more or less all our lives…this is one of God’s merciful arrangements. He gives your children…a disposition at the starting-point of life to believe what you tell them, & to take for granted what you advise them, & to trust your word rather than a stranger’s.”

“We must not expect all things at once. We must remember what children are, & teach them as they are able to bear…’Line upon line, & precept upon precept, here a little and there a little,’ must be our rule… You must set before your children their duty - command, threaten, punish, reason - but if affection be wanting in your treatment, your labor will be in vain.”

“Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, patience, forbearance, sympathy, a willingness to enter into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys - these are the cords by which a child may be most easily led - these are the clues you must follow if you would find the way to his heart.”

“If you would deal wisely with your child, you must not leave him to the guidance of his own will…He knows not yet what is good for his mind and soul, any more than what is good for his body. You do not let him decide what he shall eat, and what he shall drink, and how he shall be clothed. Be consistent, and deal with his mind in the like manner.”

It’s fine. It’s very much along the same lines as Jeanette McCurdy’s. I’m not sure what story he’s trying to tell apart from his isolation and realization of his sexuality, which, ok, I guess, but I got to the Alzheimer’s part and now I’m tapping out. It’s a dnf for me.

“When timebound cultural perspectives are presented as timeless truths, people who come to recognize and reject the former may have difficulty retaining any of the latter.”