Tiffany’s Reviews > The Duties Of Parents > Status Update

“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.”