Manuscript Releases, vol. 7 [Nos. 419-525]

Children Can Learn to Respect Right of Others; to be Molded from Babyhood

Parents, give your time to your children. Teach them to form careful habits. Some parents allow their children to be destructive, to use as playthings that which they have no right to touch. Children should be taught that they must not handle the property of other people. For the comfort and happiness of the family they must be taught to observe the rules of propriety. Children are no happier because they are allowed to handle everything they see. If they are not educated to be care-taking, they will grow up with unlovely, destructive traits of character. 7MR 11.1

The greatest suffering has come upon the human family because parents have departed from the divine plan to follow their own imaginings and imperfectly developed ideas. Many parents follow impulse. They forget that the present and future good of their children requires intelligent discipline. 7MR 11.2

Parents do their children great wrong when they allow them to scream and cry. They should not be allowed to be careless and boisterous. If these objectionable traits of character are not checked in their early years, they will take them with them, strengthened and developed, into the religious and business life. Children will be just as happy if they are taught to be quiet in the house. 7MR 11.3

Fathers and mothers, be sensible. Teach your children that they must be subordinate to law. Do not allow them to think that because they are children, it is their privilege to make all the noise they wish in the house. Wise rules and regulations must be made and enforced, that the beauty of the home life may not be spoiled.... 7MR 12.1

Our children are to be educated line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. From babyhood the character of the child is to be molded and fashioned in accordance with the divine plan. Virtues are to be instilled into its opening mind.—Manuscript 49, 1901, 5, 6, 8. (“Work Out Your Own Salvation,” June 26, 1901.) 7MR 12.2