On What Children See

“Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.”

“The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.”

“You must do nothing before him, which you would not have him imitate.”

“Of all the ways whereby children are to be instructed, the plainest, easiest, and most efficacious, is to set before their eyes the examples of those things you would have them do, or avoid.”

“Mencius' mother selected her neighbourhood.”

“Though his father die, yet he is as though he were not dead: for he hath left one behind him that is like himself.”

“Who teaches me a day is my father for life.”

“The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof.”

Nursery-age children who watched an adult strike a doll went on to strike it themselves, though nobody had rewarded or punished them. Watching was the whole lesson.

When a parent held a still, blank face for only two minutes, babies strained to win the face back, then turned away in distress. They were reading us long before they could speak.

“A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”

“In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge.”