Take Time for Your Children

In these swift-passing scenes and seasons there seems to come – insistently, almost above all else – this compelling cry: Take time for your children. More and more, professional people are telling us that children are shaped and molded at a very early age – so early that it is a sobering fact to face. Home, parents, early impressions set the pattern for the future – and the evidence is overwhelming that nothing in this world is ever going to take the place of wholesome, happy homes. And there is more to this than food and shelter and physical sustenance. There is the shaping of attitudes, of minds, of morals; opening avenues of interest and activity; instilling honesty, respect, reverence; prayers at a mother’s knee; correction with fairness and firmness and kindness and consideration. All this we cannot be, all this we cannot do, by not being there, by living separate lives, by an over-absorption in outside interests. Take time for your children. They are so soon grown, so soon gone.

“Is mother home?” “Where is mother?” are the questions often asked when they come home from anywhere. Oh, let them have the blessing of your being there. Take time for open arms; for talking, for reading, for family prayer: for home evenings and hours. As one discerning poet put it: “Richer than I you can never be – I had a mother who read to me. Take time for making memories; for fixing sure foundations that will last long after less important things are far forgotten.

Mothers need to be home. A mother, a father, waiting is a source of safety and assurance. Parents need to give their children wholesomeness and wholeness by the very lives they live. Oh, the blessedness of coming home and finding mother there, with love and kindness and encouragement.

Life goes quickly. Don’t brush them off and turn them over to others. Take time for you children – before they’re grown, before they’re gone. Oh, take time for your children.