An old proverb says: "A child is nothing if not a sacred thing." This idea governed the work of upbringing in the family of old, and we are in greater need of it in these days of ours.
What is a child? And what does he represent to his parents and to society?
To his parents, the child is the fruit of their sacred union, the fulfillment of their wishes, the joy of their home, the staff of their old age, and the keeper of the heritage of family and race.
To society, the child is the smiling hope of tomorrow and the pride of the homeland.
Sacred is motherhood, sacred is the child, and sacred is the mother's mission.
And what is the mother's mission?
It is the forming and developing of the child's body; it is the forming and developing of his intelligence; it is, above all, the forming and developing of his heart and his will.
I shall confine my talk to this last mission. I shall try, thanks to my professional experience, to show faithfully the meaning of this mission, the continuous role the mother plays in this field, and the influence she has on the child's spirit — that influence which stamps him with a mark that accompanies him all his life.
When does the education of the child's heart begin?
My answer is frank and without hesitation: before birth! For just as the child inherits from his parents their temperament and their moral character, together with their particular inclinations and their special family stamp, so too he inherits from them the ardent or lukewarm moral outlook that distinguishes them.
Some advise the expectant mother to avoid agitation, to turn her gaze from everything ugly and base, and to surround herself with beauty and cheerfulness, so that the formation of her unborn child may be completed in the most perfect way. This is a fine thing, but it is not enough; for it is a woman's duty, as soon as
she hopes for motherhood, to feel the responsibility that falls upon her toward the creature pulsing within her. She must watch over her own moral condition; for the bodily formation that has begun in her infant is accompanied by the formation of his soul and his heart.
Would that mothers thought seriously of the greatness of their mission — then the rising generation of the future would be the pride of the world.
We have said that the outward beauty surrounding the mother, and the gladness that floods her heart, have their full effect upon the unborn child; how much greater, then, is the effect of religion on his spiritual formation?
Here is the child among us, and here is that complete, radiant emotion — yes, an emotion created by God: love, flooding over him; that love whose spring never runs dry, and from which the mother, always and throughout life, knows the treasures of her tenderness, her affection, and her understanding — those treasures that make of this creature a human being.
If God grants the child a conscious and thinking mother, a mother in the fullest sense of the word, he takes from her, from his tenderest years, the meaning of the love that knows no limit and asks no return.
Through this love the child learns that the world is not wholly hostile, that there are generous hands and people who can be relied upon — and how noble it is for a man to begin his life with this idea.
Indeed, I am inclined to believe that the optimists — those who, however black the days turn against them and however dark the calamities, have never despaired — are the ones a good mother cradled. And conversely, the weary, helpless mother is the factory of pessimists and waverers.
Here allow me, before continuing this study, to mention some of the mistakes that parents commit from the very first days of childhood. The first and most frequent of them is the creation of the spoiled child — the child who
has never grown used to being crossed, and in whom the faculty of obstinacy and domination has matured. How dangerous is this faculty in a child's heart! For character is formed from the first days, and within a year you will have created either a docile child who accepts training, or one who refuses to acknowledge it.
I often hear: "She has no influence over her children; temperaments are temperaments, and there is no way of changing them." But in many cases this change may be possible at the beginning of upbringing — a beginning whose supreme importance cannot be denied.
We must accustom the child, from the first day of his life, to respect the order laid down for him, so that when the need arises he will be capable of obedience and sacrifice without grumbling and without compulsion.
Consequently, the first education, which is the foundation of moral formation, begins in the cradle.
When must we give the child an idea of God? It seems to me that the time for this idea comes when the child begins to understand what surrounds him — that is, when he begins to distinguish his parents and his brothers and sisters. Some object to this idea, saying it is better not to put this notion into the child's head, nor any other religious matters of which he understands nothing; for questions of religion are difficult to grasp and should not be entered upon before the mind matures. To this we reply: this objection, which claims that the idea of God is a philosophical idea beyond the child's comprehension, and that practical logic does not submit to the understanding of philosophical questions, is an objection without justification.
It is a mistake to claim that children grasp the idea of God only when they are more fully grown. This has been confirmed by educators experienced in the ways of innocent souls, who say that these innocent souls absorb the idea of God better, and draw nearer to Him, because at this age they have not yet been soiled by the stains of humanity, nor yet blinded by the passions.
The idea of God, then, must be brought into the child's heart from his tenderest years, without neglecting at the same time the training of his will and his intelligence; in