My Latest Reading

Your problems, Madam:

... with your child as he begins, or goes back to, his school...

... with your aged mother-in-law, who shares life with you under one roof...

... with your own self... are you being unjust to yourself?

Knowledge is an inexhaustible spring; at every moment it has fresh outpourings that fall upon souls as drops of water fall upon thirsty grains of earth; and from this source I scoop up today a handful, to offer you, Madam, a sweet and palatable drink!

Your son is at the gates of the school year, and you are at a loss what to do; here the magazine Woman's Own offers you some guidance by which your problem may be solved.

This may be his first year — a new step that scatters his tender thoughts, so that he shrinks into himself; or he may be going up to a higher class, and looks toward the future with dread; and harder than either case is his going off to boarding school.

His situation looks simple to you: it seems very easy for him to fit into the school atmosphere once the first days, with their astonishment and strangeness, are past — he will join his fellows and choose his friends from among them, and then the pleasures the school offers will occupy his mind! No — his position is harder than you suppose! Let us take as our example little Sami: he is the pivot of his mother's thoughts; she stays at his side the whole day long, watching over his food, his play, and his sleep. But the hour he enters school, the atmosphere changes: he becomes one of a crowd, and the mother's tenderness withdraws from the stage of his life for stretches at a time! He must keep silent and obey the rule at hours the school system imposes on him, and this is foreign to his nature. If the change proves hard for him, he will no doubt look for some deliverer to free him from this heavy nightmare, and his protests will begin: now he complains of a pain in his head or his stomach — and sometimes his plea is genuine, brought on by the strain on his mind and the constriction of his spirit! He needs you most sorely: help him, so that you may lift this surface gloom from him; then let him come to think of school as another home, not a monastery where he is shut away from the world; and make certain that he knows how to put on his clothes and his shoes and look after his belongings before he goes off to school.

Some parents claim that by teaching a child reading and writing at home they are helping him. No! Excess in things leads to their opposite. Teaching is the school's duty; but you can surround your child with books, answer his questions precisely and frankly, and help him to understand his surroundings, so that he forms a general idea of everything around him!

Encourage him, so that he will not be afraid to ask the school's leave to go out when he must — and this is an important point; likewise the teacher must ease the atmosphere for the child, taking him by the hand across the difficult steps, and try to study him before she teaches him!

If the boy is about to sit for an examination, he faces a struggle, and his fate is decided by his success or his failure. The clever one sometimes fails from dread of the examination or from want of self-confidence, and he carries the burden of that failure like a mountain on his shoulders — especially if he feels his parents' sacrifice — so that his soul finds no rest, even in the thick of play and amusement. Make him understand that he cannot work beyond his strength; see to his study room, so that it is far from the family's talk and the sound of the radio; and you may help him in preparing his lessons if the need arises. Thus, by understanding him and helping him, the obstacles melt away and he goes forward to certain success.

It appears that you are the family's starting point