1989 January/February issue Part 3

A Child Learns Self-Denial - Part 1

One of the countless blessings of my life is having a daughter who actually asks for my prayers and my advice (and heeds the latter). She phoned from California this morning, describing the difficulties of home-schooling three children in grade six, four, and one, when you also have a four-year-old who is doing nursery school and a two-year-old who, Colleen, who wants to do everything. And on November 19, Evangeline Mary was born, so a nursing baby now claims attention as well. How to give Colleen proper attention and teach her also to occupy herself quietly for what seems to her long periods? Valerie was deeply concerned over whether she was doing all she should for that little one.

I reminded her of the women of the Bible times- while probably not homeschooling her children, an ordinary village women would have been working very hard most of the time, carrying heavy water jars, grinding grain, sweeping, planting, and cooking while tending children. This was true also of the Indians with whom Val grew up. An Indian mother never interrupted her days’ work to sit down with a small child and play or read a story, yet the children were always more or less with her, watching her work, imitating her, learning informally. They had a strong and secure home base, “and so have yours,” I told her. “Don’t worry! You are not doing Colleen an injustice. Quite the contrary. You are giving her wonderful things: a stable home, your presence in that home, a priceless education just in the things she observes.”

  The demands on Val, as any mother of small children, are pretty relentless, of course. She does all the housework (except the heaviest cleaning) with the help of the children (a schedule of chores is posted on the refrigerator). People usually gasp when I tell them the number of my grandchildren. “Wow,” said one “it takes a special woman to have five children.” Special? Not really. Millions have done it. But it takes grace, it takes strength, it takes humility, and God stands ready to give all that is needed.

  I suggest to Valerie that perhaps she could define the space which Colleen is allowed to play in during school time, and make it very clear to her that school time is quiet time for her brothers and sisters. When Valerie was Colleens age she had to learn to play quietly alone, because I was occupied for a good portion of every day in Bible translation work, or in teaching literacy and Bible classes in our house. She knew she was not to interrupt except for things I defined as “important.” At that time there were seldom children of her age to play with, and she had neither siblings nor father, yet she was happy and, I think, well adjusted. (For a certain period we had the added difficulty of living with a missionary family with six children under nine whose mother felt obliged to be more or less available for her children every minute- they were thought too young to learn not to interrupt. It was not an ordered home, and the mother herself was exhausted most of the time.)