a mother’s love

Well, here I am again. It has been almost a year since I last ventured to write a good narration on a good piece of literature. Since then, we’ve moved to a new state and my twins have become much more mobile and hence in need of much more attention.

So chances are, these narrations I’m going to be writing will be less thorough and less frequent than their predecessors. Chances are, they might not sound as intellectual, because my brain space feels rather limited. Chances are, I’ll be writing narrations of one or two paragraphs at a time rather than full chapters.

I’m not sure if they’ll be worth reading. But the act of writing what I’ve read always seals the content in my mind. And for myself and my family, it is important that I keep my mind alive and active, eager to learn and ready to serve.

So here I am. My babies are asleep, I’ve just read and loved the first two sections of Charlotte Mason’s “Home Education”, and I’m going to do my best to recapture what was important to me about it.

Children are a gift. The most precious gift. There is no public prestige, no career promotion, that equals the honor of being a parent. Children are the future. Little boys and girls will grow up to be the thinkers, leaders, and public servants of tomorrow. And their parents are given the great privilege and responsibility of raising them up to be men and women of character.

Early childhood, until approximately six years, are perhaps the most formative for a child. They are the years when habits, ideas, and character are most impressionable. In those years, parental love, and perhaps particularly a mother’s love, is the first agent of a child’s education. Mothers were uniquely designed by the Creator to be able to give their children the early education they need. Non parental caregivers cannot supply the tenderness and loving attention that is ingrained in family setting. The early years are crucial in development, and only in the home setting can the child truly thrive and mature as they were designed to do.

In some ways, children can be seen as a social trust. They do not belong to the parents. Mothers and Fathers do not have the right to say of their child “this is mine, I may do with it as I will.” They have a responsibility to see that the child is equipped in every way to become a servant of society.

Greater still than being a social trust, children are a heavenly trust. They are not only my children, I pray that one day they will be children of God. They are beautiful human beings created in His image. I have a duty, not only to raise them up to serve society, but more importantly to raise them up to be a light to society.

However, this task that is set on the shoulders of every parent, is perhaps the most complex in nature. Physicians, teaches, engineers, even shoemakers, spend years learning their trade. Yet many parents are not in the least aware of the physiological or physical needs of their children.

Parents need to be equipped to help their children thrive. Without a basic knowledge of and adherence to the needs of the body, a child will die. And without a basic knowledge of and adherence to the needs of the mind, the child’s mind will die.

How do we proceed with this great responsibility? I’m going to have to keep reading to find out.