Christian Science is effectively meeting the challenge that faces parents and teachers in their work with children. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: "Children should obey their parents; insubordination is an evil, blighting the buddings of self government. Parents should teach their children at the earliest possible period the truths of health and holiness. Children are more tractable than adults, and learn more readily to love the simple verities that will make them happy and good." Science and Health, p. 236;
We all have the same goal in our work with children—to teach obedience in such a way that they become self -governed. If a child is to be happy, he must control his thoughts and his actions and have concern for the welfare of others. The way to reach this goal brings many conflicting opinions. Some of us may feel we have failed. Others may think they have shown their children how to be obedient, only to find these same children reaching young adulthood with an utter lack of self-control.
Parents desire to rear their children well. This prayerful desire of the student of Christian Science is powerful, opening thought to right ideas—ways of working with children that lead them to a right sense of self, a selfhood inseparable from their Father-Mother God, controlled by their heavenly Parent. In proportion to his understanding that his true spiritual selfhood is under God's unceasing control, a child eliminates self-will from his experience. In other words, he is self-governed when he recognizes his relationship to God, a God governed eternal kinship.
