Although I was greatly in need of healing, both physical and mental, my desire for a satisfying church home was the impelling force which led me into Christian Science. Activity in a Protestant church had not met my basic need, whereas joyous participation in branch church activities and membership in The Mother Church provide a fully satisfied experience. Physical discomfort and mental distress which took form in nervousness, headaches, constipation, and other troubles melted away just from my reading the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. Healings of various kinds have followed in the ensuing twenty-six years. However, I should like to relate here an experience which I pray will help families seeking a solution of this particular problem.
One of the points brought out in my class instruction in Christian Science was that in the case of a disobedient child we should handle animal magnetism. My husband and I had the opportunity to prove the practicality of this advice with our daughter, who became more difficult to manage as she approached her early teens. She was uncooperative, willful, and deceptive. Our judgment about the extent of her dating and our rule that we must be acquainted with her dates only brought on more resentment and ingratitude. Of course, we were striving to express patience with our firmness, but our efforts seemed fruitless since our judgments were met with the reply, "All my girl friends can do thus and so." Throughout all this we insisted upon her attending Sunday School each week and the Wednesday evening testimony meetings.
One day as my husband and I were discussing this problem, these questions presented themselves to us: "Where, actually, is the teen-ager? Is he something external to thought or is he a mental conception or humanly mental picture which each one of us seems to be entertaining in his own finite sense of things?"
