Last year we attended our daughter's college graduation. I remembered an experience we had had when she was attending a preschool and we'd just moved from another state. The teachers claimed this little girl played alone too much and that she was having trouble learning to read. I asked to bring the reading material home so I could work with her, but this was against school policy. There was a question as to whether she would have to be held back a semester because of poor reading skills. This was very difficult for me. I felt quite disturbed over how my daughter had been evaluated, and made an appointment with the school principal. However, I made it for several weeks in the future so I would have time to think and pray for a spiritual solution.
My first step was to pray diligently for the child. I recognized whose child she really was —God's child. This took the anxious responsibility for her well-being off me, but did not remove from me the duty of replacing the false, limited, mortal concepts I had heard expressed about her with the correct spiritual facts.
In Science and Health I read that children in their true nature are "the spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love" (p. 582). Mrs. Eddy's answer to the question "What is man?" was also strengthening. It reads in part: "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas;...that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker" (p. 475). These spiritual ideas helped me to understand that this child represented the man of God's creating.
