2.  Would you regard it as a fault if a child seems unwilling to
     talk about religion?  What do you think “religion” means to the
     child-mind?

     3.  In what ways do children’s aptitudes differ and what factors
     probably determine the difference?  What was your own childish
     conception of God?  Did you love God or fear him?  Why?

     4.  Is it ever right to teach the child those conceptions which we
     have outgrown?  What about Santa Claus and fairies?  How can you use
     childish figures of speech as an avenue to more exact truth?

     5.  Does the child learn more through ears or eyes?  Through which
     agency do we seek to convey religious ideas?

     6.  Is it possible to make the child see the intimate relation
     between conduct and religion?  How would you do this?

     7.  Give some of the characteristics of a religious child of seven
     years, of ten.

CHAPTER VII

DIRECTED ACTIVITY

Probably all parents find themselves at some time thinking that the real, fundamental problem of training their children lies in dealing with their superabundant energy.  “He is such an active child!” mothers complain.  Were he otherwise a physician might properly be consulted.  But the child’s activity does seriously interfere with parental peace.  It takes us all a long time to learn that we are not, after all, in our homes in order to enjoy peaceful rest, but in order to train children into fulness of life.  That does not mean that the home should be without quiet and rest, but that we must not hope to repress the energy of childhood.  One might as well hope to plug up a spring in the hillside.  Our work is to direct that activity into glad, useful service.

Sec. 1.  VALUE OF ACTIVITY

The things we do not only indicate character, they determine it.  Our thoughts have value and power as they get into action.  To bend our energies toward an ideal is to make it more real, to make it a part of ourselves.  Children learn by doing—­learn not only that which they are doing but life itself.

It may be doubted whether a child ever grew who did not plead to have a share in the work he saw going on about him.  That desire to help is part of that fundamental virtue of loyalty of which we have spoken above; it is his desire to be true to the tendency of the home, to give himself to the realization of its purposes.  Of course he does not think this out at all.  But this desire on the part of the child to have a hand in the day’s work is the parent’s fine opportunity for a most valuable and influential form of character direction.

One of the tests of a worthy character is whether the life is contributory or parasitic, whether one carries his load, does his work, makes his contribution, or simply waits on the world for what he can get.  A religious interpretation of and attitude toward life is essentially that of self-giving in service.  “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.”  “I must be about my Father’s business.”  How noticeable is the child’s interest in the vivid word-picture of One who “went about doing good”!