If you can only convince your children that you love them, that your soul goes out to them for their good, that you are their truest friend, they, in turn, will place confidence in you and will love you and seek to do your bidding and to carry out your wishes with your love. But if you are selfish, unkindly to them, and if they are not confident that they have your entire affection, they will be selfish, and will not care whether they please you or carry out your wishes or not, and the result will be that they will grow wayward, thoughtless and careless.10
Chapter 33: Children: The Richest of All Earthly Joys,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith (2011), 294–303
May the fathers in Israel live as they should live; treat their wives as they should treat them; make their homes as comfortable as they possibly can; lighten the burden upon their companions as much as possible; set a proper example before their children; teach them to meet with them in prayer, morning and night, and whenever they sit down to partake of food, to acknowledge the mercy of God in giving them the food that they eat and the raiment that they wear, and acknowledge the hand of God in all things.12
“Chapter 28: The Wrongful Road of Abuse,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith(2011), 249–55
You can’t force your boys, nor your girls into heaven. You may force them to hell, by using harsh means in the efforts to make them good, when you yourselves are not as good as you should be. The man that will be angry at his boy, and try to correct him while he is in anger, is in the greatest fault; he is more to be pitied and more to be condemned than the child who has done wrong. You can only correct your children by love, in kindness, by love unfeigned, by persuasion, and reason.10
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With these means, if you cannot gain your boys and your girls, they will prove to be reprobate to you; and there will be no means left in the world by which you can win them to yourselves. But get them to feel as you feel, have interest in the things in which you take interest, to love the gospel as you love it, to love one another as you love them, to love their parents as the parents love the children. You can’t do it any other way. You can’t do it by unkindness; you cannot do it by driving—our children are like we are: we couldn’t be driven; we can’t be driven now. We are like some other animals that we know of in the world: You can coax them; you can lead them by holding out inducements to them and by speaking kindly to them, but you can’t drive them; they won’t be driven. We won’t be driven. Men are not … made that way.
AUGUST 2004 GOSPEL CLASSICS:Gospel Classics:Love of Mother and Father President Joseph F. Smith (1838–1918)
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