TRAIN UP A CHILD ~ F. B. Meyer

Helping Kids Grow Right

A long time ago, a poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge talked to a man who thought kids shouldn’t be taught about God or religion. The man said kids should wait until they’re grown up to choose what they believe.

Coleridge didn’t argue, but he invited the man to see his garden. When the man looked, he was surprised and said, “This isn’t a garden! It’s full of weeds!”

Coleridge smiled and said, “I didn’t want to control the garden. I just let it grow however it wanted.”

The point was, just like a garden needs care to grow beautiful flowers, kids need guidance to grow up strong and good.

~ F. B. Meyer

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A Poem About Shaping Kids

I took some soft clay one day,
And shaped it in a fun way.
As I worked, it moved with my hands,
Following all my plans.

When time passed, the clay got hard,
It kept the shape I gave it from the start.
No matter how I tried, it wouldn’t bend,
It stayed the same until the end.

Then I took a child’s soft heart,
And gently shaped it with love and art.
Day by day, I helped it grow,
Teaching it the right way to go.

Years later, when I saw that child again,
They were grown, a woman or man.
The lessons I taught them long ago stayed,
And they followed that path every day.

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A Bible Verse for Kids
Proverbs 22:6 says:
“Teach a child the right way to live, and even when they’re old, they’ll keep following it.”