"It is essential for parents to find useful employment for their children, which will involve the bearing of responsibilities as their age and strength will permit. The children should be given something to do that will not only keep them busy, but will interest them. The active hands and brains must be employed from the earliest years. If parents neglect to turn their children's energies into useful channels, they do them great injury, for Satan is ready to find them something to do.... CT 146.1"
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
The EGW passage expands on the principle of training a child by emphasizing the importance of providing useful employment and responsibilities, which contributes to their development and prevents idleness.