Parents and Children
363
the same. At times they are somewhat prepared to meet changeable
moods, and at other times they are nervous and fretful, and cannot bear
censure. Their spirit rises up in rebellion against it. Parents want all
due allowance made for their state of mind, yet do not always see the
necessity of making the same allowance for their poor children. They
excuse in themselves that which, if seen in their children who have not
their years of experience and discipline, they would highly censure.
Some parents are of a nervous temperament, and when fatigued with
labor or oppressed with care, they do not preserve a calm state of
mind, but manifest to those who should be dearest to them on earth, a
fretfulness and lack of forbearance which displeases God and brings
a cloud over the family. Children, in their troubles, should often be
soothed with tender sympathy. Mutual kindness and forbearance will
make home a paradise and attract holy angels into the family circle.
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The mother can and should do much toward controlling her nerves
and mind when depressed; even when she is sick, she can, if she only
schools herself, be pleasant and cheerful, and can bear more noise
than she would once have thought possible. She should not make the
children feel her infirmities and cloud their young, sensitive minds
by her depression of spirits, causing them to feel that the house is a
tomb and the mother’s room the most dismal place in the world. The
mind and nerves gain tone and strength by the exercise of the will.
The power of the will in many cases will prove a potent soother of the
nerves.
Do not let your children see you with a clouded brow. If they yield
to temptation, and afterward see and repent of their error, forgive them
just as freely as you hope to be forgiven by your Father in heaven.
Kindly instruct them, and bind them to your hearts. It is a critical
time for children. Influences will be thrown around them to wean
them from you, which you must counteract. Teach them to make you
their confidant. Let them whisper in your ear their trials and joys. By
encouraging this, you will save them from many a snare that Satan has
prepared for their inexperienced feet. Do not treat your children only
with sternness, forgetting your own childhood, and forgetting that they
are but children. Do not expect them to be perfect or try to make them
men and women in their acts at once. By so doing, you will close the
door of access which you might otherwise have to them, and will drive