Feeding of Children
121
lutions of this corrupt age. The tables of many professed Christian
women are daily set with a variety of dishes which irritate the stomach
and produce a feverish condition of the system. Flesh-meats constitute
the principal article of food upon the tables of some families, until their
blood is filled with cancerous and scrofulous humors. Their bodies
are composed of what they eat. But when suffering and disease comes
upon them, it is considered an affliction of Providence.
We repeat, intemperance commences at our tables. The appetite is
indulged until its indulgence becomes second nature. By the use of
tea and coffee an appetite is formed for tobacco, and this encourages
the appetite for liquors.
The Ministry of Healing, 334
Let parents begin a crusade against intemperance at their own
fireside, in the principles they teach their children to follow from
infancy, and they may hope for success.
There is work for mothers in helping their children to form correct
habits and pure tastes. Educate the appetite; teach the children to abhor
stimulants.
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 61-64
Regularity should be the rule in all the habits of children. Mothers
make a great mistake in permitting them to eat between meals. The
stomach becomes deranged by this practice, and the foundation is
laid for future suffering. Their fretfulness may have been caused by
unwholesome food, still undigested; but the mother feels that she can
not spend time to reason upon the matter, and correct her injurious
management. Neither can she stop to soothe their impatient worrying.
She gives the little sufferers a piece of cake or some other dainty to
quiet them, but this only increases the evil. Some mothers, in their
anxiety to do a great amount of work, get wrought up into such nervous
haste that they are more irritable than the children, and by scolding
and even blows they try to terrify the little ones into quietude.
Mothers often complain of the delicate health of their children, and
consult the physician when, if they would but exercise a little common
sense, they would see that the trouble is caused by errors in diet.