Confidence Between Parents and Children
Love and confidence are almost synonymous words. It is difficult indeed to repose full confidence in those we do not love, and love without confidence is almost absurd. If we should ask a child if it loved its mother, invariably it would answer yes. If we should ask a mother if she loved her child, it would seem almost like an insult to her; for is it not an axiom that all mothers love their children? Yet, as we look around us on every side, and see parents with children growing up to manhood and womanhood apparently strangers as to the real, true feelings and emotions of the heart, we wonder whether there is really true love there or not. Is it not rather a kind of selfish interest in each other because they belong to us? O mothers, are you satisfied to be mothers only in name? Can you afford to allow your daughter to grow away from you, choosing rather to tell some girl friend just how she feels than to unfold it all to you, thus offering you the grand opportunity of giving the counsel your age and experience afford? O, how many young girls would have been saved from the delusive by-paths of sin could their mothers but have taught them from infancy up to tell it all to mother! Instead of reproving, she should lovingly counsel, show her the better way; she will soon learn to love it. Talk with your children of all that interests them. Enter heart and soul into their feelings, become an indispensable part of their lives, until they are well over the critical years in which they need a counselor so much; and then, O, then, they will turn to you for comfort, counsel, and consolation through all the succeeding years!—Pacific Health Journal.