The Scolding Habit

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 3, 1904

The Scolding Habit

SCOLDING is mostly a habit. It is often the result of nervousness, and an irritable condition of both mind and body. A person is tried or annoyed at some trivial cause, and forthwith begins finding fault with everything and everybody within reach. Scolding is a habit very easily formed. It is astonishing how soon one becomes addicted to it, and confirmed in it. It is an unreasoning and unreasonable habit. Persons who once get into the way of scolding always find something to scold about. . . . It is an extremely disagreeable habit. It is contagious. Once introduced into a family, it is pretty certain in a short time to affect all the members.

People in the country more readily fall into the habit of scolding than the people in town. Women contract the habit more frequently than men. This may be because they live in a confined and heated atmosphere, very trying to the nervous system and the health in general, and it may be partly that their natures are more susceptible, and their sensitiveness more easily wounded.

One cause of irritability is the drinking of stimulants. Another cause is found in indigestion and dyspepsia. But “bad air” is undoubtedly to be held as the cause of many scoldings which would never have occurred in well-ventilated apartments. If the reader has acquired the habit of scolding and really wants to be rid of it, she should try to remember each time she feels provoked that it only makes her look foolish in the eyes of the person spoken to and those around, and is the source of discomfort and unhappiness. By getting into the habit of speaking kind words, which never die, and seeking to benefit rather than wound others, she will escape much displeasure, and in time entirely lose the practise of speaking harshly.— Selected.