PET THE OLDER ONES by Sel.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 23, 1877

PET THE OLDER ONES.

By Sel.

It sometimes occurs to us that the babies get more than their share of petting. Not that anybody can help it; the dear little dimpled things, with their sweet ways and their helpless dependence, and the charm of some new revelation every day, invite our caresses, and our whole store of complimentary adjectives. Darling and treasure, and the common stock of nouns of endearment and approbation, come easily to our lips when we talk to the little ones.

How often we drop these pretty forms of speech as they grow older. They leave the cunning age behind, and graduate into the awkward one. Girls and boys alike pass through a period when they are shy, sensitive, morbid, and self-conscious, yet perhaps withal arrogant, conceited, and opinionated. With what matchless confidence sixteen and eighteen adopt and parade notions on subjects which have puzzled prophets and sages! Then their fathers and mothers too often feel impatient and disappointed. They do not remember that this queer husk will fall away, and from it emerge a flower by and by.

So gradually and insensibly do mothers lose the habit of caressing their older children, that the latter would often look very much surprised at a kiss bestowed out of the regular way. The habit of a morning and evening salute is kept in families where it is merely mechanical and perfunctory; yet that is better than no kiss at all. The magnetism of mother-love shown to the boy or girl, however unamiable their transitory mood may be, is strong enough to save them from much unhappiness, or from the attacks of temptation. Do not slight so strong a power. Even though you feel it difficult to take up what should never have been laid aside, begin again, and pet your big sons and daughters.—Sel.