Diet in Childhood
183
their children! How earnestly and diligently should the parents work
to do their duty, in faith and hope, to their unfortunate offspring!
Parents should make it their first business to understand the laws of
life and health, that nothing shall be done by them in the preparation of
food, or through any other habits, which will develop wrong tendencies
in their children. How carefully should mothers study to prepare
their tables with the most simple, healthful food, that the digestive
organs may not be weakened, the nervous forces unbalanced, and the
instruction which they should give their children counteracted, by the
food placed before them. This food either weakens or strengthens the
organs of the stomach, and has much to do in controlling the physical
and moral health of the children, who are God’s blood-bought property.
What a sacred trust is committed to parents, to guard the physical and
moral constitutions of their children, so that the nervous system may be
well balanced, and the soul not be endangered! Those who indulge the
appetite of their children, and do not control their passions, will see the
terrible mistake they have made, in the tobacco-loving, liquor-drinking
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slave, whose senses are benumbed, and whose lips utter falsehoods
and profanity.—
Testimonies for the Church 3:567, 568, 1875
The Cruel Kindness of Indulgence
358. I was shown that one great cause of the existing deplorable
state of things is that parents do not feel under obligation to bring up
their children to conform to physical law. Mothers love their children
with an idolatrous love, and indulge their appetite when they know
it will injure their health, and thereby bring upon them disease and
unhappiness. This cruel kindness is manifested to a great extent in the
present generation. The desires of children are gratified at the expense
of health and happy tempers, because it is easier for the mother, for
the time being, to gratify them than to withhold that for which they
clamor.
Thus mothers are sowing the seed that will spring up and bear fruit.
The children are not educated to deny their appetites and restrict their
desires. And they become selfish, exacting, disobedient, unthankful,
and unholy. Mothers who are doing this work will reap with bitterness
the fruit of the seed they have sown. They have sinned against Heaven