HER CONFIDANT

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 11, 14 March 1907, Page 37

HER CONFIDANT

As one- grows older it seems harder and harder to .enter into the plays and fancies of the children, around us, even if they are- our very own. There are mothers who -have such -'busy -lives that any exertion that is not absolutely necessary is really an impossibility,, but -many are too lazy mentally and physically to -keep in touch with their children, mothers ,who Wail about that their children do not give them'- their confidence. No child who had absolute confidence in her 'mother eyier went very far wrong. One cannot- help ~ being:" struck (by the lack of sympathy between the average mother and daughter or father and son, especially as the childiren gfrow, ud, and the fault seems to he largely with, the parents. They are so apt to be the parents, not the friend and-, companion to' whom the

children would go with even the silliness 'of youth and have them received as such, not as things of lasting importance, and to be referred to again and again after they have passed and are sinking' into oblivion. ' Oh, I can't tell mother anything, she lays so much stress, so much importance, on every trifle and never forgets it or lets me. I wish I had a mother I could tell things to,' is the cry one hears continually from schoolgirls.