"Not a passionate word is to be allowed to escape your lips."
The following paragraphs come from a manuscript written in 1911, at a time when Mrs. White was often speaking to parents on raising their children. In the longer document she also speaks of the Vine and the Branches of John 15, another very common theme of her later years.
God wants every father and mother to take their children and train them and teach them patiently. Not a passionate word is to be allowed to escape your lips. The tone of your voice is to be under the discipline of the Spirit of God. There is to be no quarreling with your children. There is no sense in it. You just take them before God and talk with them and plead with them. I have felt that if I should get in a passion before my children I should be worse than they, very much, because parents are educators. You want to so discipline your children that they will understand that “mother know all about it, and father knows all about what I need spiritually.” If they are Christians they will understand. {Ms70-1911.6}
Not an impatient word should go from the lips of father or mother. If they hear impatient words from father and mother, they will feel that they are justified in their impatient course of action. You cannot afford it. There is too much at stake. The eternal life of your children is hanging in the balance. Who is prepared to lay hold of the divine power that He has promised to give to those that shall walk faithfully and do His work? What is a greater work any parent can do than to give the children an education in regard to their future immortal life? What can be greater? And do you think they will love you any the less? They may think that you require too much of them, and they may at times get impatient. But you stand right to the truth of God as He has told you, to bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is the nurture and the admonition that blend and do the work. {Ms70-1911.7}
It is the nurture the children should have, and then the admonition, and yet you can kneel right down and pray with them, and you should, every time that they do wrong. Take them right away by themselves and let them see that mother knows they need help. And many times, when you have to correct your children, they will break right down, as those that I have taken to discipline and brought up and fed and clothed. Just tell them that the Lord Jesus knows all about what they are doing. Fathers and mothers themselves need the discipline of patience and kindness. It will do a great deal more than the rod if you just show that you want to help and bless them. {Ms70-1911.8}
Fathers and mothers have a wonderful responsibility. You cannot afford to spend your time in idle talk with visitors. The children are not to be neglected, for they are the very ones that need your encouragement or reproof, not in anger, but to tell them there is One that sees all they do. There is One that knows all that you think, and now you want to so conduct yourselves that the Lord can look upon you and bless you, and can look upon me as having discharged my duty to my children. Now this work is so neglected that I felt that if I ever spoke here in this church again I would certainly present some of these things to you. And then, let me tell you, when you speak so patiently and kindly, and when your tears flow, it melts the heart. Fathers and mothers never need to discipline or correct in anger. {Ms70-1911.9}
Children, I speak to you, dear children, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, that Christ gave His precious life that you might perfect a Christian character and that you might be welcomed at last into the city of God. Why, there is a city waiting for you. There is a kingdom and there is a crown and there is a harp, and you are to sing to the Redeemer’s praise. It is a wonderful preparation that God has made for you, children. And the parents should be diligent not to allow an evil habit to be encouraged in their children. Ask the Lord to let His blessing rest upon the children that you love so well, but never take them and shake them as I have seen done right in meeting. It is a wicked thing. {Ms70-1911.10}
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Not a passionate word is to pass our lips, because the devil is standing right by to take advantage of it and to make impressions upon the minds of our children if we speak unadvisedly. {Ms70-1911.19}
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There is to be not a passionate word, and more than this, you are to encourage godliness and you are to represent Christ in words and character wherever you are. There is no need for you to feel that it is a hardship if you have to control an ugly temper. Ask the Lord to give you patience. And then the children can tell their parents that they have displeased the Lord and displeased them, and ask the Lord to forgive them. {Ms70-1911.21}