Nagging is worry put into words,--the verbal expression of worry about or towards individuals.

The mother wishes her son would do differently.

Can the boy's actions be changed?
Then go to work to change them--not to worry over them.

If they cannot be changed, why nag him, why irritate him, why make a bad matter worse?
Nagging, like worry, never once did one iota of good; it has caused infinite harm, as it sets up an irritation between those whose love might overcome the difficulty if it were let alone.

Nagging is the constant irritation of a wound, the rubbing of a sore, the salting an abraded place, the giving a hungry man a tract, religious advice or a bible, when all he craves is food.
Ah, mother! many a boy has run away from home because your worry led you to nag him; many a girl to-day is on the streets because father or mother nagged her; many a husband has "gone on a tear" because he could not face his wife's "worry put into words," even though no one would attempt to deny that boy, girl and husband alike were wrong _in every particular_, and the "nagger" in the right, save in the one thing of worry and its consequent nagging.
In watching the lives of men and women I have been astonished, again and again, that the fruitlessness of their worry did not demonstrate its uselessness to them.