Children should be taught to be careful of books and toys. The indestructible book, generally falsely so called, is often responsible for the immediate dissolution of all others less protected which come to hand. The sympathy which little children have with the sufferings of all inanimate objects and their habit of endowing them with their own sensations may be made of use in teaching them care and gentleness. They are naturally p.r.o.ne to sympathise with the doll that has been crushed or the book that has been torn. They will learn very easily to be kind to a pet animal and to be solicitous for its feelings, and the lesson so learnt will be applied to inanimate objects as well.

There is, however, another side to the question. It is true that if the child is not to be over-stimulated upon the psychical side, we must see to it that his play, for the most part, is not dependent upon the partic.i.p.ation of grown-up persons. In practice this excessive stimulation is the common fault with which we meet. There are few children in well-to-do homes, with loving mothers and devoted nurses, who suffer from too little mothering and nursing. Too many show signs of too much. To observe the opposite fault we must seek the infants and children who for a long time are inmates of inst.i.tutions, orphanages, infirmaries, hospitals, and so forth. In such surroundings the mental life of the child may languish. His physical wants are cared for, but there the matter ends. In a rigid routine he is washed and fed, but he may not be talked to or played with or stimulated in any way. His day is spent pa.s.sively lying in his cot, unnoticed and unnoticing. I have seen a poor child of three years just released from such a life, and after eighteen months returned to his mother, unable to talk and almost unable to walk, crying pitifully at the novelty and strangeness of the noisy life to which he had returned, worried by contact with the other children, and without any desire or power to occupy himself in the home. For an hour in the day mothers may devote themselves wholeheartedly to the children, and if they set them romping till they are tired out, so much the better. In the garden or in an airy room with the windows open, a game with a ball or a toy balloon, or a game of hide-and-seek, will be all to the good, and the children may climb and be rolled over and swung about to their heart's content. With an only child, especially with a child whose home is in town, and whose outings are limited to a sedate airing in the park, such free play is especially necessary. It may help more than anything else to quiet restless minds and tempers that are on edge all day long from excessive repression.

On the other hand, those forms of entertainment which are known as "children's parties" are generally fruitful of ill results, at any rate with nervous and highly-strung children. Sometimes they entail a postponement of the usual bedtime, and nearly always they involve over-heated and crowded rooms. Perverse custom has decreed that these gatherings shall take place most commonly in the winter, when dark and cold add nothing to the pleasure and a great deal to the risk of infection which must always attend the crowding of susceptible children together in a confined s.p.a.ce with faulty ventilation. There is clearly on the score of health much less objection to summer garden parties for children, but these for some reason are less the vogue. As a rule parties are not enjoyed by nervous children. There is intense excitement in antic.i.p.ation, and when at length the moment arrives, there is apt to be disillusion. Either the excitement of the child may pa.s.s all bounds and end in tears and so-called naughtiness, or the unfamiliar surroundings may leave him distrait with a strange sense of unreality and unhappiness. It is not always fair to blame the want of wisdom in his hostess's choice of eatables, if the excited and overstimulated child fails in the work of digestion and returns to the nursery to suffer the reaction, with pains and much sickness.

The same arguments may be urged against taking little children to the theatre. The nerve strain is apt to be out of proportion to the enjoyment gained. If children must go to theatres and parties, the treat should be kept secret from them until the moment of its realisation, in order that the period of mental excitement should be contracted as much as possible, and grown-up people should be advised to treat the whole expedition in a matter-of-fact sort of way that does nothing to add to the excitement or increase the risk of subsequent disillusion.

CHAPTER VIII

NERVOUSNESS IN EARLY INFANCY

We may now pa.s.s back to consider the nervous system of the child in infancy. There, too, from the moment of birth there are clearly-marked differences between individuals. The newborn baby has a personality of his own, and mothers will note with astonishment and delight how strongly marked variations in conduct and behaviour may be from the first. One baby is pleased and contented, another is fidgety, restless, and enterprising. At birth the baby wakes from his long sleep to find his environment completely changed. Within the uterus he lies in unconsciousness because no ordinary stimulus from the outer world can reach him to exert its effect. He lies immersed in fluid, which, obeying the laws of physics, exercises a pressure which is uniformly distributed over all points of his body. No sound reaches him, and no light. After birth all this is suddenly changed. The sense of new points of pressure breaks in upon his consciousness. Cold air strikes upon his skin. Loud sounds and bright lights evoke a characteristic response. A placid child who inherits a relatively obtuse nervous organisation will be but little upset by this sudden and radical change in the nature of his environment. His brain is readily but healthily tired by the new sensations which stream in from all sides, and he falls straight away into a sleep from which he rouses himself at intervals only under the impulse of the new sensation of hunger.

Babies of nervous inheritance, on the other hand, will show clearly by the violence of the response provoked that their nervous system is easily stimulated and exhausted. They will wriggle and squirm for hours together, emitting the same constant reflex cry. The whole body will start convulsively at a sudden touch or a loud sound which would evoke no response from a more stolid infant. The sleeplessness and crying exhaust the baby, rendering the nervous system more and more irritable, while the sensation of hunger which is delayed in other children by twelve hours or more of deep sleep appears early and is of extreme intensity. We must see to it that sense stimuli are reduced to the lowest possible level. True, we cannot again restore the child to a bath of warm fluid, of the same temperature as his body, where he can be free from irksome pressure and from all sensations of sound and light, but we can so arrange matters that he is not disturbed by loud sounds and bright lights, and that he is not moved more than is necessary. Sudden unexpected movements are especially harmful. Jogging him up and down, patting him on the back, expostulation, and entreaties are all out of place and do all the harm in the world. The first bath should be as expeditious as possible, and above all the baby must not be chilled by tedious exposure. Cold irritates his nervous system more than anything else, unless it be excessive warmth.

In preserving the proper temperature so that we do not render the child restless by excess of heat or by excess of cold, we too-civilised people have made our own difficulties. We have exaggerated the completeness of the sudden separation of mother and child which nature decrees. It is the function of all mother animals to approximate the unstable temperature of the newly born to their own by the close contact of their bodies, which provide just the proper heat. Labour is nowadays so complicated and exhausting a process for mothers that, all things considered, we are wise in completing the separation of mother and child and in removing the baby to his own cot. But the difficulty remains, and we must arrange that any artificial heating needed is constant and of proper degree.

If the baby is very restless and irritable, too wide awake and too conscious of his surroundings, the all-important task of getting him to the breast and getting him to draw the milk into the breast is apt to be difficult. His sucking is a purely reflex and involuntary act.

It can be produced by anything which gently presses down the tongue, and a finger placed in the proper position will provoke the movement without the child's consciousness being aroused. The placid child whose mind is at rest will suck well and strongly. If, on the other hand, the brain is too much stimulated and the child is restless and irritable, the reflex act of suction is inhibited, and it is a difficult matter to get the child to the breast. He is too eager, mouthing, and gulping, and spluttering. Or sometimes his mental sufferings seem too much for his appet.i.te, and though wide awake and crying loudly, he refuses to grasp the nipple, turning his head away and wriggling blindly hither and thither. This effect of mental unrest on the newborn infant is often disastrous, because it is one of the common causes of the failure of women to nurse their children. This is not the place to sketch in detail a scheme for the proper technique of breast nursing, a matter which is much misunderstood at the present day. It will be enough shortly to say that an efficient supply of milk depends upon the complete and regular emptying of the breast. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all mothers will secrete milk if strong and vigorous suction is applied to the nipple by the child. If anything interferes with suction, the milk does not appear or, if it has appeared, it rapidly declines in amount. The mother's part is to a great extent a pa.s.sive one, provided that she can supply one essential--a nipple that is large enough for the child to grasp properly. Within wide limits what the mother eats or drinks, whether she be robust or whether she has always been something of an invalid, matters not at all. A frail woman may naturally not be able to stand the strain of nursing for many months, but that is not here the point in question. We are dealing only with the establishment of lactation and with the milk supply of the early days and weeks which is of such vital importance for the child. If the mother is ill, if, for example, she has consumption, we may separate her from the child in the interests of both; but if this is not done, she will continue to secrete milk for a time as readily as if she were in perfect health, and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of many a dying woman are to be seen full of milk. Mothers are too apt to attribute the disappointment of a complete failure to nurse to some weakness or want of robustness in their own health. This is never the reason of the failure, and the fault, if the mother has a well-formed nipple, is generally to be found in some disturbance in the child.

Prematurity, with extreme somnolence, breathlessness from respiratory disease, nasal catarrh, which hinders breathing through the nose, infections of all sorts, are common causes of this failure to suck effectively. But perhaps the most common cause of all is the inhibition from nervous unrest of that reflex act of sucking which works so well in the placid and quiet child. It is a point to which too little attention is paid, and mothers and the books which mothers read commonly neglect the nervous system of the child and devote themselves to such considerations as the relative merits of two-hourly and four-hourly feedings--important points in their way, but less important than this.

The matter is complicated in two other ways. In the first place, the nervous baby, just because he is so active and wakeful and restless, is apt rapidly to lose weight and to have an increased need for food.

The restlessness is generally attributed to hunger, and this is true, because hunger is soon added to the other sensations from which he suffers, and like them is unduly acute. It is difficult not to give way and to provide artificial food from the bottle. Yet if we do so we must face the fact that these restless little mortals are quicker to form habits than most, and once they have tasted a bottle that flows easily without hard suction, they will often obstinately refuse the ungrateful task of sucking at a breast which has not yet begun to secrete readily. The suction that is devoted to the bottle is removed from the breast, and the natural delay in the coming in of the milk is increased indefinitely. At the worst, the supply of milk fails almost at its first appearance. We must devote our attention to quieting the nervous unrest by removing all unnecessary sensory stimulation from the baby. He must be in a warm cot, in a warm, well-aired, darkened, and silent room, and the necessary handling must be reduced to a minimum. Sometimes sound sleep will come for the first time if he is placed gently in his mother's bed, close to her warm body. If he is apt to bungle at the breast from eagerness and restlessness, it is not wise always to choose the moment when he has roused himself into a pa.s.sion of crying to attempt the difficult task. So far as is possible he should be carried to the breast when he is drowsy and sleepy, not when he is crying furiously, and then the reflex sucking act may proceed undisturbed.

In the second place, we must guard against the ill effect which the ceaseless crying of these nervous babies has upon the mother. She may be so exhausted by the labour that her nerves are all on edge, and she grows apprehensive and frightened over all manner of little things.

The tired mother is apt to fear that she will have no milk, and her agitation grows with each failure on the part of the child. Now the first secretion of milk is very closely dependent upon the nervous system of the mother. We have said that within wide limits her physical condition is of less importance, but her peace of mind is essential. And so it is wise for some part of the day to keep the nervous baby out of hearing of the mother, and so far as possible to choose moments when the child is quiet to put him to the breast. A nurse with a confident, hopeful manner will effect most; a fussy, over-anxious, or despondent att.i.tude will do untold harm. We shall sometimes fail if the nervous unrest is very obstinate either in mother or in child, but we shall fail less often if we diagnose the cause correctly in the cases we are considering. Lastly, it is possible to control the condition in both mother and child by the careful use of bromide or chloral.

It is not, of course, suggested that these drugs should be given freely or as a routine to every hungry baby wailing for the breast, or that we can hope to combat or ward off an inherited neuropathy by a few doses of a sedative. There are, however, not a few babies in whom there develops soon after birth a sort of vicious circle. They can suck efficiently and digest without pain only when they sleep soundly.

If they are put to the breast after much crying and restlessness, each meal is followed by flatulence, colic, and renewed crying. The only effective treatment is to secure sleep and to carry a slumbering or drowsy infant to the breast. Then the sucking reflex comes to its own again, the breast is drained steadily and well, and digestion proceeds thereafter without disturbance and during a further spell of sleep. Two or three times in the day we may be forced, as meal-time approaches, to cut short the restlessness of the child by giving a teaspoonful of the following mixture:

Pot. brom., grs. ii. [2 grains]

Chloral hydrate, gr. i. [1 grain]

Syrup, M x. [10 minims]

Aq. menth. pip., ad 3 i. [1 dram]

After this has been taken the child should be laid down for a quarter of an hour until soundly asleep. Then very gently he can be carried to his mother and the nipple inserted. If in this way a few days of sound sleep and less disturbed digestion can be secured, the difficulty will in most cases permanently be overcome. The steadier suction and more efficient emptying of the breast will promote a freer flow of milk, and the deeper and more prolonged sleep will lower greatly the needs of the child for food. Most of the babies who show this fault are thin, meagre, and fidgety, and with some increase of muscular tone.

The head is held up well, the limbs are stiff, the hands clenched, the abdomen retracted, with the outline of the recti muscles unusually prominent. If we can relax this exaggerated state of nervous tension, if we can help them to become fatter and to put on weight, the dyspepsia will disappear with the other symptoms.

It is a question still to be answered whether the rare conditions of pyloric spasm and pyloric hypertrophic stenosis are not further developments of the same disturbance. Certainly these grave complications appear most commonly in infants with a p.r.o.nounced nervous inheritance, and, as might be expected, they are more commonly found in private practice than among the hospital cla.s.ses.

In pa.s.sing, we may note that there are babies who exhibit the opposite fault, and in whom the contrary regimen must be inst.i.tuted. Premature children, children born in a very poor state of nutrition, and children born with great difficulty, so that they are exhausted by the violence of their pa.s.sage into the world, are apt to show the opposite fault of extreme somnolence. They are so little stimulated by their surroundings, and they sleep so profoundly, that the sucking reflex is not aroused. Put to the breast they continue to slumber, or after a few half-hearted sucking movements relapse into sleep. We must rouse such children by moving them about and stirring them to wakefulness before we put them to the breast.

Once the child has been got to the breast, once the milk has become firmly established, we have overcome the first great difficulty which besets us in the management of nervous little babies, but it is by no means the last. Restlessness and continual crying must be combated or digestion suffers, and may show itself in a peculiar form of explosive vomiting, which betokens the reflex excitability and unrest of the stomach.

The sense of taste is as acute as all other sensations. If the child is bottle-fed, the slightest change in diet is resented because of the unfamiliar taste, and the whole may promptly be rejected. The tendency to dyspeptic symptoms is apt to lead to much unwise changing of the diet, and everything tried falls in turn into disrepute, until perhaps all rational diets are abandoned, and some mixture of very faulty construction, because of its temporary or accidental success, becomes permanently adopted--a mixture perhaps so deficient in some necessary const.i.tuent that, if it is persisted with, permanent damage to the growth of the child results. We must pay less attention to changes of diet and explore our management of the child to try and find how we can make his environment more restful.

It is wise to accustom a nervous child from a very early age to take a little water or fruit juice from a spoon every day. Otherwise when breast-feeding or bottle-feeding is abandoned one may meet with the most formidable resistance. Infants of a few months can be easily taught; the resistance of a child of nine months or a year may be difficult to overcome. The difficulty of weaning from the breast recurs with great constancy in nervous children. By this time the influence of environment has become clearly apparent. The child is often enough already master of the situation, and is conscious of his power. Such children will sometimes prefer to starve for days together, obstinately opposing all attempts to get them to drink from a spoon, a cup, or even a bottle. When this happens, sometimes the only effective way is to change the environment and to send the baby to a grandmother or an aunt, where in new surroundings and with new attendants the resistance which was so strong at home may completely disappear. When weaning is resented, and difficulties of this sort arise, it is clear that the mother, whose breast is close at hand, is at a great disadvantage in combating the child's opposition.

For nervous infants, alas! broken sleep is the rule. What, then, is to be done? It is astonishing to me that any one who has studied the behaviour of only a few of these nervous and restless infants should uphold the teaching that the crying of the young infant is a bad habit, and that the mother who is truly wise must neglect the cry and leave him to learn the uselessness of his appeals. It is true that the youngest child readily contracts habits good or bad. Either he will learn the habit of sleep or the habit of crying. Mercifully the inclination of the majority is towards sleep. But to encourage habits of restlessness and crying there is no surer way than to follow this bad advice and to permit the child to cry till he is utterly exhausted in body and in mind. It is unwise _always_ to rock a baby to sleep; it is also unwise to allow him to scream himself into a state of hysteria. A quiet, darkened room, the steady pressure of the mother's hand in some rhythmical movement, will often quiet an incipient storm. The longer he cries, the more trouble it is to soothe him.

Sleep provokes sleep, so that often we find restlessness and sound sleep alternating in a sort of cycle, a good week perhaps following a bad one. The nurse who is quick to cut short a storm of crying and to soothe the child again to sleep is helping him to form habits of sleep. The nurse who leaves him to cry, believing that in time he will of his own accord recognise the futility of his behaviour, is making him form habits of crying. A rigid routine in sleep is a good thing, but the routine belongs to the baby, not to the nurse. The child must be educated to sleep, not taught to cry. A baby has but little power of altering his position when it becomes strained or uncomfortable. He cannot turn over and nestle down into a new posture. If we watch him wake, the first stirring may be very gradual, and in a moment he may fall again to sleep. A few minutes later he stirs again more strongly, and is wider awake and for longer. It may only be after a third waking, by a summation of stimuli, that he is finally roused and breaks into loud crying. The nurse who is on the watch, who, sleeping beside him, wakes at the slightest sound and is quick to turn him over and settle him into a new position of rest, will probably report in the morning that the baby has had a good night. The nurse who lets the child grow wide awake and start crying loudly, will spend perhaps many hours before quiet is again restored. Of the voluntary, purposive crying of infants a little older I am not here speaking. Infants in the second six months are quite capable of establishing a "Tyranny of Tears" and feeling their power. Fortunately it requires no great experience to distinguish one from the other, and to adopt for each the appropriate treatment.

Again, in elementary teaching upon the management of infants stress is laid, rightly enough, upon the importance of regularity in the times of feeding, and on the observance in this respect also of a very strict routine. But in the case of the very nervous infant a certain lat.i.tude should be allowed to an experienced nurse or mother. We may wreck everything by a blind adhesion to a too rigid scheme, which may demand that we leave the child to scream for an hour before his meal, or that, when at length he has fallen into a sound sleep after hours of wakefulness, we should proceed to wake him.

Symptoms of dyspepsia which are due to continued nervous excitement demand treatment which is very different from that which would be appropriate to dyspepsia which is due to other causes, such as overfeeding or unsuitable feeding. The temporary restriction of food, which is commonly ordered in dyspepsia from these causes, is very badly supported by the nervous infant. Hunger invariably increases the unrest, and the unrest increases the dyspepsia.

The difficulties of managing a nervous infant are very real, and call for the most exemplary patience on the part of the mother and the clearest insight into the nature of the disturbance.

CHAPTER IX

MANAGEMENT IN LATER CHILDHOOD

In the early days in the nursery the actions of the infant, for the most part, follow pa.s.sively the traction exercised by nurses and mothers, sometimes consciously, but more often unconsciously. We have now to consider a period when the child becomes possessed of a driving force of his own, and moves in this direction or that of his own volition. In this new intellectual movement through life he will not avoid tumbles. He will feel the restraints of his environment pressing upon him on all sides, and he will often come violently in contact with rigid rules and conventions to which he must learn to yield. From time to time we read in the papers of some terrible accident in a picture-palace, or in a theatre. Although there has been no fire, there has been a cry of fire, and in the panic which ensues lives are lost from the crowding and crushing. Yet all the time the doors have stood wide open, and through them an orderly exit might have been conducted had reason not given place to unreason. It is the task of those responsible for the children's education to guide them without wild struggling along the paths of well-regulated conduct towards the desired goal, influenced not by the emotions of the moment, but only by reason and a sense of right; not ignorant of the difficulties to be met, but practised and equipped to overcome them.

It is easy thus to state in general terms the objects of education, and the need for discipline. To apply these principles to the individual is a task, the immeasurable difficulty of which we are only beginning to appreciate with the failure of thirty years of compulsory education before us. A recent writer[2] gives it as his opinion that the aim of education is to equip a child with ideals, and that this task should not be difficult, because the lower savages successfully subject all the members of their tribe to the most ruthless discipline. Their lives, he says, "are lived in fear, in restraint, in submission, in suffering, subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary. They endure painful mutilations, they submit to painful sacrifices.... How are these wild, unstable, wayward, impulsive, pa.s.sionate natures brought to submit to such a rigorous and cruel discipline? By education; by the inculcation from infancy of these ideals. In these ideals they have been brought up, and to them they cling with the utmost tenacity." One might as well contend that it was easy to teach all men to live the self-denying life of earnest Christians because some savage tribe was successful in maintaining among its members a universal and orthodox worship of idols. The ideals set before the child are too high and too complex to be inculcated by physical force, or even by force of public opinion. A rigid discipline, with many stripes and with terrible threats of a still worse punishment in the world to come, was the almost invariable lot of children until the last century was well advanced. Yet has this drastic treatment of young children fulfilled its purpose? Were the men of fifty years ago better conducted and more controlled than the men of to-day? In any one family did a greater proportion turn out well? Is it not true that at least among the educated cla.s.ses the relaxation of nursery and schoolroom discipline which the last fifty years has seen has been justified by its results? Is it not true that the childhood of our grandmothers was often lived "in fear, in restraint, in submission, in suffering subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary." And though perhaps the grandmothers of most of us may not have been much the worse for all this discipline, is it not true that of the little brothers who shared the nursery with them a surprising number broke straightway into dissipation when the parental restraints were removed? If we are to teach a child to be gentle to the weak it is not wise to beat him. The qualities which we wish him to possess are not more subtle than the means by which we must aid him to their possession.

[Footnote 2: _The Principles of Rational Education_, by Dr. C.A.

Mercier.]

Education comprises physical, mental, and moral training. In earlier times physical strength and the power to fight well, alone were prized and were the chief objects to be gained in the education of youth.

Later, under the stress of intellectual compet.i.tion for success in life, mental acquirements have come to occupy the first place. We are only now learning to lay emphasis upon the supreme need for moral training. Not that it is possible to separate the sum of education into its const.i.tuent parts, and to regard each as distinct from the others. That many men of great intellectual activity, and many men pre-eminent for their moral qualities have harboured a great brain or a n.o.ble character in a weakly or deformed body, forms no argument to disprove the general rule that a healthy, vigorous physique is the only sure foundation upon which to build a highly developed intellect and a stable temperament. In childhood the intimate connection between vigour of mind and vigour of body is almost always clearly shown. A child with rickets, unable to exercise his body in free play, as a rule shows a flabbiness of mind in keeping with his useless muscles and yielding bones. Such children talk late, are infantile in their habits and ways of thought, and are more emotional and unstable than healthy children of the same age. The connection between bodily ailments and instability of nervous control is even more clearly seen in the frequent combination of rheumatism and ch.o.r.ea. A very high proportion of older children suffering from the graver neuroses, such as ch.o.r.ea, syncopal attacks, phobias, tics, and so forth, show defective physical development. Scoliosis, lordosis, knock-knee, flat foot, pigeon chest, alb.u.minuria, cold and cyanosed extremities, are the rule rather than the exception. If the body of the child is developed to the greatest perfection of which it is capable we shall not often find a too sensitive nervous system. The boy of fine physique may have many faults. He may be bad-tempered or untruthful or selfish, but such faults as he has are as a rule more primitive in type, more readily traced to their causes, and more easy to eradicate than the faults which spring from that timidity, instability, and moral flabbiness which has so often developed in the lax delicate child reared softly in mind and body.

PHYSICAL TRAINING

Children thrive best in the healthy open-air life of the country, and if there is any tendency to nervous disturbances the need for this becomes insistent. Physical training, further, includes the manual education of the child. The system of child-training advocated by Dr.

Montessori is based upon the cultivation of tactile sensations and the development of manual dexterity. Exercises such as she has devised have an immediate effect in calming the nervous system and in changing the restless or irritable child into a self-restrained and eager worker. Lord Macaulay, whose phenomenal memory as a child has become proverbial, was so extraordinarily unhandy that throughout life he had considerable difficulty in putting on his gloves, while he had such trouble with shaving that on his return from India there were found in his luggage some fifty razors, none of which retained any edge, and nearly as many strops which had been cut to pieces in his irritated and ineffectual efforts. If we teach a child manual dexterity it is an advantage to him, because manual dexterity is seldom a.s.sociated with restlessness and irritability of mind. To excel in some handicraft not only bespeaks the possession of self-control, it helps directly to cultivate it. The teaching of Froebel and Montessori holds good after nursery days are over.

MENTAL TRAINING

Mental training enables the child to retain facts in his memory, to obtain information from as many sources as possible, to understand and piece them together, and finally to reach fresh conclusions from previously acquired data. So far as is possible the teacher must satisfy the natural desire to know the reason of things. It must be his endeavour to prevent the child from accepting any argument which he has not fully understood, and which, as a result, he is able not to reconstruct but only to repeat. Mental work which is slovenly and perfunctory is as harmful to the child's education as mechanical work which is bungled and ineffective. Taking advantage of his natural apt.i.tudes, his interest should be developed and extended in every way possible. Tasks which are accomplished without enthusiasm are labour expended in vain, because the knowledge so acquired is not a.s.similated and adds nothing to the child's mental growth. There should be no sharp differentiation between work and play.

MORAL TRAINING

Moral training depends upon the force of example rather than of precept. Parents must be scrupulously just and truthful to the child, for his quick perception will detect the slightest deceit, and the evil impression made on his mind may be lasting. They must confidently expect conduct from him of a high moral standard, and be careful at this early age to avoid the common fault of giving a dog a bad name.

If it is said on all sides that a child has an uncontrollable temper, is an inveterate grumbler, is lacking in all power of concentration, or has a tendency to deceit, it is likely that the child will act up to his reputation. He comes in time to regard this failing of his as part of himself just as much as is the colour of his hair or the length of his legs. It may be said of a schoolboy that he shows no apt.i.tude for his work. Term by term the same report is brought home from school, and each serves only to confirm the boy in his belief that this failing is part of his nature, and that no effort of his own can correct it. If one subject only has escaped the condemnation of his master, then it may be to that study alone that he returns with zest and enjoyment. Spendthrift sons are manufactured by those fathers who many times a day proclaim that the boy has no notion of the value of money.