THE BEST BOYS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 61, 13 March 1926, Page 34

THE BEST BOYS.

WHY THEY ARE UNTIDY.

FIRST SIGN OF EMANCIPATION,

If you ace a boy of eight who is described as a Perfect Little Gentleman, be extremely suspicious. It was in the course of an explanation that dirt and untidiness are good signs in boys that Dr. Crichton Miller used the above words, when addressing the winter school of the Women Sanitary Inspectors and Health Visitors' Associations at Bedford College. "That Perfect Little Gentleman," he added, "is failing to realise the sense of emancipation, and will presently shirk his responsibilities." Explaning this point, Dr. Miller said:—

The dirtiness of the small boy which is euch a chronic source of ofience to adults ia not a fortuitous thing. Although he does not know it, there is a perfectly good reason for his conduct.

When a boy of eight says, "I am now old enough not to have my hands scrubbed by Mummy," he is only expressing another side of the truth that he is old enough to wash his hands himself. He is expressing his independence, and says, "If I keep my hands as clean as Mummy kept them, nobody would realise how grown up I am." In the same way, he does not wipe his feet on the door-mat, is unpunctual and careless. It has a profound phychological significance.

The Victorian idea of a mother's permanent and complete ascendancy in a child's life was based on ignorance. At about eight years of age a boy was becoming "fed up" with his mother, and it was perfectly normal, right and proper that he should. It was the boy's interpretation of the fact that he was developing independence.