CHILDISH TERRORS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 15

CHILDISH TERRORS

REAL MENTAL DANGER.

Whenever a mother sees one of those occasional instances of a small child who has accomplished a long journey alone, she invariably wonders what the poor little mite has been through— whether she has been frightened to death or spoiled for life by idle-minded people as careless of their child-interest as of the quality of tho crumbs they might throw to a sparrow. In these days of enlightened childpsychology it is considered almost as criminal to send a small child unaccompanied among absolute strangers, for any longish period, as to commit the old sin of child-labour against the Factory Acts, writes Kathleen Coyle in an exchange. No intelligent person who cared for a child would,do such a thing. Either he or she would send the child under the care of somebody known, or, if they were compelled to commit the , charge to unknown people, they would prepare the, child's mind concerning those people so that she would possess some assurance at the back of her small consciousness that these people were either to be loved or trusted.

To cast a very young child into a state of independent relationship with outsiders makes a demand upon its unformed intelligence which is physically equivalent to making it carry bricks, or do something beyound the strength of its years. • ...

It is even more cruel than stunting its growth, for it exposes it mentally to all sorts of insidious dangers—dangers that may not, perhaps, show immediately, but may turn up later and manifest themselves in. the-grown character. A child's disappointment, or fear, is far more poignant than that.of an older person. It is wilder, more hopeless, more forlorn, for the child has no vision.

To be shut off from all intimate beings in a crisis can indeed for a child be a shipwreck of something fundamental .

A child may seem to forget—on the surface. But it is only on the surface. We have all laughed throughout our childhood. Do we remember why we laughed? Very seldom. But wha"t we do remember are our terrors : when the light went out in tho nursery . . . or when somebody we loved wtnt away arid never, never came back . . .when a beloved kitten was drowned. . .when the Man with the Beard spoke to us. or whon we were blamed for something wo had nofc done. Those are the things! So, if you would be merciful, preserve the child, either by proper guardianship or by preparing it beforehand for its encounters. And'be as sure ts you can be of the encounters.