THE CHILD MIND

Evening Star, Issue 19994, 11 October 1928, Page 5

THE CHILD MIND

TRIALS OF RED-HEADED BOYS Don’t poke tun at tho red-haired boy. Don’t call little girls “ Bobbie.” Don’t make boys and girls feel greedy when they are willing to cat wholesome food. These warnings were uttered by speakers at the Summer School of tho British Social Hygiene Council at Cambridge. Admonishing his hearers not to poke fun at the red-haired boy, Dr Crichton Miller said: “Wo all think red hair a joko because none of us here has it in any marked degree; but it is not a joke to the owners. They may grow to regard it as a joko when they reach mature years, but the experience in earlier years of having been on their entry into a schoolroom or going down tho street the signal for a joko has twisted their whole attitude to tho human herd.

“ Wo have all sorts of misapprehensions about the red-haired person, especially the red-haired boy, .We think that red hair goes with a choleric temperament, which is a complete misapprehension. It is thought that rebels and adventurers and wild people like that have red hair as a physical symptom of their temperament.” That might he true in a slight degree, but the real fact of the_ matter was that rod hair led to an attitude of self-defence, and the owner might become aggressive trying to compensate himself for what ho felt to he an injustice.

Dealing with the altitude of mental defectives towards life, Dr Miller said: “The mental defective is haunted with the feeling that he is different from the others, and his life tends to become one long attempt to prove to himself and others that he really is as good as others or bettor. The mental defective is always wanting to cheat simply because the feeling that ho has thwarted the normal person, that he has proved to himself how clever he is, is meat and drink to him.”

Speaking of the effect of the absence of a sense of personal value, Dr Miller mentioned a girl who had become l>eyond the control of her parents. She was the seventh girl in the family, and had always been oven more de trop than the others. The complete absence of personal value led her to try to get her own hack on life. Then there was nineteen-year-old “ Bobbie,” a girl whose mother Tind wanted a boy and had not hidden that desire. “Mothers who call their little girls Bobbie are calling them something they had no .right to do.”