Training a Child

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7068, 30 January 1933, Page 2

Training a Child

Dr J. E. Rees, deputy-director of the Institute of Mental Psychology, in an address to the Chichester Diocesan Council at Brighton, declared that mental ill-health was responsible for most sickness, and that tho Ispoiling of children was responsible for tho majority of mental and moral disorders of later life. Nervousness, bad temper, irritability and stupidity wero not inherited. It was useless to cxcuso ourselves on tho score that our parents were nervous. “If,” said Dr Rees, “you pick up a baby on the first day of its lifo just becauso it yells, and not becauso it has a pain, you have laid the- foundation of hysteria. You havo told the child ‘lf you shout loud enough you can do what you like.’ Tho child grows up bad-temp-ered and disgruntled because in its after-life it cannot havo what it wants just for shouting. So many people regard children as lumps of putty they have got to mould. That is not the way in which a child should be brought up. You arc moulding and shaping when you ought to be encouraging real growth. A child must doubt, must question and think for itself. Only then will it have real freedom or real mental health.”