THE C. M. ROSS CO., LTD.

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 171, 22 July 1939, Page 14

THE C. M. ROSS CO., LTD.

Victoria Unhrersity College ■ABAK ANNE RHODES FELLOWtiHIt* IN HOMS SCIENCE HABITS —AB HELPS OB HANDICAPS Tilt health, happiness and efficiency of the adult man and woman depend, to a Ter y large extent, upon the type of habits they acquire from their training and experience during early life. 4 * Habit’ * is such a common, everyday ■ort of term, with which everyone is more or less familiar, that it hardly seems necessary to discuss it at all However, it is in this very fact—that habits are so commonplace and ordinary in the minds of the great mass of individuals—that the danger lies. All too frequently the fundamental importance of forming right habits in early life is minimised or overlooked altogether. Failure may lurk around the cornel for the boy or girl or the man or woman who is handicapped by faulty habits. To illustrate: A reputable author has written that sometimes persons having superior mentality, even ranking as geniuses, have sometimes failed to attain the happiness and success in life that persons of only average ability have attained. In such cases it was explained that the advantage of a superior mind was frequently offset by such characteristics as poor health, slovenly personal habits, habits of dissipation in leisure time, a wrong attitude toward work or authority, ot possibly a lack of self control and consideration for others. Dr. Douglas Thom, in his book * 4 Everyday Problems of the Everyday Child,* * makes this statement regarding habits as handicaps in life: “The person who is without friends, unhappy, poorly adjusted to his home, schoo', business or community, wtu> is without funds and dependent on others for the material needs of life, who is dragging along in school work or is untrustworthy and inefficient lu business, if not physically or mentally sick, is usually a creature handicapped by habiti which are inadequate to meet his daily needs. * * Most of our prejudices are the outcome of habits of thinking formed in childhood. Many persons, as children, develop a feeling about racial and religious differences which may lead in later life to intolerance and hatred toward their fellow men. All these tendencies toward thinking and acting in certain ways, which are called habitual, are the outgrowth of training and experience. They are not inherited. We begin to form habits at birth and go on through life, forming them quickly and easily in youth ana more slowly and with difficulty as the .

years advance. The oftener the act is repeated or the thought is indulged in the more lasting the habit becomes. A young child has certain characteristics that make the acquiring of new habits easy. For one thing, he is sug gestible; that is, he accepts without reasoning about it anything which comes from a person he looks up to. “My father said so” or “My mother did it” makes a thing absolutely right for a little child. Again, a child naturally tends to imitate the words, actions and attitudes of the people round him, and this makes it of the greatest importance that older people furnish him the kind of models they want to have copied. Furthermore, a child wants to please those he loves and wants them to say so. At first it is only his parents or some one in the immediate family whose good opinion he wants. Then it is the kindergarten or school teacher. Finally, at nine or ten, the praise or blame of his playmates concerns him more than anything else. This attitude of concern regarding what other people think is a force that parents may use in developing right conduct. Ha rely is a child found who does not care for the approval of some one, and training should make a child realise that it is to his advantage to win approbation for desirable acts. Praise for unselfishness, kindness and general consideration for others tends to perpetuate that type of conduct. Some parents play upon a child’s natural sympathy for others until it becomes like a worn-out elastic band which has been till it is useless. “Don’t make a noise; mother’s head aches,’’ may make a child sorry for mother at first, but if it interfere? with every bit of happy play he has he soon learns to be hard-hearted about it. On the other hand, real sympathy for others, which is one of the finest qualities of personality, may be developed by training and form the basis of a habit of kindness understanding which will last throughout life. A child has a mental life far more delicate and complex than his physical body, far more difficult to keep in order and much more easily put out of adjustment. A child lives a real mental life, full of hopes, ambitions, doubts, misgivings, joys, sorrows and strivings that are being gratified or thwarted much tho same at three years of age as they will be at 30. The home is tho workshop in which the character and personality of this individual are being molded for tho formation of habit? >nto the person he will be in adult life.

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