PSYCHOLOGICAL LAWS REGARDING HEALTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22053, 8 September 1933, Page 6

PSYCHOLOGICAL LAWS REGARDING HEALTH

4B*Child training nnd the part played by ■women in the world were the subjects dealt with by Br Elsie M. Port in her lecture at the Y.W.C.A. Inst night. It was an age of women's emancipation, said Dr Port, for never before had women taken such a place in the world's doings as at present. There were women in Parliament, nnd all the great professions had women representatives. Womanhood represented the creative principle in all its wonder and beauty and the average girl to-day was far mom healthy and beautiful than the girl of the past. She possessed a wider and more tolerant outlook on life and n mental capacity unknown to women in former dnys, while she was slowly developing those spiritual qualities so necessary in the mothers of coming generations. Speaking of child life, Dr Port; stated that most mothers did not understand the psychology of the child. When asked by their children questions pertaining to matters of sex, most parents either answered with a direct lie or side-tracked the question. It was a duty of every mother to explain to her children the facts of Nature's methods of reproduction by taking examples from the vegetable nnd animal worlds. It was the training of the child that made it good or bad, continued Dr Port, and it was to be remembered that the use of force set: up antagonism. The mind of a child was very sensitive nnd often an ill-spoken word affected its whole life. Mothers sometimes told their children to do as they were directed, but set a bad example by their own wrong ways of living. The free public lectures will be continued until September 11.