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THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY 
 CHILD 
 
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 BOOKS ON WOMAN. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT WOMAN. Third edition 
 in England ; Sixth edition in America. 
 
 THE POSITION OF WOMAN IN PRIMITIVE 
 SOCIETY. ( American Title, " The Age of Mother- 
 Power.") 
 
 MOTHERHOOD AND THE ^RELATIONSHIP 
 
 OF THE SEXES. 
 
 WOMEN'S WILD OATS. Fourth edition. 
 SEX EDUCATION & NATIONAL HEALTH. 
 DIVORCE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW. 
 
 BOOKS ON ART. 
 
 A RECORD OF SPANISH PAINTING. 
 VELASQUEZ^ 
 EL GRECO > Spanish Series. 
 THE PR ADO J 
 PICTURES IN THE TATE GALLERY. 
 
 BOOKS ON SPAIN. 
 MOORISH CITIES IN SPAIN. 
 THINGS SEEN IN^SPAIN. 
 SPAIN REVISITED. 
 CATHEDRALS OF iSOUTHERN ;SPAIN. 
 
 N or ELS. 
 
 LIFE THE MODELLER. 
 THE WEAVER'S SHUTTLE. 
 
 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 STORIES OF BRITISH HEROES. 
 STORIES FROM THE GREEK LEGENDS. 
 CHILDREN OF THE EMPIRE. (In collaboration 
 with ARTHUR D. LEWIS.) 
 
THE MIND 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. GASQUOINE HARTLEY 
 
 A. M. PHILPOT, LTD. 
 69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, w.c.i. 
 
G-3 
 
 [Copyright] 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W. JOLLY AND SONS, LTD. 
 ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 1'AGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY . . . . .9 
 
 II. THE BUMPTIOUS, BOASTFUL AND VIOLENT- 
 TEMPERED CHILD . . .19 
 
 III. THE SULKY CHILD . . . .27 
 
 IV. THE JEALOUS CHILD . . . .35 
 V. THE DESTRUCTIVE CHILD . . .53 
 
 VI. THE INQUISITIVE CHILD . . .60 
 
 VII. THE THIEVING CHILD . . .68 
 
 VIII. THE LYING CHILD . . . .73 
 
 IX. CONCLUDING REMARKS . . .84 
 
 
The Mind of the Naughty 
 Child 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 ARE you puzzled about your child ? 
 
 All parents with any intelligence are puzzled 
 at times. Their child acts in ways they cannot 
 understand, is naughty without reason, does 
 those things which he ought not to do and 
 leaves undone those things which he ought 
 to do. Parents peer anxiously back into 
 their own childhood for some explanatory 
 remembrance of the child mind. But because 
 they have forgotten, and because of the gulf 
 fixed between the generations, very rarely 
 are they able to comprehend the motives 
 that direct the conduct of children. 
 
 The child and the adult are always 
 strangers. 
 
 There is no greater mistake than this ; 
 that it is easy for the parents to understand 
 their children. Some parents adopt the easy 
 
10 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 solution of leaving a child to itself, and, indeed, 
 this is not by any means the most dangerous 
 of treatments, if only the parent has a natural 
 tenderness for the child. The careless but 
 affectionate parent is not the worst kind of 
 parent. And there is, strange as this may 
 seem to those who have not thought about it, 
 more danger in over-anxious interference than 
 there is in loving neglect. 
 
 Most parents, however, are faced with some 
 definite trouble and few mothers, at any rate, 
 are able to leave their children alone. They 
 are too anxious about the development of 
 the character of the child. Their children 
 are sulky, fall into unexpected tempers, are 
 disobedient ; they retire from other children's 
 company and mope ; they are backward at 
 school and do not develop in the right way. 
 At other times the children are jealous, angry 
 when brothers and sisters are praised, or when 
 father occupies the attention of mother so that 
 they feel little and left out ; or again a child 
 becomes destructive or is constantly peering 
 into drawers and cupboards, while another child 
 is contradictory and cocksure in the extreme. 
 
 Worse than these more common faults 
 (and here the ordinary parent is "greatly 
 alarmed, and yet such cases are not unusual) 
 one of the children, with no apparent cause, 
 begins to take what is not his property, he 
 will rifle cupboards of cake and jam, take 
 sweets and playthings from his companions 
 
INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 and hide them, and will even steal money if 
 he can find it and do so without being* found 
 out. Other children persist in telling lies or 
 inventing romantic adventures in which they 
 always play the hero's part. No scolding 
 or punishment seems to break this bad habit ; 
 the child may show sorrow and even shame 
 just when he is convicted of an untruth, but 
 very soon he does the same thing again. 
 
 Help can be given to the parents of such 
 children. The help will be plain and practical 
 in character. At the same time it must be 
 understood that the immediate action com- 
 plained of in the child the fault that is 
 troubling the parent, making the child 
 naughty is really a sign, and must always 
 be so regarded, of a hidden trouble. The 
 child who steals, steals neither solely because 
 he wants what he takes nor because he was 
 born dishonest. The child who lies does not 
 do so because he gives way to the human 
 tendency to lie. It is useless merely to scold 
 or punish children for being sulky, jealous, 
 destructive, prying or cocksure. The symp- 
 toms of a deeper evil cannot, with any 
 profit, be dealt with apart from their causes. 
 
 Always you must ask yourself why your 
 child does this or that? What is the 
 concealed motive that impels his conduct ? 
 Unless you can answer this question (and to 
 find the answer is never easy and in every 
 case calls for knowledge and great patience) 
 
12 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 you are as unable to help your child as a 
 doctor would be who started to treat a patient 
 without any examination as to the nature of 
 his disease. 
 
 There can be no quack remedies in dealing 
 with children. 
 
 The good that this book will do for any 
 parent troubled with these kinds of slight 
 childish malformation of character, is precisely 
 this : it will show the deep causes on which 
 such faults are based. Unless the cause is 
 discovered the evil not only cannot be cured 
 but it will grow ; and this is true, even 
 when the specific fault which is the visible 
 manifestation, is checked ; the evil, apparently 
 got rid of, is active still, and later will break 
 out in another and often worse form. The 
 sulkiness, jealousy, thieving, lying, are like 
 bubbles that rise from the depths. From 
 time to time a bubble rises and bursts. What 
 is the wound in the inner being that sets free 
 from time to time the poisonous gas that goes 
 up in a bubble ? That is the question that has 
 to be answered. Once the cause is known it 
 can be dealt with, it can to some degree be 
 made known to the child himself, and he can 
 himself help in his own cure. 
 
 I shall deal separately with various kinds 
 of undesirable childish behaviour. First, 
 however, a few words must be said as to 
 the special difficulties which any child has 
 to face. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 18 
 
 Few parents, I think, understand sufficiently 
 how very hard are the efforts the child has to 
 make to grow up. It is not easy for the child 
 to be good ; to do what you want and leave 
 off doing what he wants to do himself. The 
 child lives in an adult world in which every- 
 thing is arranged by grown-ups of whose ways 
 and desires he has very little understanding 
 and often a very great dislike. He is exactly 
 in the same position as a traveller in a strange 
 land, where he does not know the customs of 
 the people or speak their language. 
 
 We like to think of childhood as a delightful 
 period of happy innocence. 
 
 But the very reverse is the truth. The 
 child has brought with it much from more 
 primitive times ; just in the same way as its 
 body shows traces of earlier development in 
 life, so its emotions, its wishes and its conduct 
 revert back in many particulars to lower stages 
 of growth. Always the child has to fight its 
 way up and, indeed, it has no easy task to find 
 and keep the right path in its way of discovery 
 from the savagery of the babe to the level of a 
 civilised social man or woman. If we do not 
 help it in every possible way, the task becomes 
 doubly hard and often the path is lost or, in 
 other words, the savage triumphs. 
 
 Every effort must be made to educate from 
 the very hour of birth those primitive instincts 
 and behaviour which, though permissible and 
 right in the little child, are wholly wrong if 
 
14 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 allowed to remain active so that they persist 
 in the later adult years. Delay is fatal. 
 Time lost now can never be regained ; 
 mistakes cannot be put right. A wrong 
 direction may most easily be given even by 
 a careless act. 
 
 I cannot emphasise this too strongly and 
 too soon. The fate of every child is decided 
 in the nursery. 
 
 And this brings me to the second fact I 
 wish to bring forward ; the almost terrible 
 dependence of the child on its parents, and 
 especially on the mother, who at first occupies 
 all the child's life. The importance of the 
 mother's influence cannot possibly be ex- 
 aggerated. I shall speak of this again, but 
 what I wish above all to emphasise now is 
 the persistence of this influence the deeply 
 stamped mother-picture started in this first 
 chapter of life. 
 
 As the child gradually realises its world, it 
 learns its own limitations, sees itself dependent 
 on others. Everything it wants it must 
 receive. Very soon it learns to adapt itself 
 to gaining what it wants. 
 
 And here I reach a further fact that is of 
 the very greatest importance. The child at 
 a very early age has to become an actor. 
 So many parents, and especially good parents, 
 expect too much from their children. Judge 
 them too frequently by a grown up standard 
 quite wrong for their stage of growth. Expect 
 
INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 them to be too clean, too quiet, too obedient. 
 This causes very often a continuous and most 
 harmful nervous strain from the child pre- 
 tending to be what you want and think he 
 ought to be. He tries, at a cost you do not 
 easily understand, to like what you think he 
 ought to like. 
 
 It has filled me often with wonder and 
 admiration to see the really brilliant way in 
 which even the youngest children play up to 
 the good-child part forced upon them by 
 grown-ups. Much naughtiness and many 
 violent unexplained tempers are really a 
 breakdown in this part. The right cue is 
 forgotten at the right moment, or the 
 correct entrance is missed ; and I feel it 
 very necessary to urge upon every parent to 
 remember the very simple truth that their 
 child is a child, and never ought to be ex- 
 pected, or indeed, allowed to have the 
 controlled emotions and to act in the re- 
 gulated way right for the adult. It is here, 
 as I suggested before, that the careless loving 
 parent has advantages from the child's point 
 of view. The over-conscientious, over-good 
 mother so often demands too much, and by 
 so doing frequently does harm to the child, 
 which afterwards never can be undone. 
 
 There is another danger that only the wisest 
 mothers quite escape in the very natural desire 
 to keep their children too closely bound by 
 their love, for the child has two contradictory 
 
16 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 impulses. It would remain in comfort and 
 safety in the mother's arms. All children go 
 back in trouble to the mother, but the 
 healthy child would also like to be bold, to 
 do things by itself, to be brave, clever and 
 admired. Never can it achieve this good 
 for itself if it is too much looked after, too 
 much loved in an unwise way. 
 
 Many mothers hinder their children by 
 seeking to possess them too much and for too 
 long. 
 
 It is a good thing that the English parent 
 encourages the child to be independent, to 
 climb trees, to go out by himself, to fall into 
 the brook. The poor child here has an ad- 
 vantage over the rich child. The neatly 
 gloved child that always walks quietly down 
 the pavements with its nurse, bored and dull, 
 will not become resourceful in the emergencies 
 of adult life. 
 
 Children who do exactly what they are told 
 and are told exactly what to do throughout the 
 day are without the needful opportunity for self- 
 expression, and after a time they come, as a 
 rule, to enjoy the pleasure of resting on their 
 parents. Without any responsibilities they 
 grow up incapable of exercising responsibility. 
 The too exacting mother perpetuates the child- 
 hood of her son. 
 
 These children will not make themselves a 
 nuisance by disobedience and falling into 
 mischief, indeed, they may be the very 
 
INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 pattern of " mother's good child"; yet I 
 must insist upon the danger of this depend- 
 ence ; there is no condition of childhood so 
 harmful, so likely to bring irremediable injury 
 to the character. Such children retire into 
 themselves, find over-great pleasure in solitary 
 satisfactions, they go back to the primitive 
 stage of self-communing joys derived from 
 what they receive, as when they sucked at 
 their mother's breast. This is a very 
 dangerous state of affairs. Such children 
 must be made to join in play and work with 
 other children ; they should not be allowed to 
 be much with their mother or with any adult ; 
 they need to be encouraged to decide things 
 and live in the real world and not in a dream 
 world. 
 
 There is one thing more. It must be 
 known that the wise directing of the funda- 
 mental emotional impulses, which will in later 
 life develop into the adult sexual impulses, is 
 the most important duty of the parent and is 
 the root basis of character. No parent can 
 neglect these primitive instincts. How they 
 are directed and how they gain their earliest 
 expression in relation to the mother, the father, 
 the brothers and the sisters and all who come 
 within the child's circle of the home, will 
 provide the main framework of the structure 
 of the child's character, a structure never to 
 be altered, however much later circumstances 
 may change the decorations and rebuild the 
 
18 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 features of lesser importance. In particular 
 the peculiarities and mal-adaptation of the 
 adult sex-life are due to the first germs of 
 the sex attitude, expressed in the earliest 
 years by the relationships in the home. The 
 entire after love-life is dependent on these first 
 formative years. 
 
 This doctrine is not easy or popular, and 
 often is misunderstood, but the more it is 
 studied and comprehended in its real meaning, 
 the more certain its truth will appear. 
 
 These preliminaries having been explained 
 we will examine one by one the most common 
 types of troublesome and difficult children. 
 
II 
 
 THE BUMPTIOUS, BOASTFUL AND VIOLENT 
 TEMPERED CHILD 
 
 EVERY child suffers sometimes from a feeling 
 of inferiority. He is so much smaller and 
 weaker than the grown-ups who control his 
 play and his work that he feels uncomfortably 
 helpless against their authority, which to him 
 seems often to be exercised in an arbitrary and 
 unkind way. 
 
 It is then that he becomes naughty ; for 
 the very easiest way to command the attention 
 of his mother and the other adults who are 
 with him is by making a disturbance being 
 bumptious, argumentative, violent tempered. 
 Good, he is left alone ; the grown-ups go on 
 with their occupation ; he feels neglected, at 
 most he is mildly praised. " Johnny is a nice 
 quiet boy to-day." 
 
 But this is very different from the attention 
 he commands when he is naughty. He defies 
 authority, contradicts, rudely asserts his own 
 opinions. For a short time he becomes a 
 despot, ruling the grown-ups who usually rule 
 
20 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 him. His sensation of power is intensely en- 
 joyable, and the more disturbance he makes 
 in the nursery life the deeper is his satisfaction. 
 Of course he is sorry afterwards, but his 
 sorrow is not for the first period of successful 
 rebellion, but for the afterwards when his 
 power fails. 
 
 Now it is very important for mothers to 
 understand this. The real problem is to 
 minimise as much as possible the chilcfs en- 
 joyment of naughtiness. 
 
 Any unwisdom on the mother's part, such 
 as her being too emotionally concerned, in- 
 dulging in nagging or violent anger, may have 
 very serious results. Inevitably the child feels, 
 as he sees his mother's tears and want of 
 control, " I have caused this." Instead of 
 being weak he is the master of his mother. 
 That is why usually he is good after he has 
 been naughty. 
 
 But this kind of behaviour is disastrous to 
 the child's character. 
 
 Let me tell you rather a striking story to 
 illustrate this kind of nursery conduct. A 
 young boy, who had been very rude and 
 rebellious was sent to bed. His mother, 
 greatly troubled, went some hours later to 
 his room. He was kneeling praying. She 
 thought he was asking God to forgive him. 
 But this was what she heard : " Please, dear 
 God, forgive my bad mummy for being so 
 unkind to poor little Freddy." 
 
THE BUMPTIOUS, BOASTFUL CHILD 21 
 
 The boy grew up in the most unfortunate 
 way. I cannot give the details and there 
 were, of course, several causes. Yet certainly 
 his character suffered the first wrong in -the 
 nursery from an unwise emphasising by his 
 mother of his own importance. 
 
 The self-assertive, naughty child is always 
 the child over-occupied with thoughts of him- 
 self, and his feelings are unhealthily important 
 to him, just because he 'finds himself for some 
 cause at a disadvantage. And what I wish 
 to insist upon is this a feeling of inferiority 
 may be painfully fixed in a child and distort 
 the character permanently. 
 
 Parents, unconsciously, but very foolishly, 
 emphasise their children's inferiority ; they 
 speak of their weakness, tell them they are too 
 little to do this or that, never realising the 
 danger of what they are doing. But the 
 matter is usually more complicated than this. 
 For the inferiority-feeling may be, and often 
 is, induced by some cause which to the parents' 
 (or to other ordinary observers') eyes should 
 not induce such a feeling. The child may 
 be less active than others, not so clever, or 
 so good at games, less attractive than its 
 brothers and sisters. Here are a few very 
 obvious causes which start the little one on 
 its backward path. We all know that the 
 child sees life through a microscope ; incidents 
 that seem trivial to the grown-ups are to the 
 children permanent sources of discouragement. 
 
22 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 How much more will inferiority be felt if 
 the unfortunate child, through some parental 
 carelessness or unfortunate circumstances, is 
 generally exposed to the sword of contempt, 
 for which it has no adequate defence. If he is 
 shabby, of an inferior class to his associates, 
 ugly and nervous, dull in school, bad at games, 
 of different tastes from other children an out- 
 cast ; his father a dancing-master or a tailor, a 
 Jew or foreigner, or in any way peculiar, 
 not like the fathers of other children that 
 children feel such things acutely is shown by 
 the readiness with which they boast of their 
 possessions and their father's possessions, of 
 their homes or connections, of the famous 
 deeds and great events connected with their 
 families if there are none they make them 
 up ; they must have something that will give 
 them a position of importance in their own 
 world. 
 
 Children are snobs. Parents should do all 
 they can to equalise the position of their 
 children with that of the other children they 
 meet at school and elsewhere. They must 
 never emphasise the class distinctions of 
 adults. Great care ought to be taken in 
 avoiding differences in dress a shabby hat, 
 a coat or frock that is grown-out-of or is 
 over-worn may do lasting harm, out of all 
 proportion to the saving gained. Another 
 very important matter is pocket-money ; the 
 right amount should be given, neither more 
 

 THE BUMPTIOUS, BOASTFUL CHILD 28 
 
 nor less ; both boys and girls, in this respect, 
 should be in a similar position to their 
 companions. Otherwise they are very certain 
 to develop the dangerous inferiority-feeling, 
 that always lurks, like a dread shadow, behind 
 the child. 
 
 Any child that is aggressive, boastful, or 
 unnecessarily rude must be treated in such a 
 way as will increase his confidence in himself. 
 This seems contradictory, but is true. If the 
 child is snubbed and discouraged, the trouble 
 from which it suffers is sure to increase, for 
 when a group of inter-related circumstances 
 and repeated incidents have permanently in- 
 duced the feeling of self-depreciation, the child 
 drives back the devastating feelings into the 
 obscure places of the mind, the unseen office 
 of the directing forces that in secret issue the 
 supreme orders that control conduct. It is in 
 order the better to overcome the truth that 
 the child becomes agressively self-assertive, 
 practices a marked boastfulness of behaviour. 
 
 We have all seen examples of such a 
 process. The timid assume a forced cheerful 
 geniality and blunder into ill-placed familiarity 
 because they feel so little at home. The short 
 insignificant man struts and is pompous. The 
 plain girl is always more aggressive than her 
 beautiful sister. The boastful child is not 
 more boastful because he thinks too much of 
 himself but because he thinks too little has 
 insufficient self-confidence. Such children are 
 
24 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 without courage, and all their pride boils up 
 behind a timid character. 
 
 It should always be remembered that the 
 secret, unconscious sense of inferiority lies at 
 the back of most of the forms of childish 
 naughtiness with which I have to deal. When 
 the child asserts itself it attracts attention. 
 When it is sulky, jealous, destructive, lies, 
 steals, seeks to gain some advantage over 
 others, it does so as a compensation for de- 
 ficiencies, imagined or real. The supposed 
 deficiency, the attempted advantage (which, 
 for example, may consist in a cultivated power 
 to deceive) may assume strange unreasonable 
 forms. For this reason, it must be frankly 
 confessed that the task of the parents is often 
 far from easy. The sources of the inferiority- 
 feelings are diverse and complex. The parents, 
 however, can always know when these feelings 
 are starting. The child will be unable to stop 
 his secret trouble from making some escape, 
 for he will suffer too much. 
 
 No parent can safely neglect these danger 
 signs. 
 
 For this sense of inferiority, unconquered 
 and, indeed, unrecognised and unseen, lies 
 at the root of serious adult crime and vice. 
 It may lead to drink, criminal acts, excessive 
 sexuality to any form of bad conduct that 
 frees the personality from a feeling of helpless 
 subjection. 
 
 There is, however, fortunately another and 
 
THE BUMPTIOUS, BOASTFUL CHILD 25 
 
 a brighter side. Good as well as evil may 
 result from this sense of inferiority which, as 
 we have seen, is common to all children. It 
 may lead to the greatest achievements. If 
 self-assertiveness can be combined with a 
 desirable means of self-expression, then one 
 of the elements of genius is present. 
 
 The artist pays by his defects for his 
 superiority. His ego-centric character, a 
 witness to some early inferiority-feeling, finds 
 compensation that leads him to absorb every- 
 thing into the hive of his art ; he fills the 
 cells of his power to find expression in words, 
 or sounds, or paint, or steel, with all the honey 
 of experience that life offers to him. His sex 
 impulses too, often extreme or even perverted, 
 provide waste products that vitalise his poems, 
 his pictures, his prophecies, his theories and 
 his schemes. 
 
 Defeats and inabilities in childhood lead to 
 the desire for power in some form. The child 
 says, when found at fault and weak, " When I 
 grow up I shall " Thus, when I was a child 
 I was delicate and very backward, and I could 
 not learn to read. My companions laughed at 
 me, my mother apologised for me to my aunts 
 and others who compared me with their 
 children, or my much cleverer sister. I 
 suffered, but I used to say to myself, " Never 
 mind, when I grow up I shall write books 
 myself/' I am sure that I owe to this early 
 deficiency the fact that I am a writer. I 
 
26 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 think, too, it has helped me to understand 
 children. 
 
 Biographers of great men and women will 
 furnish many examples of this kind of com- 
 pensatory achievement. Demosthenes, the 
 stammerer in his youth, became the greatest 
 orator in Greece. Clara Schumann and 
 Litzmann, the accomplished musicians were 
 deaf. Leonardo da Vinci was born illegiti- 
 mately. Darwin owes to his father his early 
 interest in flowers and insects. 
 
 The advice, then, to the parents of 
 bumptious, boastful and violent-tempered 
 children is this : do all you can to give 
 the child complete self-confidence, for those 
 who are sure of themselves do not need to 
 boast and be aggressive. Encourage every 
 kind of innocent and self-determining activity, 
 so that the child may have harmless means 
 of satisfying his desire to achieve ; help him 
 to master some task that he can do well so that 
 his work may compare favourably with what is 
 done by the other children. Remember all 
 children must find satisfaction by feeling 
 powerful in some way. If you do not help 
 them to gain it in a right way, they will 
 certainly do so in a bad way. Above all be 
 most careful never to hinder or discourage, 
 never allow yourself to praise one child while 
 another child remains in the background. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SULKY CHILD 
 
 THE case of the sulky child seems simple. Its 
 symptoms are easily recognised. The cure of 
 leaving such a child alone often seems to offer 
 relief. Yet it is necessary to investigate the 
 symptoms a little further, and at once we shall 
 find the case more complicated. Without this 
 investigation, sulkiness cannot be understood. 
 
 The sulky child is solitary and complains 
 without just cause ; he complains of grievances 
 which are hardly, if at all, grievous. 
 
 But has the child no grievance ? 
 
 He does not complain of what really and 
 seriously hurts him. For he himself does not 
 fully know, any more than the average patient 
 knows, the real and deep-seated causes of the 
 disease which troubles him. 
 
 We all know how often it is thus with 
 children. They do not know, or will not say, 
 where the shoe pinches. For one thing, and 
 it is very necessary for parents to remember 
 this, they cannot express themselves in a way 
 that the grown-ups will understand. There is 
 always the haunting fear of being censured, of 
 
28 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 not being thought good. This is much more 
 terrible to children than is usually believed. 
 The child in an adult world has very much 
 the feelings we should have if we were 
 translated, just as we are, into heaven and 
 had to explain ourselves to our God. We 
 should fear to tell much of what we know 
 about ourselves ; unconsciously and inevitably 
 we should try to make out a good case. The 
 ordinary parent does partly know this and very 
 commonly attributes naughtiness to some 
 physical cause. " Tommy is irritable of an 
 evening because he is very active and too 
 strong," says one mother. " Janet is very 
 difficult because she feels the heat," observes 
 another mother. " We found out that Harry 
 was dull and moping and not getting on at 
 school because his digestion was out of order," 
 is the observation of a third mother. 
 
 But note this ; it may well be the other way 
 round. Tommy may be too active and not 
 strong because he is irritable. Janet may be 
 unable to resist the heat because she is 
 difficult, while Harry's digestion is certainly 
 dependent on his dullness and moping. You 
 will see what I mean. The child is not 
 naughty because it is ill, rather it is ill 
 because it is naughty. 
 
 What the parent has to do is to find out 
 why the child is ill. The physical symptoms 
 are, in nine cases out of ten, a sign of some 
 conflict that is hidden. 
 
THE SULKY CHILD 29 
 
 Of course, the child is quite unaware of this 
 conflict and it would be worse than useless to 
 question him. If he thinks consciously about 
 the matter at all, he will accept the adult 
 explanation of physical troubles as the root 
 cause from which spring the irritability and 
 the sulkiness that are making him so unhappy. 
 
 Could the child speak he would, I think, 
 know better than the parents what it is that 
 is wrong. For the real, most frequent causes 
 of sulkiness are indeed difficult for parents to 
 see. They do not see them because they do 
 not want to see them. It is they themselves 
 who are at fault ; they jar on the child. Their 
 own conduct makes the home suit the child 
 badly. The unhappy child feels within itself 
 a dreadful conflict. Tongue-tied with authority 
 and with love, the child desires rebelliously to 
 criticise the parents to be himself. He wishes 
 to judge for himself and to try for himself, to 
 do what he wants and to give up pretending 
 that he wants to do what his parents want. 
 
 I have spoken before of the immense strain 
 on the child in continuously keeping up the 
 actor's role. Often there is a reaction, which 
 if it does not find relief in some act of ag- 
 gressive naughtiness, must cause a nervous 
 condition of which sulkiness, as well as certain 
 physical ailments, are the common signs. It 
 is then that the children judge the parents. 
 Within their young souls the majesty of 
 revered and loved parenthood conflicts with 
 
30 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 the awakened desire to be themselves. They 
 want to fix right and wrong more in accord 
 with their unformed and undisciplined desires ; 
 in a word, to become independent of adult 
 control. Inevitably the easiest way to prove 
 themselves right is to think the parents wrong. 
 Yet the boy and the girl would like to respect 
 the parents on whom they do feel themselves 
 dependent, in spite of the lapses into rebellion, 
 and to whom they go for help in trouble and 
 not in vain. It is here that the conflict arises, 
 and the trouble is greatly intensified by the 
 careless behaviour of parents ; for many 
 parents are found untruthful by their children 
 or at any rate uncandid. They are weak, they 
 threaten, they make stupid mistakes and will 
 not own up, they are unjust, they are shabby. 
 The children, too often have to struggle to 
 respect parents whom they cannot but blame. 
 The child is like a flower, and the banks 
 where it grows are its world its home and the 
 school and the friends with whom it comes in 
 contact ; the sky above is the parents to 
 whom it looks up as the flower to the sun 
 for gladness and for life. What I mean is 
 this, the child has desires and impulses of its 
 own, but it reflects the changing moods and 
 atmosphere and the small world in which it 
 lives and is terribly dependent on its parents. 
 It is forming and selecting a character. It 
 very largely tries what the effect is of different 
 kinds of conduct, different characters. The 
 
THE SULKY CHILD 31 
 
 child does not itself know what it is or would 
 wish to be. Whenever there is, as often there 
 must be, a mistake made a clash of two 
 opposing desires a conflict inevitably occurs, 
 and must find some quick expression in childish 
 naughtiness, otherwise dullness and unhappiness 
 will arise, and you have the dangerous condition 
 of the sulky child. 
 
 I would venture to ask parents to consider 
 this metaphor of the flower more closely. The 
 child wants to suit itself to its world, to be at 
 home in its world. Its undeveloped, uncertain 
 surface reflects, therefore, as well as it can, 
 both the sky above and the banks on either 
 side. If there are deep disharmonies between 
 the two, very different standards of conduct, 
 clashing opinions, opposed desires at home 
 and at school and in the world outside, the 
 child, too, will be disharmonious. 
 
 Again there may be disharmonies in the 
 home itself. The sunny sky of married life 
 may have its blue surface spotted with clouds. 
 The child may find (and no one finds these 
 troubles out as quickly as children) that all is 
 not as it should be, or as it appears to be, in 
 the atmosphere of its home. The father and 
 the mother are not truly mated, they do not 
 think and feel alike and, if this is so, they will 
 not deceive the child however carefully they 
 act and speak to do this. The child must 
 suffer. In the depths behind the bright pearly 
 net of pleasant feeling which the parents cast 
 
32 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 over each other, there is a greyish depressing 
 and drifting cloud, an ever-present discord and 
 remembered grievances between them. These 
 the child will feel. As the sea reflects the sky, 
 so is the child's sulkiness received from the 
 atmosphere of the adult life about it. 
 
 Or it may not be a case of mere reflection ; 
 the disharmony that causes the sulkiness may 
 be due to direct action on the part of the 
 parents in some failure to understand the child. 
 We all know the interfering parent who rains 
 down pin-pricking spots, in unwise and too 
 great carefulness as well as in scolding and 
 irritability ; the cause does not matter, but 
 these spots, if continuous, will mark the whole 
 surface of the child's life. 
 
 It is wise to help the child to form good 
 habits. Do so while the child is young 
 and does not resent instruction. But if the 
 child has grown older with some bad habits, 
 it is better to leave them uncorrected, than to 
 ruin the character of the child, while correcting 
 comparatively trivial errors. Better let him 
 dirty the carpets with muddy boots, leave his 
 clothes lying about, be unpunctual, than to 
 grow up sullen, complaining, unable to meet 
 the world amicably and in trust. After all the 
 parent need not trouble, strength of character 
 will enable the child later to correct any fault 
 when he comes himself to feel the need for 
 correction. But if the character has been hurt 
 (and this is, alas ! a very easy thing to do to 
 
THE SULKY CHILD 33 
 
 any child) he will for ever be maimed, no 
 matter what after-mending may take place ; 
 a weakness will be left so that there will be 
 greater danger of shipwreck in any hour of 
 strain, at any time of moral difficulty. 
 
 Or lastly, (and I may add that of all causes 
 this is the commonest), the child's sulkiness 
 may be due to the fact that the clear 
 waters of childhood have been polluted with 
 feelings of inferiority or of jealousy, so that 
 everything that is reflected in the character is 
 coloured with the falsehood of prejudiced 
 emotions. Of this I have written in other 
 chapters of this book, earlier and later. Remove 
 the child's jealousy, relieve the devastating 
 sense of inferiority, which causes him to feel 
 like the youngest son in the fairy tale, always 
 rather more stupid, more clumsy, and tongue- 
 tied than the rest, and the sulkiness will surely 
 depart of itself. 
 
 In conclusion, I must again emphasise the 
 seriousness of this fault. The sulkiness of 
 children, if recurrent, is never unimportant. 
 It marks some hidden mental suffering. Even 
 if these symptoms disappear under happier 
 treatment, there is still need for care. The 
 child's character must be strengthened, and, as 
 far as is possible, rebuilt ; the child must be re- 
 educated to have confidence in himself and to 
 trust others. This is not going to be easy. Never 
 must it be forgotten by the parents thattheir child 
 has been hurt yes, literally maimed by them or 
 
34 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 through their carelessness. Most necessary 
 of all is it to find the hidden cause that has 
 given the wound ; and afterwards always to 
 remember it in dealing with the child ; by this 
 care alone can be prevented the development 
 of a fixed morbid attitude of mind towards the 
 world. 
 
IV 
 
 THE JEALOUS CHILD 
 
 MY difficulty in writing about the bumptious 
 child was to persuade you that behind the 
 apparent boastfulness, and unknown to the 
 child himself, lay the wound of self-depreciation ; 
 a wound induced by some contempt, acutely 
 felt some thought of lower valuation in which 
 he was valued, or to himself appeared to be 
 valued, in comparison with others. 
 
 It was the same with the sulky child ; it was 
 not the sulkiness that was important. What 
 must be found out was ; why the child was 
 sulky ? What hurt was causing him to see 
 life darkly and wrongly. 
 
 What I tried to make plain to you was that 
 what mattered was, never the visible symptoms, 
 but always the cause beneath. A cure could be 
 effected only by finding this out and making 
 it plain to the child, and satisfying his deeply 
 hidden trouble. 
 
 Both the boastful child and the sulky child 
 present to the world a print derived from a 
 negative on which by some carelessness two 
 
86 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 pictures have been taken, the one beneath 
 appearing in curious and unexpected ways 
 through the upper picture and causing the 
 most strange distortions, and thus often con- 
 veying an impression exactly opposite from 
 the real picture. 
 
 My Sifficulties in this chapter are different. 
 The jealous child, in the majority of cases, is 
 recognised as being jealous. But the ordinary 
 parent takes a light view of " childish jealousy " 
 as often it is called. This is the very gravest 
 mistake. Jealousy in children is never a 
 matter for laughter. Its action is at least as 
 serious as jealousy ever is in the character of 
 an adult. It may do the gravest harm ; it 
 inflicts the deepest pain. 
 
 This is the first fact on which I would 
 insist. 
 
 Jealousy in children is so common an 
 emotional trouble that the failure on the part of 
 most parents to recognise its importance is a 
 serious matter. Never should jealousy be 
 neglected. It will not of itself die down, as is 
 commonly believed, though it may, and usually 
 does, wear down its outward manifestations. 
 But this is not to say that it is dead. It is not. 
 It is pushed deep out of consciousness because 
 the conflict it has caused is too bitter for the 
 young child to solve. There, buried in the 
 child, unconscious, it acts in many adverse 
 ways. It [is the fertilizer of ineradicable weeds 
 of bitterness and hatred in the fair garden of 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 37 
 
 character, weeds that may take all nourishment 
 from the fairest seeds. 
 
 At a very early age jealousy of the father 
 stirs in the baby's soul. This may surprise you. 
 But I would ask you for a moment to consider 
 the baby's position. The child is in a small 
 shut-in world with its mother. At first she 
 occupies all its life. She is the earliest love- 
 object, and of supreme importance in the 
 opening infantile character. Everything starts 
 from her. She is the source of nutrition, and 
 as such the first object towards which the 
 hunger-wish is directed. She is also the 
 supplier of warmth, of comfort, of rest the 
 personification of shelter and happiness the 
 starting point of all those interests of the child 
 which lie outside its own body. 
 
 But there is another parent who comes as 
 both intruder and friend into this mother- 
 child circle. He plays with the baby, opens up 
 new and delightful ways of interest, but also he 
 talks to the mother, draws her attention from 
 the child, makes him feel left out, little, unim- 
 portant, unhappy. 
 
 It is in this way jealousy of the father begins 
 to stir in the baby soul. And this feeling will 
 increase if the baby is a boy. The love of the 
 mother may grow to great intensity, which, 
 coupled with the jealousy of the father, will 
 work the greatest evil, especially if the mother 
 is unwise, too tenderly solicitous, too possessive 
 in her love, herself neurotic. In the case of 
 
88 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 the girl the position is different The baby- 
 fixation upon the mother is, as a rule, relieved 
 with growth, as a large part of the love-fund is 
 transferred to the father. Sometimes this does 
 not happen, especially when the jealousy of the 
 girl is aroused by a brother or sister more loved 
 or praised than herself. Then, indeed, a 
 harmful mother-fixation occurs and the little 
 girl becomes too attached to the mother. 
 
 Every mother has to guard against keeping 
 her children too closely bound to herself : a too 
 possessive or undisciplined love on her part 
 may cause the greatest nervous trouble. 
 Jealousy is a destructive factor in families. I 
 feel compelled to emphasise this jealousy of the 
 father because it is so common a danger, active 
 in so many homes. Do we not see that there 
 is a kind of war in families in which the father 
 is one of the hostile forces, while the mother 
 and children are fighting against him ? 
 
 I cannot enter into the question further for it 
 is one of the greatest difficulty and impossible 
 to treat fully in the limits of this small book. I 
 am at work upon a much larger book, to be 
 called " Parents and Children/' in which the 
 difficult position will be dealt with. I hope, 
 however, that I have said enough to show how 
 almost inevitable are these jealous feelings, 
 nearly always unrecognised, between parents 
 and children. What should be remembered is 
 that the boy tends to love his mother and be 
 jealous of his father, while the tendency of the 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 39 
 
 girl is usually in the opposite direction with a 
 too fixed love for the father and jealousy of the 
 mother. In the concluding chapter I shall 
 attempt to show you the tremendous influence 
 this has on the later love-life of the boy and the 
 girl. 
 
 There are as well other causes of jealousy in 
 families, almost as common, almost as 
 dangerous. Jealous feelings are very certain 
 to be aroused at the birth of a new baby 
 brother or sister. The child, who, up to then, 
 was the centre of attention, the youngest, the 
 despotic ruler in the nursery, loses his position 
 of importance, is banished from the mother. 
 The child understands nothing. He feels 
 neglected and unimportant. He suffers all the 
 more because of the mystery with which birth 
 is usually treated. Nothing is properly 
 explained. Where has the baby come from ? 
 Why has this thing happened ? Why does his 
 mother want anyone but himself? The throne 
 is taken from him and given to the newcomer. 
 The new-born, the youngest, inherits the crown 
 of privilege. What more certain, than that an 
 emotional disturbance should be aroused in the 
 child, who is quite inexperienced and almost 
 always is left unguided by its parents to 
 struggle through the blackness of early 
 jealousy. He hates the new brother or 
 sister the usurper who has taken his place 
 with his mother. 
 
 What can be done to avoid this ? Parents 
 
40 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 should try to give the older child a place of 
 its own. Care must be taken to prevent 
 occasion for jealousy. The child must be 
 given a new world to redress the loss of the 
 old one ; again made to feel important. As 
 for example, he (or, of course, she) should 
 be asked to help the grown-ups in looking 
 after the new baby. He should be given 
 new privileges so that he will feel it is nice 
 to be older ; perhaps, a little later sitting up 
 at night, or the coming down from the nursery 
 to meals with mother and father, or something 
 to make up for the baby-joys he has lost. In 
 this way the child can be kept from jealousy 
 as well as being helped onwards on the difficult 
 forward path. 
 
 But if this is not done, if the early conflict 
 is not prevented, there may be very likely 
 persistent jealous rivalries between brothers 
 and sisters. Frequently the fault lies with the 
 parents. Children are urged to be peaceable 
 and loving. They try to be so, but always 
 there is envy and hatred, because one child 
 is cleverer, or older, more praised, or more 
 attractive than the others. The parents fail 
 to recognise and disperse these hostile feelings, 
 and the painful conflict between two opposite 
 sets of feeling the love and affection and the 
 jealous hatred, is the root of great nervous 
 strain and emotional ill-health. 
 
 In large families the middle children are 
 often neglected ; the older group and the 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 41 
 
 younger are more interesting, or sometimes 
 it is the younger children who are treated 
 as inferior, are told, " You are too little to 
 do this or that." This sets up a feeling of 
 inferiority, which expresses itself either in 
 humility and lack of effort or in assertiveness 
 and jealousy. 
 
 There should be no neglect of these early 
 conflicts, Again I must urge this upon all 
 parents. Much more could be done to guard 
 against them arising ; for instance when one 
 brother or sister is cleverer or more attractive 
 than the other, care should be taken not to 
 let them go to the same school. Especial care 
 is needed if the younger child is the more 
 successful. In a family known to me, where 
 this common-sense precaution was neglected, 
 the older, duller girl became very nervous 
 and developed St. Vitus's dance. In this way 
 she brought about her own cure by having 
 to be taken from school and do lessons at 
 home with her mother. When I talked with 
 this mother she blamed the school, said they 
 had not understood the older girl for her 
 dullness had now disappeared, and she learnt 
 easily and made quick progress. The mother 
 did not know that she was to blame, that it 
 was her habit of praising her younger child 
 which had wrought havoc in the sensitive 
 soul of the older child. 
 
 It is in such ways as this that parents 
 hinder and even destroy the lives of the 
 
42 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 children they love. What, then, is the lesson 
 we may learn ? Nothing except the old 
 knowledge of the extreme difficulties of parent- 
 hood, and the terrible need of the child for 
 understanding and help. 
 
 Possibly I can help parents further by 
 trying to make the position clearer. Jealousy 
 is so important and so common a fault in 
 children that I offer no apology for devoting 
 further space to the subject. 
 
 The symptoms of openly expressed jealousy, 
 roughly classified, are hatred, spite, malicious 
 teasing, telling disparaging tales to others, 
 vindictive acts, and causeless anger, aroused 
 on apparently trivial pretexts ; and what I 
 wish to impress on parents is this : it is better 
 when the child openly shows its feelings finds 
 relief in active hostilities for the jealousy it is 
 suffering. The child ought not, therefore, 
 to be unduly blamed, rather the cause of the 
 jealousy must be found and if possible removed. 
 Punishments and harsh treatment will but 
 drive the child into silence, dissimulation and 
 most painful self-accusation. The inevitable 
 result, as I have said already, will be an 
 emotional conflict, probably too painful for 
 the child to bear. 
 
 When this has happened relief will be 
 found (for it must never be forgotten that 
 wherever there is a conflict there must be a 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 43 
 
 breaking of the tension in some way) in 
 indirect expression. 
 
 A few of the more frequent forms may be 
 given. Whenever a child has night-terrors, 
 calls for its mother, will not sleep alone, it 
 is suffering from jealousy, usually jealousy of 
 the father. This night-naughtiness is a very 
 simple device on the child's part to gain for 
 himself (or herself) the attention of the mother. 
 As the child grows older resistance in school 
 against the authority of the teacher is another 
 sign of early jealous rebellion against the 
 father. This is the reason why boys are so 
 much more often in rebellion at school than 
 girls. They are finding expression for a 
 conflict which was not got rid of in the 
 nursery. 
 
 There are many things that appear to us as 
 simple, when in reality the cause is complex, 
 dating far back to some early emotional trouble, 
 which ought to have been prevented, and could 
 have been prevented, if the parents had had 
 sufficient knowledge to detect and deal with the 
 trouble when it arose. 
 
 I w r ould strongly urge the importance of 
 parents giving greater attention to the spon- 
 taneous utterances and acts of their children. 
 It is these that will give the clue as to what 
 is troubling the child at any particular time. 
 Direct questioning, as a rule, is quite useless. 
 Children cannot be open to adults. But if the 
 parent has intelligence and some knowledge, 
 
44 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 and will wait with patience and watch, the 
 child will almost certainly give itself away and 
 the parent will find the guiding clue. 
 
 Care should always be taken to note any 
 dreams the children may have and tell you 
 about. If they do not talk of their dreams, 
 they should be encouraged to do so. Dreams 
 are exceedingly important. For in his dreams 
 the child expresses, though usually in a dis- 
 guised form, the hidden wishes that cannot find 
 an expression in the waking life. 
 
 A boy of nine had a dream which he told 
 his parents. His mother was in a shop, and a 
 man on a bicycle, dressed as an officer, came 
 along the road ; he, the little boy, rushed to 
 the bicycle, stopped it, flung the man off and 
 killed him. In telling the dream the boy said, 
 " I prevented him getting to mother/' This 
 dream is so clear that I need not wait to in- 
 terpret, beyond saying that the father of the 
 boy was an officer and that he rode a bicycle. 
 It will cause no surprise to anyone, with even 
 a rudimentary knowledge of the emotional 
 troubles of childhood, to know that this boy 
 has developed very serious nervous symptoms. 
 
 It is, unfortunately, very common for the 
 original childish jealousy, and particularly if 
 directed against the father, to re-appear at any 
 period of the later years of childhood and 
 during adolescence. And this hostility is 
 likely to be greatly increased if the father 
 acts unwisely and himself shows an hostility 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 45 
 
 he will not acknowledge, in too great harshness 
 and failure in understanding his son. This 
 drives the boy back to his mother, the two 
 are joined against the father, always a situ- 
 ation of the very greatest peril for the child's 
 emotional health. 
 
 Inevitably difficulties arise wherever there is 
 any unhappiness in the home, any disharmony 
 between the father and the mother. Another 
 less usual, but terribly serious cause of jealousy 
 arises if one of the parents has married again 
 and the children are, therefore, living with 
 a step-father or mother. 
 
 There is in my opinion always hostility in 
 these cases of changed parents, and I repeat 
 this hostility does least permanent harm when 
 it is openly shown, for then it finds relief in 
 action. If this is not done there is certain to 
 be trouble of some kind. 
 
 The trouble sometimes may be lessened, or 
 even got rid of, if a fortunate chance provides 
 an opportunity by which the pent-up jealous 
 feelings may be tranferred to someone else ; 
 that is, to some person to whom the child feels 
 no special obligations of respect or gratitude. 
 
 The idea of ''transferring" a feeling may be 
 a little strange to you. Yet everyone knows 
 that if you are angry with someone and dare 
 not show your hostile feelings, you are 
 liable to be angry with little cause as soon as 
 you are at home with those familiar to you. 
 The boy who is afraid of his father is likely 
 
46 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 to be a bully ; he takes what he has suffered 
 out of those weaker than himself. And it is 
 the same process with the suppressed jealous 
 feelings. They fortunately find an escape in 
 indirect and comparatively harmless channels. 
 
 I have known a boy who was very jealous of 
 his father. He was also too much attached to 
 his mother, being in that most unfortunate 
 position of an only child. As a consequence 
 he suffered terribly from jealous feelings. At 
 the same time he was fond of his father who 
 always had been kind to him. The boy was 
 thus torn and thrown from one mood to the 
 other so that he could not control or compre- 
 hend his own feelings. In this way a conflict 
 was aroused between love and jealous hatred, 
 and very serious nervous symptoms developed. 
 The poor boy became morose and sulky. He 
 failed at school, had to be put down into a 
 lower class, was generally retrogressive and 
 unhappy. 
 
 His recovery was curious and came un- 
 sought. One summer holiday a school friend, 
 younger than himself, came to spend some 
 weeks with him. The boy was of course a 
 stranger in the house, but, being affectionate 
 and quick to respond to friendliness, was soon 
 on the lap of his friend's mother. From that 
 moment the son was furious with him and 
 entirely unable to control his rage. So violent, 
 indeed, did his resentment become that the two 
 boys had to be kept apart and very shortly the 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 47 
 
 young visitor was sent home. But to the sur- 
 prise of everyone the boy who was left grew 
 better. These outbursts against his friend had 
 relieved the violence of his jealousy to his 
 father. The conflict-creating feelings had 
 been dissipated by finding an object on which 
 they could openly, and without deep remorse, 
 be vented. 
 
 This case is so curious and so instructive 
 that I would ask you specially to consider it. 
 The parents of this boy were greatly distressed 
 at his behaviour ; they regarded his unkindness 
 to his little friend and violent outbursts of 
 temper with the deepest concern. But here 
 they were wrong. The rage was violent 
 because for so long it had been repressed, and 
 its escape now was a sign of health, an effort 
 the boy was making to rid himself of an un- 
 bearable hidden trouble. 
 
 Jealousy may find many ways of reconciling 
 its feelings with the demands made by the 
 conscience demands imposed on us by the 
 society in which we live. The child must not 
 hate its mother or its father ; but if they 
 prefer one of the other children, then a situation 
 will arise in which the jealous feeling must find 
 some relief in expression. I know a family 
 where the son was better loved than the 
 daughter. The daughter loved her mother 
 exceedingly and could not endure the situation. 
 To ease it she began, when about ten years old, 
 to console herself with a day-dream. It could 
 
 
48 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 not be that her dear mother, her real mother, 
 cared less for her than for her younger brother. 
 The girl found comfort for herself in imagining 
 a very common story : she was not living 
 with her true mother, but had another real 
 mother all to herself. And she would in the 
 future show her real mother how good and 
 clever she was, outshining her brother. As 
 this fantasy continued she became ill with 
 grave nervous symptoms which developed into 
 a severe attack of chorea (St. Vitus's dance). 
 
 This disastrous life of self-centred, intense 
 imagination seems largely to have ruined her 
 later existence. It disturbed her power of 
 normal love, fixing her desire on the ideal 
 rather than the real person. Just in the same 
 way as she rejected her mother and loved a 
 make-believe mother, so now the image of an 
 unknown, constructed substitute came between 
 her and any lover, so that she found no satis- 
 faction in mating. Being attractive, she has 
 been admired by many men and has been 
 engaged more than once, but in each case, 
 the lover has been discarded for no adequate 
 reason. She behaves in all love affairs with a 
 capricious unkindness, very difficult to pardon, 
 if one did not understand. 
 
 (All day-dreaming the loving of imaginary 
 persons to compensate for the actual or 
 supposed unkindness of the existing parents 
 or friends, or thinking of deeds to be done and 
 success to be achieved by magic, as it were, 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 49 
 
 and not by effort is exceedingly harmful for 
 children. It turns them away from reality and 
 confuses their power for effort in reasonable 
 action. This important question will be dealt 
 with in a later chapter when we consider the 
 bad habit of telling lies). 
 
 In these two cases I have given, the jealousy 
 felt by the boy to the father and by the girl to 
 the mother, both found relief, the one by the 
 transference of the jealous feelings, the other by 
 the much more dangerous ways of make-believe 
 and day-dreams. 
 
 But suppose no free expression for such 
 strong feelings is permitted. The boy and the 
 girl know it to be wrong to hate their father 
 or mother who have always been good 
 and considerate to them. Everyone tells them 
 it is wicked to show hatred of their parents. 
 They cannot understand the reason of their 
 own wickedness, so they refuse to face or 
 acknowledge the jealousy that they ought not 
 to have, pretend it does not exist, push the hated 
 feeling away. But these feelings do not really 
 disappear. In a hidden world they suck the 
 vitality of the young character, cramp the 
 roots of the forces of life. It is as a house 
 divided against itself and one, moreover, in 
 which the very head of the house, the one who 
 should guide and inspire, languishes dull and 
 tired. Then the trouble becomes too great to 
 be borne. The secret conflict and the disorder 
 set up hysteria. 
 D 
 
50 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 I would ask each parent who reads this book 
 to remember that all this grave result arises 
 from suppressing the child's jealousy. Because 
 we adults say that the child must not feel jealous, 
 that it is wrong to have such feelings, the 
 child, trained to obey the parents, forces them 
 away from his consciousness until he can no 
 longer squarely face the position. He turns 
 back his trouble into the darkness of apparent 
 non-existence where in secret it works its 
 deadly destruction. 
 
 What is hysteria ? 
 
 Hysteria is the display of feelings which are 
 out of all proportion or relation to that which 
 seems to cause them ! Such feelings are derived 
 from some great shock or unsolved conflict of 
 emotion in the past. The feelings of to-day 
 are echoes of old disturbances. Thus the 
 child who has once suffered a great terror will 
 tremble at the creaking of a door. It is like 
 what we know in the physical world. The 
 healed wound leaves a sore place on which the 
 gentlest touch is agony. 
 
 . And^the pity is so little can be done. It is 
 useless to argue with hysteria. The original 
 cause m ust be exposed. Nothing can be done 
 except by uncovering the old wound, the 
 memory must be taken back to that forgotten 
 event inethe past, which hurt too terribly to be 
 remembored, and to which the hysterical 
 feelings of the present are appropriate. This 
 backward tracing to a forgotten pain, is an 
 
THE JEALOUS CHILD 
 
 51 
 
 extremely difficult and painful process, but 
 unless it is done there will always remain 
 the tendency to emotional trouble, ready to 
 break out under any stress. The man or the 
 woman thus handicapped is never really 
 
 safe. 
 
 Now this is why parents should exercise 
 the greatest care not to treat lightly in their 
 children any signs of jealous troubles, which, 
 if left unsolved, are almost certain to cause 
 conflicts children are quite unable to face or 
 understand. 
 
 I should not be honest if I did not say that, 
 in my opinion, it is impossible to avoid all 
 jealous feelings in children. 
 
 All that can be done by the parents is 
 to watch carefully for the first coming of 
 jealousy. And if any child is jealous to allow 
 it openly to be jealous. Repression of these 
 destructive feelings does the greatest harm. 
 The safest plan is to let the trouble wear itself 
 
 out. 
 
 If, however, the child's own conscience, ^ as 
 is very usually the case, acts as an inhibition 
 which prevents the jealousy from finding relief 
 in expression, the easiest way is to " transfer " 
 the adverse feelings to some other person, as 
 was explained in the case of the young boy 
 who transferred the jealousy he felt for the 
 father to his school-friend. There is no other 
 cure that I know. To divert the child's mind, 
 to make it forget by work or by play, may 
 
52 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 give some relief, but it is only a palliative. 
 The mischief goes on, and indeed, grows worse 
 if it remains unrecognised and unsolved. 
 
V 
 
 THE DESTRUCTIVE CHILD 
 
 I HAVE several times referred to nervous strain. 
 I have spoken as if nervous strain was always 
 due to a conflict of impulses, a struggle of 
 instincts of what the child desires to do 
 contesting against the conduct approved and 
 praised by those around him. But strain is 
 not always due to conflict. The word 
 "nervous" naturally mates with " active." 
 Passionate people also are active, while 
 apathetic people are inactive. There is, of 
 course, the question of the reason behind. 
 Why one child, as a rule, is eager and 
 another child dull. But activity may be born 
 of happy surroundings, which provide the child 
 with the right amount of stimulus and of the 
 right kind, neither too much so that interest 
 turns into excitement, nor too little so that 
 interest flags. And when interest and impulse 
 are yoked, action is the natural result, and 
 will, if completed and performed, dissipate 
 the excess of feeling which naturally ac- 
 companies it. 
 
54 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 A sound truth underlies this fact in dealing 
 with childish destructiveness. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that the child hates 
 someone, to strike them is a relief; and all 
 children desire to strike when they hate. But 
 if they hate and dare not strike, restrained by 
 habits of respect and affection, they do not 
 allow their hatred to lead on to action, thus 
 there is a considerable amount of strain caused 
 in them by the holding back of the pent-up 
 (as we usually call it) feeling. 
 
 Now, it is a relief to the strain caused by 
 feelings, baulked of a direct expression in 
 appropriate action, to perform even an indirect 
 or useless action. Anxiety may cause people 
 to start up and pace the room anxiously. 
 Rage, as we know, clenches its fists, bends 
 its arms, stands in a posture of attack, even 
 when there is no natural antagonist present. 
 An enraged man takes up any piece of 
 furniture, a book, a china ornament near at 
 hand, and dashes it to the ground. The 
 rending of garments (as Bible readers know) 
 is an Oriental sign of mourning. 
 
 You will see what this implies. Destructive- 
 ness in children marks nervous disturbance 
 baulked desire. By destructiveness, I mean, 
 of course, deliberate destructiveness, breaking 
 of furniture or machinery (common in boys), 
 harming other people's possessions, not a mere 
 pulling things to pieces to see how they are 
 made. These nervous disturbances may be 
 
THE DESTRUCTIVE CHILD 55 
 
 due to any of the already explained causes- - 
 jealousy, a consciousness of inferiority, real or 
 mistaken, dislike of and opposition to parents 
 and teachers and those in authority, resentment 
 and rebellion, helpless feelings of repression 
 and thwarted desire for self-assertion and for 
 opportunity to live without being regulated by 
 adult rules. I have known a girl who was 
 very jealous of her step-father her mother 
 had married twice. She destroyed all the 
 drawing-room ornaments in an outbreak of 
 apparently unexplained passion. I was con- 
 sulted by her mother. I recommended 
 patience and very strong efforts on thefpart 
 of the step-father to win her love. 
 
 Nervous children under strain tend to bite 
 their nails, and to adopt other similar bad 
 habits, to destroy things, and to act cruelly to 
 animals and children younger and weaker than 
 themselves. A boy, about ten years old, of 
 a specially gentle and loving nature, was placed 
 under a tremendous nervous strain, owing to a 
 divorce and change of mothers ; almost directly 
 afterwards, to the surprise of everyone who 
 knew him, he began to act in a very cruel 
 manner to a dog, which before he had idolised, 
 having had it to sleep in his room at night, and 
 as his inseparable companion by day. 
 
 Everyone will be able to think of children 
 who show these sudden lapses into bad 
 conduct. In all such cases the parents must 
 seek for the deeper causes. It is useless to 
 
56 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 scold the child for the immediate fault. It 
 must be understood clearly that the child 
 destroys things because it is driven on by 
 an impulse without conscious intention and, 
 therefore, if you argue and scold, pointing 
 out the foolishness and wrongness of the 
 habit, he or she, though this fault is more 
 common in boys, agrees with you. He knows 
 as well as you can tell him that the destructive- 
 ness is useless and unfair to the owner of the 
 property. 
 
 What he does not know and what you, the 
 parent, ought to know so that you may be able 
 to help him, is that his action is symbolic, a 
 kind of expiatory expression for something 
 within him. The child often suffers more 
 than the adult at all understands, for while 
 he is sorry for what he has done himself, 
 dislikes intensely the destruction and also is 
 sorry for having grieved you, he is conscious 
 as well of exhilaration and a strong feeling of 
 liberation. And because he does not under- 
 stand these conflicting emotions (ambivalent 
 is the scientific word) he pushes the whole 
 incident away from him, will not think about 
 it, and each time he does this, matters grow 
 worse. 
 
 The desire for destruction will increase. It 
 may become a passion very difficult indeed to 
 change. More and more the instinct of the 
 moment will overcome the arguments of 
 reason, the narrow prescription of teaching, 
 
THE DESTRUCTIVE CHILD 57 
 
 and even his own conscious inclination towards 
 good conduct. 
 
 For the act of destroying does relieve and 
 soothe the child. So far it has had a good 
 effect. But the relief gained is temporary, 
 as well as greatly neutralised by the bad 
 effects of which I have just spoken. The 
 confusion in the child necessarily increases 
 his nervous trouble which arises from his 
 being quite aware of his own naughtiness, 
 while at the same time he is conscious of 
 his pleasure and relief of tension by the 
 destruction he has caused. 
 
 Now, as I already have made plain, the 
 parent must try to find out why the child 
 needs relief. It is the only way in which 
 the trouble can be helped and the destructive- 
 ness stopped with any safety. Nothing can 
 be done until the cause is found. 
 
 This will not be easy. Any direct question- 
 ing is sure to give barren results. The child 
 does not know what is the matter, does not 
 understand at all why he gets pleasure from 
 destroying things. I must drive home this 
 unconsciousness on the part of the child 
 though I risk wearying my readers by 
 repetition. But so often I have found even 
 intelligent parents very stupid on this matter. 
 They will ask the child, " Why did you break 
 that ? What made you so careless ? " not 
 understanding that it is their duty, and not 
 the child s, to find the answer to this question. 
 
58 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 Also I must urge again the necessity of 
 the parent paying the closest attention to 
 the child's unconscious acts, watching carefully 
 his games, noting his voluntary remarks and 
 the information he gives about himself in his 
 unrehearsed hours of play. For in this way 
 only can be detected the trouble causing the 
 emotional conflict of which the destructive 
 activity is the sign. 
 
 Further, I repeat that till this is done the 
 only course of safety is a negative one 
 non-interference. By non-interference the 
 dangers leading almost certainly to increased 
 emotional disturbance will be avoided. But 
 if you stop the destructiveness without 
 relieving the emotional cause, the baulked 
 wish, the hurt affection, the thwarted curiosity, 
 or whatever is the source of the trouble, 
 is but thrust back further repressed to work 
 havoc in the psyche. The after-result is 
 certain inevitably the trouble will break out 
 later in a worse form. Like the man in the 
 Bible story who got rid of one devil only to 
 be possessed by seven devils worse than the 
 first. And very probably this trouble will 
 work in secret, and the damage done will 
 not manifest itself until your child has grown 
 up and left your protection and your care. 
 
 One plain word then to end. 
 
 Do not be angry with your child when he 
 becomes destructive breaks things continu- 
 ously and without visible cause. Sit down 
 J- '- 
 
THE DESTRUCTIVE CHILD 59 
 
 and think, search your own heart, be truthful 
 with yourself. Ask yourself this question. Is 
 there any cause, any failure in my love for this 
 child, any help I could have given him, any 
 disturbance in the harmony of his home that 
 has given the hurt to his tender and young 
 and mouldable soul that drives him, by the 
 pain he suffers, to act destructively and cruelly ? 
 
VI 
 
 THE INQUISITIVE CHILD 
 
 IN the last chapter I mentioned thwarted 
 curiosity as one of the causes of emotional 
 disturbance. I want now to call attention to 
 the children who exhibit an unreasoning 
 curiosity about everything, opening drawers, 
 looking into the envelopes of other people's 
 letters, searching excitedly for what they do not 
 want. 
 
 Here we meet with a case of spontaneous 
 symbolic action. The peculiarity of such 
 activity is that if you ask the child, " What are 
 you doing ? " he gives an evasive answer ; also 
 he usually shows annoyance at being questioned. 
 He tells you he is looking for something or 
 wishes to know what is inside some box or 
 some drawer ; but he cannot name the thing he 
 is seeking, and the insistence of the action, the 
 importance attached to it, the anxious way in 
 which the search is carried out are not 
 explained. 
 
 Again, we have to ask the question, why 
 
THE INQUISITIVE CHILD 61 
 
 does the child do this ? What is it that urges 
 him to act like a " Peeping Tom " ? For he is 
 urged. You will find this habit of needless 
 prying almost impossible to check. It may 
 persist into adult life. I have known a man, 
 well educated and intelligent, who, whenever 
 he is upset, begins to search for something he 
 does not want. He will disturb the entire 
 house, and though gentle in disposition he 
 grows vexed, even angry, if he is disturbed in 
 his search. He realises the foolishness of his 
 action but he cannot explain it ; he just feels 
 he is compelled to search. 
 
 This seeking action is symbolic. It implies 
 that the search for the thing that is not wanted, 
 the curiosity over something of no interest at 
 all, is a substitute action for something that is 
 wanted something about which knowledge has 
 been desired, and desired so much that it will not 
 be denied. It is a curiosity so real that the 
 thwarting of it has started emotional trouble of 
 which these searching acts are the symbol or 
 sign. ^ 
 
 This substitute formation is a common 
 emotional process in children. The child pries, 
 opens drawers and letters, aimlessly searches for 
 knowledge he does not want because there is 
 some knowledge he wants tremendously badly, 
 but cannot ask you about. 
 
 Now, what is this knowledge which the child 
 wants and cannot get? It is of course 
 knowledge about something forbidden. 
 
62 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 I spoke in the introductory chapter of the 
 mistaken idea that the sex interests were absent 
 even in the youngest children. In the nursery 
 years the child begins to develop its first 
 curiosity about sex, usually expressed by the 
 question, " Where does the new baby come 
 from ? " 
 
 Parents are greatly to blame for not answer- 
 ing the questions of their children, and for 
 being blind to their natural curiosity. I 
 referred in the chapter on jealousy to the 
 mystery with which in most homes birth is 
 clouded. There need be no spoken words to 
 make the child feel that something hidden and 
 disgraceful is happening. 
 
 Adults are surprisingly ignorant of the 
 affectability of children their quick response to 
 every kind of influence. 
 
 In the case of the birth of another child an 
 usurper who takes the older child's place this 
 affectability is exceedingly acute on account of 
 the emotional disturbance, in excitement, in 
 jealousy, in hatred, and the arousing of the 
 always harmful inferiority-feelings. And in this 
 way the very certain interest and investigations 
 of the child into what is happening are confused 
 and connected with what is shameful and wrong ; 
 while the trouble is aided, and usually in the 
 worst possible manner, by the sharpest observa- 
 tions and deductions made by the child from 
 unconsidered actions and overheard remarks of 
 the parents, and of servants and other adults, 
 
THE INQUISITIVE CHILD 63 
 
 none of whom have any idea of the child's 
 watchfulness or his curiosity in this matter. 
 
 We underestimate very much the activity of 
 the intelligence of children which begins to 
 work at a very early age. We think they are 
 not interested in these matters because we do not 
 want them to be interested. And they, with 
 the almost uncanny sagacity which children 
 show, understand this adult desire only too well 
 and too quickly. 
 
 Few parents are aware of the confusion and 
 hurt that may be caused to a child by the false 
 theories and untrue ideas of birth the result of 
 their own stupid adult silences and even more 
 stupid hints and allusions ; ideas that fix them- 
 selves into children's minds, where they cannot 
 be checked owing to imperfect knowledge and 
 immature development. In this way harm 
 is often started that will be determinative of the 
 gravest evils in the later adult life. 
 
 I must insist (though I know that by doing 
 so I shall antagonise some parents who do not 
 believe it because they will not believe it,) that 
 there is no escape from this sexual curiosity 
 on the child's part, which is, indeed, entirely 
 normal and unavoidable ; and that all oppo- 
 sition set against its satisfaction is dangerous. 
 The degree of curiosity differs of course in 
 different children, but I do not think it is 
 absent from any normal child. If they do not 
 question their elders, certainly they will talk 
 with one another. It should also be remem- 
 
64 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 bered that curiosity will be kept active and 
 strengthened by any mystery, any hiding of 
 the truth. Other matters being equal, the 
 child thinks much less of what it knows and 
 understands than of what it does not know, 
 but wants to find out. Bans and prohibitions 
 almost always defeat their object. Label any 
 subject to your child as improper, and that it 
 is naughty of him to speak about it and you 
 set up certainly an abnormal and often very 
 harmful curiosity. 
 
 You will see now, I think, what I have all 
 this time been trying to make plain, and will 
 understand better my statement that curiosity 
 in children continuously displayed without 
 reason or purpose is a very usual sign of 
 thwarted sexual curiosity. No longer will it 
 appear a mere fantastic statement. I trust I 
 have made clearer to you how this takes place, 
 how easy, indeed, it is, and how frequent. 
 
 Again I must emphasise that the child gains 
 the greatest relief from this makeshift curiosity. 
 That is why he persists in his habits of peeping 
 and prying, in spite of your scoldings and 
 punishments. He must persist, unless you 
 deaden his character so terribly by your ill- 
 judged repressions that even this substitute 
 relief is closed. Your child will then, pro- 
 bably, find some other make-believe comfort ; 
 he will bite his nails, pick his nose, or other 
 much worse bad habits may begin ; or again, 
 the emotional disturbance may be so acute 
 
THE INQUISITIVE CHILD 65 
 
 that it becomes impossible for the child to 
 face, so that he fails in achieving any kind 
 of symbolic replacement. The thwarted and 
 emotionally over-charged curiosity is thrust 
 back into the psyche, where it remains a 
 cause of ill-health and uncleanness, until that 
 time, in the later adult years, when the harvest 
 of tares is reaped from the bad seed that has 
 been sown. 
 
 The parents have the greatest responsibility. 
 A child of four or even younger may begin 
 to ask questions of its mother, simply and 
 spontaneously. As soon as the questions are 
 put they should be answered, quite simply, and 
 in such a manner that the child can under- 
 stand. // is the child who must guide the 
 parent. I regard this as the most urgent rule 
 for the mother ; never to arouse sexual curiosity 
 but always to satisfy it when it is present. 
 
 I should, however, be giving a wrong im- 
 pression if I left the matter here, so that this 
 answering of children's questions seemed to be 
 a simple thing. It is not simple. For each 
 child, as for each adult, the problems of sex 
 are personal problems. Instruction here is 
 not and never can be like teaching the child 
 about other things, That is what so many 
 of the modern advocates of sex-education so 
 entirely overlook. 
 
 In every child, as it has been my purpose 
 to show you, there are conflicts of jealousy, of 
 
 E 
 
66 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 love, of hate, which determine already its 
 response to the parental teaching. 
 
 I cannot here treat at all adequately this 
 difficult question ; it is one on which I have 
 written elsewhere. (Sex Education and 
 National Health.) I can say only that what 
 above all else is the necessary duty of the 
 parent is to watch for the child's unconscious 
 betrayal of its own curiosity. I mean by this 
 that the parent has to find out just what part 
 of the problem is troubling the child at that time. 
 
 Again, I must insist that sex-education is 
 an emotional education ; that is why it is so 
 difficult. I may perhaps make this plainer to 
 you by means of two illustrations. A little 
 girl became troubled and nervously ill soon 
 after the birth of a baby brother. The 
 symptoms were serious, so that the child was 
 placed under special care. Many months of 
 patient work were required to get at the 
 back of what was troubling this young child. 
 All the facts of birth were carefully and 
 lovingly explained to her ; but this was not 
 what was the matter ; she had found it out 
 already for herself from the talk of a servant. 
 Her special trouble was that her mother had 
 not trusted her, had not told her the truth. 
 Only with the greatest difficulty was her 
 confidence restored, and it was not until this 
 was done that the nervous symptoms and 
 moral faults, that had so much alarmed her 
 parents, were cured. 
 
THE INQUISITIVE CHILD 67 
 
 The second case that of a much older girl 
 is quite different. Here the trouble rested 
 in the parent giving too much knowledge, not 
 too little. This girl had from her childhood 
 been brought up on very modern lines : she 
 had been taught about flowers and birds ; 
 wisely made to understand her own body ; but 
 the holiness and beauty of sex had been over- 
 emphasised by a neurotic and not too happily 
 mated mother. The latter circumstance ac- 
 counts for a strong disharmony in the psyche 
 of the girl. Puberty brought her troubles she 
 had not been taught to face feelings and 
 sensations that were not at all explained by 
 her mother's over-idealised teaching. This 
 poor girl felt herself wicked and horrid. She 
 was, as we should expect, quite unable to 
 speak to her idolised mother, and, unfitted to 
 face her trouble alone, she became nervously 
 ill. Melancholia was feared ; but fortunately 
 her suffering was discovered by a wise friend 
 and the help she wanted was given to her. 
 
 It has seemed worth while to record these 
 tw r o cases, as I feel they will make plainer than 
 any mere statement I can make how compli- 
 cated the problem is, and how wise and how 
 loving parents need to be before they can help 
 their children. 
 
VII 
 
 THE THIEVING CHILD 
 
 IN the next chapters I have to speak of the 
 faults of stealing and lying. These are com- 
 monly regarded by parents as far more serious 
 faults than boastfulness, sulkiness, jealousy, 
 destructiveness, curiosity the faults hitherto 
 dealt with. 
 
 I can to this extent be assuring; the thieving 
 and lying are not signs of a tendency to thieve 
 and lie. They must not be regarded as afford- 
 ing proof of original sin. Rather they are 
 special manifestations of the effects arising 
 from great underlying causes. It will be found 
 that it is not necessary, and indeed not wise, to 
 attempt directly to correct the faults them- 
 selves. The really necessary duty of the 
 parent is to track down the trouble to its 
 source ; to find out Where ? How ? and Why ? 
 the child has been hurt. It will then be 
 possible to counteract and neutralise this hurt, 
 which to a certain extent should be explained 
 to the child himself, so that, understanding 
 
THE THIEVING CHILD 69 
 
 what it is drives him to thieve or lie, he may 
 help in his own cure. 
 
 There is one thing more that it is necessary 
 to make plain. Though these faults are not in 
 themselves a sign of any moral failure in the 
 child's character, our treatment of them our 
 adult stupidity in understanding the difficulties 
 and the sufferings of the child often hound on 
 the stealing child into the thief, the child who 
 lies into the man or woman who has no con- 
 sciousness of truth. 
 
 We make criminals of children because we 
 are blind ; because our eyes are too blinkered 
 by the complexes in our own characters to face 
 the truth of our failures in education, which in 
 nine cases out of every ten, are the cause of the 
 faults which we condemn in them. We also 
 cause the most heart-breaking tragedies. It 
 is appalling even to contemplate the suffering 
 brought quite uselessly upon children by 
 grown-up foolish ignorance. 
 
 We grown-ups show too little imagination in 
 our treatment of children. We rarely remem- 
 ber their sensitiveness, nor do we consider the 
 terrible advantage (from the point of view of 
 the child) that we possess just in being grown- 
 up. And nothing is to the child plainer as a 
 sign of this grown-up freedom than the power 
 we have to spend money when we like and 
 how we like. That is why the taking of 
 money is one of the most common symbolic 
 acts for a child's hidden wish for love or power. 
 
70 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 I do not hesitate to state that in the great 
 majority of cases of boyish thieving the reasons 
 for the act must be sought in some deeply 
 hidden cause marking a want which the boy 
 does not understand. The taking of small 
 sums of money or other pilfering, acts as a 
 covering mask and has no direct connection 
 with crime. 
 
 And what I desire to emphasise with every 
 power I have is the cruelty and uselessness of 
 our punishments. For the finer and more 
 sensitive the character of the child, the more 
 certainly will our failure to understand destroy. 
 
 Is it necessary for me to write more to con- 
 vince you ? That infantile theft is often patholo- 
 gical, is proved by the fact that the objects stolen 
 are useless to the child ; that they are hidden 
 away and, as a rule, soon forgotten ; and further, 
 that the child apparently forgets, or almost 
 forgets, what he has stolen or how he took it. 
 Some children have a passion for stealing 
 certain objects, which they take over and 
 over again. Those who have had anything 
 to do with delinquent children will know 
 these symptoms. 
 
 In nearly all cases the thieving is repeated 
 over long periods ; although each act may be 
 followed by violent remorse. Parents should 
 know that this sorrow, especially if emotionally 
 excessive, serves only to increase the tendency 
 to a fresh repetition of theft. For remorse 
 fixes the child's attention on stealing and on 
 
THE THIEVING CHILD 71 
 
 his wickedness in stealing. And this fixity 
 of attention in itself, is a kind of rehearsal of 
 the act ; this is very likely to lead to an actual 
 performance of it. Childish remorse is, no 
 doubt, gratifying to parents, but almost in- 
 variably it is harmful to the child. 
 
 Whenever the child thinks how bad he is, 
 how wrong and disastrous an act would be, he 
 is in danger of being compelled to perform 
 that act. Most of us have experienced this, 
 but we forget its application to our children. 
 Once think how terrible it would be to fall 
 down the precipice and the idea of jumping 
 down approaches. 
 
 Remorse is a form of temptation. And all 
 forms of temptation should, in dealing with 
 children, if possible, be avoided. If your 
 child steals money, do not leave money lying 
 about. Also, even if he has stolen money 
 several times, express no faintest suspicion as 
 to his not using honourably any money en- 
 trusted to him for some necessary purpose, 
 such as paying railway fares or buying a 
 school-book. Never be suspicious over the 
 change that such a child brings you. As he 
 steals from a feeling of inferiority, and, in 
 particular, because through jealousy he feels 
 himself less blessed with the love of those 
 about him than other more confident children, 
 any sign of your not being able to treat him 
 like the others, not able to trust him, must 
 render him more liable to err. 
 
?2 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 If the thieving child were treated with 
 sympathy and understanding, and loved and 
 helped instead of being blamed and often 
 cruelly punished, there would be few grown- 
 up thieves. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE LYING CHILD 
 
 THE lies of children arise out of something that 
 parents and grown-ups regard as charming. I 
 mean the child's habit of dreaming itself into 
 an imaginary life. This life always is one in 
 which the child appears in a favourable position. 
 
 Many children conjure up imaginary play- 
 mates. In all such cases, the real child is 
 the leader and superior of the make-believe 
 child. Such nursery-pretences may be con- 
 tinued, for intervals, over long periods. They 
 enable the child to achieve its wishes without 
 effort. He becomes prominent, obtains a 
 friend, enters into life as the superior of 
 someone else. 
 
 The child may dream that he will, or is, 
 rescuing from fire or from water, someone 
 (often the imaginary companion) who is in 
 danger. By this heroism, the gratitude of the 
 person saved and the admiration of those around 
 may be won. Or the dreamer pictures himself 
 (or herself) very clever, top of the school class, or 
 exalted in rank, endowed with wealth and posi- 
 
74 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 tion. Or lastly, the dreamer succeeds in attaching 
 himself to someone of high rank, often a new 
 wonderful parent, whose special favour and love 
 is gained. 
 
 In numerous cases where children dream of 
 being grown-up and of having grown-up 
 occupations, it is the apparent power of con- 
 trolling their parents (especially the father) and 
 other adults, that attracts them to the life of 
 a policeman, a teacher, or an engine-driver. 
 
 These day-dreams are egoistic and self- 
 flattering. They are formed by wishing to be, 
 or to do, what the dreamer feels he (or she) 
 has not done in real life. 
 
 The dream is a consolation for failure in real 
 achievements. It is, therefore, the result of a 
 thwarted wish. The child feels himself little 
 and weak, but he wishes to be big, strong and 
 powerful so badly, that he imagines himself to 
 be a policeman, who is always big, very 
 powerful, and who orders about even fathers. 
 The child's pretending is a balm of imagination 
 applied to a wound inflicted by reality. 
 
 This is its danger. The mischances of 
 reality must be met by real alterations of 
 character or conduct, not by imaginary com- 
 pensatory dreams. 
 
 No other lesson, perhaps, which parents have 
 to teach their children, is quite so important as 
 this. The little boy who wants to be a police- 
 man to control father, should be entrusted with 
 the care of a younger brother or sister. He 
 
THE LYING CHILD 75 
 
 must be praised or rewarded, if he does the 
 task well, and encouraged to try again, not 
 Iblamed, if he does it badly, so that he may 
 come unconsciously to feel that real achieve- 
 ment is more satisfactory than dream 
 achievements. 
 
 It is obvious that the fantasy, as the day- 
 dream is technically called, leads directly to the 
 fantasy-making lie. This is the more common 
 form of lie, by which the child tries to make 
 himself appear different from what he is more 
 important, and not any longer less important 
 than others. Frequently the lie is the result of 
 the wished-for dream life, pictured by the child 
 in his make-believe life : what is said is an 
 expression of something the child has dreamt 
 about. Thus the lie is true to him though 
 untrue to the adult who hears him. 
 
 As a remedy (not so much for the lying itself 
 as for the mental uneasiness at the back of the 
 lying), an attempt must be made, (in ways such 
 as I have suggested), to give the child some 
 social activities or simple duties in which he 
 will have a place of his own. Never forget 
 that what the child needs is liberation from 
 any consciousness of inferiority. Success is 
 necessary for health and for moral conduct. 
 How many boys, for instance, who do badly at 
 lessons, are saved from ill results because they 
 are good at cricket, or have a decent position 
 as a scout, or in some other way attract the 
 favourable attention of their school-fellows. 
 
76 THB MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 Then, it must be pointed out to the child, 
 how impossible it is to win success and power 
 over others by the methods of the day-dream 
 and cinema-impersonations. In these ways, 
 the child's sense of reality must be increased. 
 No fixed rules can be laid down. Treatment 
 must vary with the child. Such methods must 
 be tried as in each case will encourage the, 
 child to make successful efforts to achieve inno- 
 cent prominence and a good position in the real 
 world, not in the make-believe world. At all 
 costs, and against any resistance, the child must 
 be trained to face the nursery and school-room 
 situations as they are, not as he wants them to be. 
 
 If one child is not very clever, he (or she) 
 must be taught to accept this and shown how 
 he can make up for this defect by working hard 
 and taking pains. If another child is weak and 
 delicate, there must be no pretence of strength, 
 but encouragement may be given to strive for 
 success in ways that do not call for physical 
 ability. Let the child feel that he has to make 
 the best of himself , not pretend he is better than 
 he is. 
 
 There is terrible danger to happiness and to 
 health in fantasying. For the day will come, 
 as the child grows up, when reality must be 
 faced and disaster is almost certain. More 
 and more the day-dreamer becomes unfitted for 
 life. His attention and his interest is turned 
 inwards on himself, away from the world of 
 effort and action. He is an introvert. The 
 
THE LYING CHILD 77 
 
 lisaster to character here is so great that the 
 Darent should be on the watch for the^ first signs 
 }f this failure in meeting the truth of life. Such 
 i child must be stimulated to work and to play 
 ivith others ; he should not be allowed to spend 
 nuch of his time alone. 
 
 Let me tell you about a young girl with a 
 strong tendency to introversion, who was very 
 wisely treated by her mother. It was once said 
 that if she was sent on an errand to one place, 
 lours after she would be found in another 
 Dlace, having completely forgotten what she 
 was originally sent out to do. Her mother did 
 not scold her or make her in any way a centre 
 of attention, but she arranged always for her to 
 experience the results of her negligence and 
 absence of mind. Thus one day, when she 
 forgot to order the dinner, the whole family 
 dined off bread, greatly to the girl's humiliation. 
 Through lessons of this kind, she was taught 
 to see the real situation ; and, after years of 
 careful training, she was able to sublimate her 
 imagination and become a well-known and 
 successful writer. She ceased dreaming unpro- 
 fitably and became very practical, though still 
 much disliking details. 
 
 This fantasy-making, as you will readily see 
 for yourself, is connected with most kinds of 
 children's lies, but for convenience in advising 
 how to deal with the wrong-doers (or sufferers 
 as I should prefer to call them), I would divide 
 children's lies into three further classes. 
 
78 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 I have spoken already of the boastful child. 
 The lies and they are frequent told by such ! 
 children arise out of self-contempt. This leads 
 to self-assertion. Such assertiveness, even 
 of falsehoods, may be connected with aims 
 socially useful, as when the child dreams of 
 oraining fame by performing great and heroic 
 exploits. Or, and this is considerably more 
 dangerous, the fear of failure, of not appearing 
 well, may lead to the child insisting on its 
 dullness, weakness, illnesses, deficiencies- 
 shelter may even be sought by boastfulness 
 over telling lies. Such an attitude will have 
 two causes : 
 
 (1) It arises because the child is afraid of 
 failing. He (or she) needs to be reassured, 
 made confident. Point out in what he does 
 excel. 
 
 (2) Or it may arise out of a desire to 
 contradict and annoy. Children as well as 
 adults are much moved by opposition and 
 counter-will. Give them as much freedom as 
 possible. 
 
 Note further that the feeling of inferiority 
 as I have had again and again to point out, 
 often has its origin in obscure and highly 
 unreasonable causes, very difficult to track 
 to their source. But the feeling may be 
 connected with physical smallness, weakness, 
 malformation, or the inferiority of any limb 
 or organ, all of which may very easily give 
 rise to a corresponding character-inferiority. 
 
THE LYING CHILD 79 
 
 Other common causes are want of beauty or 
 attractiveness ; or, the child being younger than 
 others (in which case the trouble is much 
 increased and often started by foolish remarks 
 that it is too young for this or that), or being 
 placed in intimate relationships, as for instance 
 at school, with companions who are richer or 
 of higher social pretensions, or indeed, any 
 circumstance for which contempt is normally 
 expressed by those whose opinion the child 
 values. 
 
 I have pointed out already the dangers 
 arising from these feelings of inferiority. I 
 would again emphasise this danger. Any 
 child who feels inferior quickly deteriorates 
 directly he loses self-confidence. It is one of 
 the most urgent and difficult tasks of parents 
 to guard against this. I say the task is 
 difficult because the way must not be made 
 too easy by an over-loving hiding of the 
 inferiority of the child, but on the other 
 hand the way must not be made too hard 
 by constant insistence on the child's faults, a 
 practice which does nothing except dis- 
 courage him, thus inevitably increasing the 
 inferiority-feelings which are the cause of his 
 faults. Always when the fault is mentioned, 
 encouragement should be given by showing 
 the ways in which improvement may be 
 made, and every possible help must be given 
 to make this possible for the child's attainment. 
 
 Now, finally, two other classes of childish 
 
80 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 lies may be distinguished. First, the lie as 
 an excuse ; the lie of evasion, of defence, told 
 by the child to avoid blame or punishment. 
 It is used as a means of escape from the 
 consequences of wrong-doing. This kind of 
 lie is known to most parents. 
 
 Now I would plead for these young 
 offenders because they are usually very sensi- 
 tive as children always are. In many ways 
 children are akin to savages. I spoke of 
 this in my introductory chapter. Now, panic 
 is the usual condition of mind of the savage. 
 He sees enemies in everything ; in trees, in 
 stones, in thunder and lightning, in the flight 
 of birds, in fact, in all things around him. It 
 is much the same with the child, Parents do 
 not realise that the child not only sees the 
 world through a microscope but for it a 
 moment is a thousand years. Its fear, not of 
 doing wrong, but being found out doing wrong, 
 is really a most powerful courage- destroying 
 emotion. The child is paralysed thinking of 
 the punishment to follow. For to be shut 
 off from his world, to be called a liar, to 
 have his brothers and sisters told not to 
 speak to him, for instance, is an enormous 
 punishment. It makes the child an outcast, 
 leaves him defenceless. We need not wonder 
 much if he takes the ready escape of a lie. 
 To expect him to do otherwise, if his sensitive- 
 ness is such that he has been unable to 
 overcome his fear, is really rather like asking 
 
THE LYING CHILD 81 
 
 him to follow the behaviour of the boy on the 
 burning deck (hated by me in my childhood), 
 who did not run away, but waited to be burned. 
 
 Sympathy may, however, be felt for parents 
 too. They may truly say that they do not 
 punish or blame at all severely, and they see 
 no reason why they should be regarded with 
 so much fear. But so might the civilised man 
 argue about foolishness in the savage. Often 
 the deep causes of fear are obscure and of very 
 old origin. They may arise by suggestion or 
 as shadows left from a remote past when fear 
 was necessary for the preservation of life. Or, 
 if of more recent growth, very likely they are 
 attributable to some pain unconsciously inflicted 
 by the parent a pain forgotten by the child, 
 repressed out of his consciousness because of 
 the painfulness of the experience. This pain 
 is usually connected with childish jealousy or 
 some careless parental hurt to the child's pride. 
 
 Lastly there is the lie that aims at obtaining 
 direct advantages. Usually it is told to attract 
 attention and increase the child's feeling of 
 importance by acquisition of property. This 
 type of lie resembles the theft. It is the lie 
 fraudulent. 
 
 I would recall to you again what was said 
 in connection with the child who steals, as to 
 the way in which property relieves the feeling 
 of inferiority. Money and the spending of 
 money gives importance. To spend money 
 at shops, for the child, is the easiest form of 
 F 
 
82 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 grown-up behaviour ; the shop assistant is 
 deferential the boy (or girl) customer orders 
 him about. Again, a newly obtained possession 
 gratifies, in a peculiar way, the acquisitive 
 instinct, always so strong in children. Pro- 
 perty with them, as with the savage, is part 
 of the personality, and has a distinct value 
 as a sign, or kind of decoration, enhancing 
 individual importance. 
 
 This to some extent is felt by normal 
 civilised adults, but as a motive directing 
 conduct it is much more powerful in the 
 savage and the child. And the less sure the 
 child is of himself, of the love of those around 
 him, of his position and importance in his 
 world, the stronger it will be. 
 
 Any child who shows this abnormally strong 
 feeling for property (and this will be recognised 
 most easily by an obsession for collecting quite 
 useless things), should be given opportunities 
 to earn money to buy the possessions he 
 desires, by some useful work in the home. 
 Also rewards may be offered for the gaining 
 of some school position or prize, or even for 
 the giving up of some bad habit. Care must, 
 however, be taken in this case that the child 
 is able to do what is asked. If the bad habit, 
 as is probable, is a substitute relief for conflict 
 concealed within, the child cannot control it 
 cannot cure himself. To ask him to do so is 
 just as foolish as to ask a patient to control the 
 symptom of his disease while doing nothing 
 
 
THE LYING CHILD 83 
 
 to cure the disease itself. Always what is 
 necessary is to find out the root of the trouble. 
 This must be done before a cure is attempted. 
 We are so frightened of facing the real issues ; 
 but do you not see how it is only by sublima- 
 tion of what are faults in the child, by using 
 what is there that the faults get changed into 
 virtues, an ugly trait into a beautiful character, 
 and the child gets freed. 
 
IX 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 ENOUGH has now been said. I have been 
 dealing with the faults of the naughty child 
 in sections ; with boastfulness, with sulkiness, 
 with destructiveness, with curiosity, with 
 thieving and with lying, one after the other. 
 We have, I trust, learnt many new things 
 which will fit us more competently to guide our 
 children, so that we may help and not hinder 
 thenv too muchl in the difficult task of growing 
 up. 
 
 Now, in conclusion and to clear our minds, 
 I think we may summarise certain important 
 principles which have constantly been operative, 
 guiding my treatment of the various and diffi- 
 cult problems we have had to consider. 
 
 Always I have tried to find a reason Why ? 
 To; discover what is causing the child to act 
 in the way it does. I have refused to regard 
 any childish naughtiness as being possible to 
 cure by scoldings, by punishments, or indeed 
 by any kind of direct attack. 
 
 The fault which distresses the parents must 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 85 
 
 be regarded as the sign of a hidden conflict that 
 distresses the child. It is this conflict then that 
 must be discovered and dealt with. Never in 
 any case can the lazy adult view be accepted 
 that the child does wrong because of original 
 sin. 
 
 The child does wrong because he suffers, 
 usually through the blunders of those who are 
 supposed to train him ; his faults in behavioitr 
 are a relief for pain he finds too intolerable to 
 bear. If a child is happy, in harmony with 
 his world, loved and loving, then the child is 
 good. 
 
 The influences that unconsciously affect 
 children are everything. Their eyes and ears 
 are ever open : they are eager for favours, for 
 love, for praise, for someone or something to 
 gratify their desires. They must find this to 
 heal their feeling of being little and weak, the 
 havoc-working sense of inferiority, for thus 
 only can they gain the courage to go on step 
 by step upwards on the path of life. 
 
 And another truth follows from this. The 
 spontaneous reception given to the general 
 actions of children is far more important than 
 what is said to them about any particular fault. 
 The continuously acting emotional effects, the 
 fundamental moods of the nursery and school- 
 room years, the first experiences in the home, 
 never are these effaced from the later character. 
 It is the things that you do every day 
 unconsciously ; the thoughts that you have and 
 
86 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 the things you feel ; or all that perhaps you are 
 trying to hide from your children, and also 
 covering away from yourself, that are the real 
 directing forces in their characters. 
 
 Thus, this duty appears for all parents, and 
 may not be neglected. To train our children 
 we have unceasingly to train ourselves. 
 
 Moral conduct is never easy. We all want 
 what we do want. We surrender our wishes 
 only because we find that we satisfy other 
 desires by so doing. We are praised and 
 rewarded for preferring to give up to others 
 what we want ourselves. And a practical lesson 
 in our training of children depends upon this. 
 The parents must take the greatest possible 
 care that bad conduct does not give children 
 greater pleasure than good conduct. If children 
 are left unnoticed when good they quickly feel 
 neglected, and if allowed to enjoy power when 
 they are naughty, through the sorrow of the 
 parents and the upsetting of the nursery regime, 
 they will continue to be naughty whenever 
 they are bored or for any reason crave some 
 emotional relief. 
 
 I want to go one step further. I have, I 
 think, made it sufficiently clear that behind all 
 symptoms of character-deformation in children 
 lie deep ills, which perhaps may be defined 
 as feelings of unexplained excitability. We 
 found, too, that the troubles arise out of groups 
 of emotions, connected with the family relation- 
 ships the mother and son, the father and 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 87 
 
 daughter, the brothers and sisters. Now, 
 these emotions are, I hold, essentially sexual. 
 The child is born with instincts and desires, 
 which give rise almost at once to love, to 
 hatred, and to jealousy. 
 
 Most parents, I am well aware, will in- 
 dignantly deny this. Some will treat the 
 suggestion as ridiculous. They will regard it 
 as the result of a mania, of a fixed idea, of a 
 determination to explain everything by one 
 explanation. I can to a certain extent reassure 
 them. I am stretching the word sexual to 
 include the very germs that afterwards blossom 
 into the sexual life. 1 should say that the little 
 girl with her doll is showing maternal instincts, 
 that the boy with his trumpet and tin sword is 
 showing the crudest manifestation of the male 
 protective instinct. Am I not also entitled to 
 say that the child's rebellion against the rule of 
 the father, its nestling in the mother's arms, 
 its rivalry and quarrels for mastery with its 
 brothers and sisters, show the instincts of love, 
 of hate, and of jealousy ? 
 
 Never to be effaced are the effects of these 
 early emotional relationships. If we realise 
 this fully and practically, it must mean much 
 greater watchfulness over our children, in 
 particular over the expression of our love for 
 them and the love we claim from them. For 
 these first expressions are the prelude of the 
 book of love that is to follow. They influence 
 all of the child's later love experiences ; they 
 
88 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 determine the happiness and the unhappiness 
 of his^(or, of course, her) adult life. 
 
 This is no fanciful statement. And because 
 it is true the responsibility of parents is very 
 great. The purpose of this little book will be 
 fulfilled if it clears the way and gives some 
 practical knowledge, because if parents under- 
 stand better they will have more sympathy 
 with childish wrong-doers. 
 
 Many of the suggestions made are, I know, 
 new to many parents and will by no means be 
 pleasing to them. Also I am fully aware of 
 the inadequacy of my statement of the facts. 
 I have purposely made everything as simple as 
 I could. This may lead to mistakes. Yet I 
 hope I have sufficiently emphasised that the 
 task of helping any child can never be easy for 
 any parent. For most of us it is a series of 
 blunders, which we fail to see only if our eyes 
 have lost their vision of truth. 
 
 I do, however, venture to believe that I 
 have set forth some truths placed the nursery 
 in a fresh and brighter light, which may give 
 help to many anxious parents ; and further, I 
 have started some lines of investigation which 
 will enable some parents to detect and rectify 
 the first signs of error in their children, while 
 there are others, I hope, who may be led by 
 the suggestions I have opened out, to study 
 more deeply the causes and perplexities that 
 determine the roots of character. 
 
 This is certain only by accepting what is 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 89 
 
 true can we advance. By this honesty only 
 can we give aid to the children, who with a 
 burden of ancient instincts and uncontrolled 
 impulses, come into a world filled with un- 
 desirable examples and manifold temptations. 
 
 One final word of advice. 
 
 No parent can hope to accomplish too much. 
 Children have got to be naughty. We do not 
 expect the child to read until it has learnt its 
 letters or to calculate and work sums before it 
 understands the use of figures ; we do not 
 expect it to walk until it has stumbled and 
 fallen many times, or to use its tiny hands with 
 precision until it has broken many objects. 
 Why then should we expect it to be good 
 without learning to be good ? 
 
 Parents by constantly requiring from the 
 child standards of conduct right for the adult, 
 do, in ways I have tried to make plain, produce 
 a strain which, not only hurts, discourages and 
 irritates the child, but may turn the creative 
 force of the young life back upon itself. 
 
 It is ever thus in life ; when we draw back in 
 fear, too hastily or too much coerced from any 
 expression of a spontaneous act, the energy 
 gathered for action flows back impotent. I 
 believe that many a creative artist, as well as 
 uncounted happy and productive lives, are 
 destroyed in this muddled and unintelligent 
 training, whereby we attempt to turn the child 
 into the good boy or girl. 
 
 What parents can do is to clear up difficulties 
 
90 THE MIND OF THE NAUGHTY CHILD 
 
 as these appear, and to remove obstacles in the 
 way of the child's growth. Also they can 
 place within the child's reach the materials and 
 the means by which it can most readily liberate 
 its primitive instincts by giving them a right 
 expression. 
 
 In fact the real work of the parent may be 
 likened to that of the scene-shifter and property 
 manager. 
 
 One certain rule may be given. Children 
 must not be subjected, in any circumstances, 
 to conditions of emotional stress, which 
 increase immensely their inevitable conflicts 
 and their feelings of inferiority in an adult 
 world. If the parents do not find out these 
 feelings (which they ought to know are always 
 present whenever a child is naughty), let me 
 warn them and this is the last word I have 
 to say that they are dangerously limiting 
 their children's chances of a successful and 
 happy life. 
 
 The fate of every child is decided in the 
 nursery ; criminals are made there as well as 
 saints and heroes. 
 
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