must remember that he is still a child, and that if that reputation is
lightly taken from him and he is accused of a permanent tendency
towards untruthfulness, he is left hopeless and resigned to evil. Let
any mother make the experiment of presenting to her child in this way
a reputation for some particular virtue. For example, if an older
child shows too great a tendency to tease and interfere with the
younger children, let the mother seize the first opportunity which
presents itself to applaud some action in which he has shown
consideration for the others. Let her comment more than once in the
next few days on how careful and gentle the older child is becoming in
his behaviour to the little ones, and in a little the suggestion will
begin to act until the transformation is complete. If, on the other
hand, the mother adopts the opposite course and rebukes the child for
habitual unkindness, she will be apt to find unkindness persisted in.
The criminal records of the nation show too often the truth of the
saying that "Once a thief always a thief." Deprived of his good
repute, man loses his chief protection against evil and his incentive
to good.

The inability of a child--and especially of a nervous and sensitive
child--to form conceptions of his own individuality except from ideas
derived from the suggestions of others, gives us the key to our
management of him and to our control of his conduct. He has, as a
rule, a marvellously quick perception of our own estimate of him, and
unconsciously is influenced by it in his conception of his own
personality, and in all his actions. Parents must believe in his
inherent virtue in spite of all lapses. If they despair it cannot be
hid from the child. He knows it intuitively and despairs also. It is
then that they call him incorrigible. If it happens that one parent
becomes estranged from the child, despairs of all improvement, and