The difficulties of managing a nervous infant are very real, and call
for the most exemplary patience on the part of the mother and the
clearest insight into the nature of the disturbance.




CHAPTER IX

MANAGEMENT IN LATER CHILDHOOD


In the early days in the nursery the actions of the infant, for the
most part, follow passively the traction exercised by nurses and
mothers, sometimes consciously, but more often unconsciously. We have
now to consider a period when the child becomes possessed of a driving
force of his own, and moves in this direction or that of his own
volition. In this new intellectual movement through life he will not
avoid tumbles. He will feel the restraints of his environment pressing
upon him on all sides, and he will often come violently in contact
with rigid rules and conventions to which he must learn to yield. From
time to time we read in the papers of some terrible accident in a
picture-palace, or in a theatre. Although there has been no fire,
there has been a cry of fire, and in the panic which ensues lives are
lost from the crowding and crushing. Yet all the time the doors have
stood wide open, and through them an orderly exit might have been
conducted had reason not given place to unreason. It is the task of
those responsible for the children's education to guide them without
wild struggling along the paths of well-regulated conduct towards the
desired goal, influenced not by the emotions of the moment, but only