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848 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
forces that we must
reckon with later."
Then whose fault
is it when Mr. or
Mrs. Thirty orders
something done and
Mr. Six stamps his
small foot and says
wilfully, "I won't"?
It is the fault of the
person who is training
the child, the fault
of the three dollar a
week nurse girl with
whom he plays, or
the mother who fails
to understand him or
the father who says,
"Take that kid to bed,
I'm tired."
When a child is two
years old he is "cute" when
he swallows father's watch
or throws soup at the butler.
Four years later this
very ebullition is an act of
Satan who unaccountably
has got into the child in
spite of his kind and loving
parents. But it is not.
You laughed with the baby
who was energetic with the
Constant Nagging
Brings Out Objectionable
Qualities, while
a Real Attempt to Sympathize
and Help Ordinarily
Is Rewarded Out
of All Proportion to the Effort
Required
soup but you punished the child who later did the same thing, so you established
a cross in his mind. The later psychologists have proved that a child or a man
never forgets anything, though he can recall only the smallest part of his experiences
at will. Back in his mind he knows that you once approved that action and
now disapprove of it. He says nothing, and probably thinks nothing about it,
but he forms what the Freudians call a "complex" or a "neurosis", a misunderstanding
which perverts the energy and makes him develop a wild temper or some
other "bad" trait.
We all suffer from our childhood training because, as Mrs. Scott and the
great educators of today believe, our formative years are from birth to six. It
is during these years that we are forming our personality, will-power, high
spirits, desire for mental and physical activity, curiosity, initiative, concentration,
imagination and emotional strength.
In diagnosing the minds of the youngsters Mrs. Scott merely watches them
at play as she did the concrete example of which we spoke above. The ordinary
child comes bouncing into the room and is pleased at the right to do as he
pleases. Everything is in order in its place and to get playthings he must take
them out. Does he put them back? What sort of a toy interests him? According
to this his personality expresses itself for those who know how to understand.
Is he honest? There is a game of Russian jackstraws (Continued on page 94?)