Child Management (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Child Management

The health, happiness, and efficiency of the adult man and woman depend, to a very large extent, upon the type of habits they acquire from their training and experience during early life. Any informa tion which gives the interested parent 9. Better idea Of the mental life of the child, methods that may be utilized in developing desir able habits, and suggestions for overcoming undesirable habits may be considered well worth while.

Habit is such a common, everyday sort of term, with which everyone is more or less familiar, that it hardly seems necessary to discuss it at all. However, it is in this very fact - that habits are so commonplace and ordinary in the minds of the great mass Of individuals - that the danger lies. All too frequently the funda mental importance of forming right habits in early life is minimized or overlooked altogether.

Without any attempt to give a strictly scientific definition, it may be said that habit is the tendency to repeat what has been done before. One develops not only habits Of acting but habits of think ing and feeling in certain ways. Habits in regard to the care of the body - eating, sleeping, eliminating, bathing - are easily formed and vitally affect health. Our manners are a collection of habits; we do a rude or a courteous thing almost without stopping to think. If we did not learn the muscular movements which become habitual through repetition we could never play the piano, run a typewriter, or gain skill in athletics. Of course, children must learn the simpler motions first - the use of knife and fork, the buttoning of buttons, and the tying of knots. The morals of most of us are, to a large extent, the result of habits of thinking formed in early life - our attitude toward the drinking of alcoholic liquors or the taking of others' property, or the problem of sex, as well as our attitude toward other people, whether sincere or deceitful, friendly or an tagonistic. Most of our prejudices are the outcome of habits of thinking formed in childhood. Many persons as children develop a feeling about racial and religious differences which may lead in later life to intolerance and hatred toward their fellow men. This same attitude of mind is seen in children toward their playmates who have the misfortune Of being orphans, or the child whose mother is a scrubwoman, or whose father is a garbage collector, or who is boarded under the care Of a child-placing agency. Care should be taken to see that children are early taught kindness and consideration for those less fortunate, for unconsciously they will form their attitudes from the home atmosphere.

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