Bringing up the normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bringing up the normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    falsehoods must be a main feature of the child’s education; the apparitions must be dethroned from their position as real beings. But usually these creatures of fancy refuse to be altogether banished, and linger throughout the life of the individual as shadowy superstitions, giving the mind a bias toward belief in the supernatural. Often they become rehabilitated in the mind of the adults, and accepted once more, slightly changed in form, as realities. Then we call them delusional ideas, and we call their possessor in- sane; but we are prone to forget that these same delusions were the mental pabulum on which the budding mind was trained. Surely, in the light of the sequel, such training might well have been omitted. Repress Inordinate Egoism As further stabilizing the developing mind and giving it a just estimate of its own relations to the environment, it is desirable, particularly in the case of the nervous child, to guard against meet- ing its complaints with an exhibition of undue sympathy. Undue egoism is the perennial fault of the unstable mind, and this may begin to show it- self at a very early period. The desire to attract attention at all hazards is a symptom which should be regarded by the parent with out and out solicitude. [26]
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