The problem child at home : a study in parent-child relationships / by Mary Buell Sayles.

  • Sayles, Mary Buell, 1878-
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The problem child at home : a study in parent-child relationships / by Mary Buell Sayles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to the full exercise of all his powers which is essential to healthy growth; and that every child wants to grow up, to become strong and independent, is as true as that every child seeks security. Gradually he must learn to hold his own in a larger world of which his home is only the center. It is this desire for growth, for freedom and opportunity to grow, which reveals the second great emotional need of the child, full satisfaction of which is to be gained only from and through his parents. To many parents this need 1s less obvious than the need for security; if only they can keep their little boy or girl safe, and their own, they hardly think of the young man or woman in the making. The child, if he be not granted freedom and opportunity in gradually in- creasing measure, may indeed eventually break away and grasp them for himself. Unfortunately, the prize thus ac- quired will no longer be what it might have been; the youth, however loudly he may proclaim his independence and adult- hood, will be marked by immaturities which he does not himself recognize and cannot shake off. For growing up is a stage-to-stage process, and if he is held back at the earlier stages and then seeks to pass them at a single bound, he in- evitably misses the practice along the way which would have fitted him little by little to make intelligent use of each new experience encountered. Security and freedom to grow, though sometimes they may thus interfere with one another, are not, however, neces- sarily antagonistic. The child who is encouraged, as he emerges from infancy, to mingle with other children and to find a great part of his satisfaction in relations with them; who is given ample opportunity to handle and learn about things, to orient himself in the physical world and the world of ideas; who is taught to fight his own battles and en- couraged to make his own plans: such a child will not be
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