[Sidenote:  Abnormal Laziness]

However, there is a degree of laziness difficult of definition which is abnormal; the child fails to perform any work with regularity, and falls behind both at school and at home.  This may be the result of (1) poor assimilation, (2) of anaemia, or it may be (3) the first symptom of some disease.

(1.) Poor assimilation may show itself either by (a) thinness and lack of appetite; (b) fat and abnormal appetite; (c) retarded growth; or (d) irregular and poorly made teeth and weak bones.

[Sidenote:  Anaemia]

(2.) Anaemia betrays itself most characteristically by the color of the lips and gums.  These, instead of being red, are a pale yellowish pink, and the whole complexion has a sort of waxy pallor.  In extreme cases this pallor even becomes greenish.  As the disease is accompanied with little pain, and few if any marked symptoms, beyond sleepiness and weakness, it often exists for some time without being suspected by the parents.

(3.) The advent of many other diseases is announced by a languid indifference to surroundings, and a slow response to the customary stimuli.  The child’s brain seems clouded, and a light form of torpor invades the whole body.  The child, who is usually active and interested in things about him, but who loses his activity and becomes dull and irresponsive, should be carefully watched.  It may be that he is merely changing his form of growth—­i.e., is beginning to grow tall after completion of his period of laying on flesh, or vice versa.  Or he may be entering upon the period of adolescence.  But if it is neither of these things, a physician should be consulted.

[Sidenote:  Monotony]

A milder degree of laziness may be induced by a too monotonous round of duties.  Try changing them.  Make them as attractive as possible.  For, of course, you do not require him to perform these duties for your sake, whatever you allow him to suppose about it, but chiefly for the sake of their influence on his character.  Therefore, if the influence of any work is bad, you will change it, although the new work may not be nearly so much what you prefer to have him do.  Whatever the work is, if it is only emptying waste-baskets, don’t nag him, merely expect him to do it, and expect it steadily.

[Sidenote:  Helping]

In their earlier years all children love to help mother.  They like any piece of real work even better than play.  If this love of activity was properly encouraged, if the mother permitted the child to help, even when he succeeded only in hindering, he might well become one those fortunate persons who love to work.  This is the real time for preventing laziness.  But if this early period has been missed, the next best thing is to take advantage of every spontaneous interest as it arises; to hitch the impulse, as it were, to some task that must be steadily performed.  For example, if the child wants to play with tools,