they should be confined within strict limits and to a definite hour in the daily routine.  There is sometimes too great a tendency for parents to make playthings of their little children.  Save at stated times, they must curb their desire to join in their games, to gather them in their arms, to hold them on their knee, while they stimulate their minds by a constant succession of new impressions.  With an only child, whose existence is the single preoccupation of the nurse and mother, and, often enough, of the father as well, it is difficult to avoid this fault.  Yet, if wisdom is not learnt, the damage to the child may be distressingly serious.  He rapidly grows incapable of supporting life without this excessive stimulation.  Without the constant society and attention of a grown person, he feels himself lost.  He cannot be left alone, and yet cannot enjoy the society he craves.  He grows more and more restless, dominating the whole situation more and more, constantly plucking at his nurse’s skirts, perversely refusing every new sensation that is offered him to still his restlessness for a moment.  The result of all this stimulation is mental irritability and exhaustion, which in turn is often the direct cause of refusal of food, dyspepsia, wakefulness, and excessive crying.

The devices by which children will attract to themselves the attention of their elders, and which, if successful, are repeated with an almost insane persistence, take on the most varied forms.  Sometimes the child persistently makes use of an expression, or asks questions, which produce a pleasant stir of shocked surprise and renewed reproofs and expostulations.  One little boy shouted the word “stomachs” with unwearied persistence for many weeks together.  A little girl dismayed her parents and continued in spite of all they could do to prevent her to ask every one if they were about to pass water.

Disorders of conduct of this sort are not really difficult to control.  Suitable punishment will succeed, provided also that the child is deprived of the sense of satisfaction which he has in the interest which his conduct excites.  His behaviour is only of importance because it indicates certain faults in his environment and a certain element of nervous unrest and overstrain.

The young child demands from his environment that it should give him two things—­security and liberty.  He must have security from shocks to his nervous system.  It is true that from the greater shocks the children of the well-to-do are as a rule carefully guarded.  No one threatens or ill-uses them.  They are not terrified by drunken brawls or scenes of passion.  They are not made fearful by the superstitions of ignorant people.  Nevertheless, by the summation of stimuli little emotions constantly repeated can have effects no less grave upon their nervous system.  From this constantly acting irritation the child needs security.  In the second place, he requires liberty to develop his own initiative, which should be stimulated and sustained and directed.  Without liberty and without security conduct cannot fail to become abnormal.