An attempt to deceive the child is almost always wrong, and because of our tendency to underestimate the child’s intelligence it generally fails.  If a little girl has a sore throat, and the doctor comes to see her, she knows quite well that she is the prospective patient.  It is useless for the mother to begin proceedings by trying to convince her that this is not so—­that mother has a sore throat too.  Such a plan only arouses apprehension, because the child scents danger in the artifice.

Closely connected with the reasoning powers of the child is the difficult question of the growth of his appreciation of right and wrong, or, to put it in another way, the growth of obedience or disobedience.  Sooner or later the child must learn to obey; on that there can be no two opinions.  Nevertheless, I think there can be no doubt that far more harm is done by an over-emphasis of authority than by its neglect.  If the nurse or mother is of strong character, and the authority is exercised persistently and remorselessly, so that the whole life of the child is dominated, much as the recruit’s existence in the barrack yard is dominated by the drill sergeant, his independence of nature is crushed.  He is certain to become a colourless and uninteresting child; he runs a grave risk of growing sly, broken-spirited, and a currier of favour.  If a child is ruthlessly punished for disobedience from his earliest years, there is, it need hardly be said, a grave risk that he will learn to lie to save his skin.  I have seen a few such cases of what I may call the remorseless exercise of authority, and the result has not been pleasing.  Fortunately, perhaps, not many women have the heart to adopt this attitude to the waywardness of little children—­a waywardness to which their whole nature compels them by their pressing need to cultivate tactile sensations, to experiment, and to explore.  Therefore, much more commonly, the authority is exercised intermittently and capriciously, with the result that the child’s judgment is clouded and confused.  Conduct which is received indulgently or even encouraged at one moment is sternly reprimanded at another.  Every one who has the management of little children must above all see to it, whatever the degree of stringency in discipline which they decide to adopt, that their attitude is always consistent.  The less that is forbidden the better, but when the line is drawn it must be adhered to.  If once the child learns that the force which restrains him can be made to yield to his own efforts, the future is black indeed.  From that day he sets himself to strike down authority with a success which encourages him to further efforts.  I have known a child of five years terrorise his mother and get his own way by the threat, “I will go into one of my furies.”