But the force which is acting most strongly in producing this refusal of food is the force of which we have spoken in a previous chapter—­the force which results in negativism, the force which is in reality the habit of opposition, the love of power, and the desire to attract attention.  Here again the refusal of food, if due to this cause, is never the sole manifestation of the fault.  Just as the delay in learning to swallow and to chew properly and to feed himself is part of a general want of dexterity and capacity manifested in all his actions, so it will seldom happen that the child’s anxiety to oppose is only seen at meal-times.  Watch a nervous child in the nursery before the dinner hour.  He is cross and restless and inclined to cry.  The nurse hands him a doll, and he throws it away saying, “No, no doll.”  At the same moment he may catch sight of his ball, and it too is violently rejected, “No, no ball.”  Everything in turn is treated in the same way.  Finally he falls upon his nurse, crying and beating her with his hands, saying, “No, no Nurse.”  If that long-suffering woman at that moment summons him to dinner, it will be strange indeed if his attitude is not “No, no dinner,” and “No, no” to every mouthful offered him.  How strong this love of opposition may be is illustrated by the case of a little boy who was brought to me for refusal of food.  Three weeks before, he had been taken in a motor-car to his grandfather’s to midday dinner on Sunday, when his absolute refusal of food had spoiled the day and had occupied the attention and the efforts of the whole party.  Doubtless he had enjoyed himself, for three weeks later, when he caught sight of the car which was to bring him to me, and which he had not seen in the interval, he at once said, “Not eat my dinner.”  This child’s father told me that the sight or sound of the preparation of a meal was enough to bring on a paroxysm of opposition.  Now this force of opposition, as we have seen, only develops into a serious difficulty when the child’s own will has been opposed too much, when authority has been too freely exercised, and when the child has been urged and entreated and reproved with too great frequency.  His opposition grows with all counter-opposition.  And he is not really naughty, only irritable and restless from the thwarting of his natural impulses, and unable to express his thoughts and desires.  Negativism will not often confine itself to meal-times.  It will show clearly in all the actions of the child, and to get him to eat well and freely we must so change our management of him that negativism disappears or at least diminishes.  There is no other way.  No entreaty, no force, no threats of force will ever succeed, but will only make him worse, and, since negativism is due to mental unrest, the struggles and crying will only perpetuate the cause.  The one way to banish negativism and overcome the opposition is to cease to oppose, and to practise this aloofness not so much at meal-times, for somehow by patience