We know how effective the so-called “therapeutic conversation” may be in helping some overwrought and nervously exhausted man or woman to regain peace of mind and self-control.  After an intimate conversation with a medical man who knows how to draw from the patient a free expression of the doubts, anxieties, and fears which are obsessing him, many a patient feels as though he had awakened in that instant from a nightmare, and passes from the consulting-room to find his troubles become of little account.  Not a few patients return to be reassured once more, and derive new strength on each occasion.  Yet visits such as these must be infrequent or they will lose their power.  Now, just as the physician is well aware that his intervention if too frequently repeated will lose its effect, so the parent must be chary of too frequent an appeal to the moral sense of the child.  At long intervals opportunity may be taken with all seriousness to set before the child ideals of conduct, to-speak to him of the meaning of character and of self-discipline, and of the standards by which we judge a man or woman to be weak and despicable, or strong and to be admired.  The effect of such an intimate conversation, never repeated, may persist throughout life.  Constantly reiterated appeals, on the other hand, do more harm than good.  To tell a child daily that he is “breaking mother’s heart,” or that he is “disappointing his father,” is to debase the moral appeal and deprive it of its strength.

For everyday use it is best to cultivate a manner which can indicate to the child that he is for the moment unpopular, but which at the same time denies to the small sinner the interest of attempting his own defence.  On the other hand, should the child be reasonably in doubt as to the nature of his offence we must spare no trouble in explaining it to him.  Punishment will be most effective when the child is convinced that he is rightly convicted.  If it is to act as a real deterrent, he must agree to be punished—­a frame of mind which, if it can be produced, may be welcomed as a sure sign that training is proceeding along the right lines.

By physical training, mental training, and moral training the child’s character is formed and self-discipline is developed.  With the child of neuropathic disposition and inheritance matters may not proceed so smoothly.  Reasoning and conduct may be alike faulty, and the nervous disturbances may even cause detriment to the physical health.  Not that the nervous child requires an environment different from that of the normal child.  The difficulties which the parents will encounter and the problems which must be solved differ not in kind but in degree.  An error of environment which is without effect in the normal child may be sufficient to produce disastrous results in the neuropathic.