1.  What special opportunities are offered in the rise of moral
     crises?

     2.  Do we tend to expect too high a development of character in
     children?

     3.  How early in life do we have manifestations of a conscious will?

     4.  What constitutes the importance of early crises of the will?

     5.  What are probably the causes when children habitually defy
     authority?

     6.  Is anger always a purely mental condition?

     7.  What importance have the angry demonstrations of infants?

     8.  What is the relation of the control of temper to the rightly
     developed life?

FOOTNOTES: 

[48] See Gow, Good Morals and Gentle Manners, chap. viii.

CHAPTER XX

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (Continued)

Sec. 1.  QUARRELS

A child who never quarrels probably needs to be examined by a physician; a child who is always quarreling equally needs the physician.  In the first there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet and realize some of life’s oppositions; in the other there is probably some underlying cause for nervous irritability.

It is perfectly natural for healthy people to differ; in childhood’s realm, where the values and proportions of life are not clearly seen, where social adjustments have not been acquired, the differences in opinions, as in possessions, lead to the expression of feeling in sharp and emphatic terms.  Rivalry and conflict are natural to the young animal.  Children do not wilfully enter into conflicts any more than adults; they are only less diplomatic in their language, more direct, and more likely to follow the word with attempts at force.

In few things do parents need more patience than in dealing with children’s quarrels.  First, seek to determine quietly the merits of the cause; but do not attempt to pronounce a verdict.  It is seldom wise to act as judge unless you allow the children to act as a jury.  But ascertain whether the quarrel is an expression somewhere of anger against injustice, wrong, or evil in some form.  Sometimes their quarrels have as much virtue as our crusades.  It is a sad mistake to quench the feeling of indignation against wrong or of hatred against evil.  A boy will need that emotional backing in his fights against the base and the foes of his kind.  While rejoicing in his feeling, show him how to direct it, train him to discriminate between hatred of wrong and bitterness toward the wrongdoer.  Help him to see the good that comes from loving people, no matter what they do.