I do not like people to be too fastidious in speaking with children, nor should they go out of their way to avoid calling a spade a spade; they are always found out if they do.  Good manners in this respect are always perfectly simple; but an imagination soiled by vice makes the ear over-sensitive and compels us to be constantly refining our expressions.  Plain words do not matter; it is lascivious ideas which must be avoided.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children.  Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil; and how should children without this knowledge of evil have the feeling which results from it?  To give them lessons in modesty and good conduct is to teach them that there are things shameful and wicked, and to give them a secret wish to know what these things are.  Sooner or later they will find out, and the first spark which touches the imagination will certainly hasten the awakening of the senses.  Blushes are the sign of guilt; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Children have not the same desires as men; but they are subject like them to the same disagreeable needs which offend the senses, and by this means they may receive the same lessons in propriety.  Follow the mind of nature which has located in the same place the organs of secret pleasures and those of disgusting needs; she teaches us the same precautions at different ages, sometimes by means of one idea and sometimes by another; to the man through modesty, to the child through cleanliness.

I can only find one satisfactory way of preserving the child’s innocence, to surround him by those who respect and love him.  Without this all our efforts to keep him in ignorance fail sooner or later; a smile, a wink, a careless gesture tells him all we sought to hide; it is enough to teach him to perceive that there is something we want to hide from him.  The delicate phrases and expressions employed by persons of politeness assume a knowledge which children ought not to possess, and they are quite out of place with them, but when we truly respect the child’s innocence we easily find in talking to him the simple phrases which befit him.  There is a certain directness of speech which is suitable and pleasing to innocence; this is the right tone to adopt in order to turn the child from dangerous curiosity.  By speaking simply to him about everything you do not let him suspect there is anything left unsaid.  By connecting coarse words with the unpleasant ideas which belong to them, you quench the first spark of imagination; you do not forbid the child to say these words or to form these ideas; but without his knowing it you make him unwilling to recall them.  And how much confusion is spared to those who speaking from the heart always say the right thing, and say it as they themselves have felt it!