The child whose body and arms are free will certainly cry much less than a child tied up in swaddling clothes.  He who knows only bodily needs, only cries when in pain; and this is a great advantage, for then we know exactly when he needs help, and if possible we should not delay our help for an instant.  But if you cannot relieve his pain, stay where you are and do not flatter him by way of soothing him; your caresses will not cure his colic, but he will remember what he must do to win them; and if he once finds out how to gain your attention at will, he is your master; the whole education is spoilt.

Their movements being less constrained, children will cry less; less wearied with their tears, people will not take so much trouble to check them.  With fewer threats and promises, they will be less timid and less obstinate, and will remain more nearly in their natural state.  Ruptures are produced less by letting children cry than by the means taken to stop them, and my evidence for this is the fact that the most neglected children are less liable to them than others.  I am very far from wishing that they should be neglected; on the contrary, it is of the utmost importance that their wants should be anticipated, so that they need not proclaim their wants by crying.  But neither would I have unwise care bestowed on them.  Why should they think it wrong to cry when they find they can get so much by it?  When they have learned the value of their silence they take good care not to waste it.  In the end they will so exaggerate its importance that no one will be able to pay its price; then worn out with crying they become exhausted, and are at length silent.

Prolonged crying on the part of a child neither swaddled nor out of health, a child who lacks nothing, is merely the result of habit or obstinacy.  Such tears are no longer the work of nature, but the work of the child’s nurse, who could not resist its importunity and so has increased it, without considering that while she quiets the child to-day she is teaching him to cry louder to-morrow.

Moreover, when caprice or obstinacy is the cause of their tears, there is a sure way of stopping them by distracting their attention by some pleasant or conspicuous object which makes them forget that they want to cry.  Most nurses excel in this art, and rightly used it is very useful; but it is of the utmost importance that the child should not perceive that you mean to distract his attention, and that he should be amused without suspecting you are thinking about him; now this is what most nurses cannot do.

Most children are weaned too soon.  The time to wean them is when they cut their teeth.  This generally causes pain and suffering.  At this time the child instinctively carries everything he gets hold of to his mouth to chew it.  To help forward this process he is given as a plaything some hard object such as ivory or a wolf’s tooth.  I think this is a mistake.  Hard bodies applied to the gums do not soften them; far from it, they make the process of cutting the teeth more difficult and painful.  Let us always take instinct as our guide; we never see puppies practising their budding teeth on pebbles, iron, or bones, but on wood, leather, rags, soft materials which yield to their jaws, and on which the tooth leaves its mark.