THE CHILD’S WILL

Shannon News, 7 February 1928, Page 2

THE CHILD’S WILL

“Of course, I can’t let him have his own way,” said a mother the other day apropos of a difference of opinion between herself and her three-year-old son. It was not clear, and it never has been, why it should be laid down as a principle that whenever an adult and a child are in disagreement it must always be the child who must give way. The child has a personality that should be respected. He has his desires, his impulses and his cravings for expression ’exactly the same, as an adult lias. And one can never urn derstand how it can become a matter of parental righteousness to assume that those desires must he ignored, and impulses thwarted whenever they happen to be in conflict with those of anyone a little nearer senility than the child himself. How .can we expect our children to develop into strong-minded, self-reliant men and women, capable, when they are older, of making decisions, and standing up

for them, if them all the training" and opportunity of using their will when they are young?

The child is father to the man, and if we adopt an attitude of honest reasonableness to the young", letting them have their will sometimes, so that they may learn by experience the full consequences of their OAvn acts, denying it at other times when we can show them that it is not mere obstinacy on our part but a well-reason-ed attitude that has determined our course, we are doing everything in oar power to help them to develop into firm-willed and reasonable men and women.