SHY CHILDREN. They Should be Strengthened to Bear Their Misfortune and to Overcome It.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 180, 27 November 1886, Page 7

SHY CHILDREN. They Should be Strengthened to Bear Their Misfortune and to Overcome It.

Pity the sufferings of eh'y children ; stand between these little ones and the people who unthinkingly inflict pain upon these tender souls. Why outrago a child's faith n nature, human and material, if hohasßucb faith, or prevent hie acquiring it, by taking advantage of his ahynvea and want of aeliconridenco? Why fill him with distrust, with fear, with terror? Why convert the world that , should be boaatifui to him into one that is to be dreaded ? If the person who does these things is anything short of I a brute, he is guilty of a eeiious offence that no carelessness can excuse. j Courage and confidence should be stimulated in a child who is shy. He should be taught to believe that hia extreme disgust is ill-founded, by showing him the source of hia error. A happy life will then be opened to him, where all before was desolate. But to intensify this shyneas ia an easy matter, and many children have been made to suffer the pangs of a miserable existence through ecarinor, terrifying and various impositions upon their weakness. Jf a child is bashful at the pretence of a stranger, cor.fidence in himself and the stranger also can be awakened by treating the child with conticlerate regard for hia feelings and by a gentle prdaaure behind him that shall force him to overcome them. But to expose the infinity anri laugh at it in ridicule, increase the pam and make the cure all the more difficult-, co that the sufferer must undergo additional pains when he grows up and must overcome them best he may in his unavoidable contact with the world. What a gratifying thing it must be to scare a child -to fill hia heart with hob goblins, to people the darkness with monsters, to manufacture euTOundinga that incdBsantly menace harm. This would be amueemenfc to the savage who burn 3 his capcivea at the stake, but to the person living in this nineteenth centu«-y of civilisation it should be as repulsive as savagery itself. How pleasing an act it must be to fri<<ht3n a child to death, as it i 3 now and then done, or to scare the little one till ho stands transfixed with terror and trembling in agony. Stiengthen thy children to bear their misfortune and to overcome it ; do not subject them to ridicule or foar. They can bo led out of the manifold anhappine?s9S arising from shyness, by strengthening each cautious step until familiarity makes it permanent ; and so, a little at a timi-, they can be advanced in confidence and courage until they dare to look about them without fear or failure or harm. The impressions of childhood aie often almost ineradicable ; people should take care, then, that these impressions shall be true, hopeful, giving self-reliance and courage to tho?e who need it. There can be assault and battery against the feelings as well as against the body, and the foivner offence is more enduring and more_ painful than the latter, it ia jusb a^ inalienable a right that one's feelings shall not bf» outraged aa that his bodily liberty snail be abridged, and the shy child demands immunity and protection from those who outrage this right by making him a victim of his shyness.