SEX INSTRUCTION
»ir,--ANeplying to your correspondent, "Out of the Everywhere,’ who is concerned, and quite rightly, with the mental welfare of the sensitive, spiritual child, may I say that my article was addressed particularly to the parents and guardians of just such children, If we could keep our "other-worldly" /children segregated in an other-worldly
home, in an other-worldly neighbour. hood and attending an _ other-worldly school it might be permissible to give an entirely spiritual explanation of the advent of baby brother, although the shock of discovering the physical origin is bound to come sooner or later, and the later the discovery, the more profound the shock, in my opinion, Since, however, our sensitive children must everywhere mix with children of coarser clay, and since sex knowledge inevitably comes to them in their early years in one way or another, it seems to me that it had better come from a sympathetic parent, and later on from a well-trained, well-balanced teacher, than from another child who delights in destroying all those pretty-make-believes that have been built up "out of the everywhere." So far from it being cruelty to give the physical truth to the sensitive child when it asks for an explanation of the origin of baby brother, I think it is cruelty to fill its mind with airy nonsense only to have. a playmate brush aside such delicate imaginings with the truth in its most brutal and sordid aspect. You smash then not only the child’s faith in the beauty and rightness of Nature, but its faith in its parents and their veracitv.
M. R.
KENT
(Kohu Kohu).
{Our correspondent goes on to say (in reply to the same critic), that although there has been "peace in the land... , for many long periods in our history," the ‘percentage of sex-normal adults has been distressingly small." In reply to another critic, "C.C.," our correspondent agrees that ‘‘Nature not work too badly if left alone,’’ but asks how often that is.-Ed,]
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 195, 19 March 1943, Page 2
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329SEX INSTRUCTION New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 195, 19 March 1943, Page 2
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