HEREDITARY NERVOUSNESS
The so-called nervous child—all things equal—is the child who is born into the world with an unbalanced or inefficiently controlled nervous system; and while it is all too true that the common nursery methods of "spoiling the child" are often equally to blame with heredity for the production of an erratic disposition and an uncontrolled temper, nevertheless, it is now generally recognized that the foundation of the difficulties of the nervous child reaches back into its immediate and remote ancestral heredity.
I no longer doubt but that many of these babies with a bad nervous heredity, who are born predisposed to Saint Vitus' dance, bad temper, chronic worry, neurasthenia, and hysteria could be spared much of their early troubles and later miseries by prompt and proper methods of early nursery discipline.
These nervous babies are born into the world with an abnormal lack of self-control. Their "inhibition control" over the natural and spontaneous tendency of the nervous system to manifest its inherent impulses and passing whims is decidedly deficient. The child is unduly sensitive, whines, hollers, or flies into a violent rage when its will is crossed in the least degree. Such a child sometimes keeps its mother living in constant terror because, when its will is crossed in any particular, it will scream and hold its breath until it turns black in the face and sometimes actually goes into a convulsion.
In dealing with these unfortunate little ones, fathers and mothers, while they should be firm and persistent in their methods of correction, should also be kind and patient; fully recognizing that whatever undesirable traits the little ones manifest they have come by honestly—these naughty tendencies being the result either of heredity or spoiling, for both of which the parents stand responsible.