The fundamental abnormal characteristic of that great group of nerve-patients who throng the doctor's office is sensitiveness, suggestibility, and lack of self-control. Sensitiveness is nothing more or less than a refined form of selfishness, while lack of self-control is merely the combined end-product of heredity and childhood spoiling. I am a great believer in, and practitioner of, modern methods of psychological child culture, but let me say to the fond parent who has a nervous child, when you have failed to teach the child self-control by suggestive methods, do not hesitate to punish, for of all cases it is doubly true of the nervous child that if you "spare the rod" you are sure to "spoil the child."
Let me urge parents to secure this self-control and enforce this discipline before the child is three or four years of age; correct the child at a time when your purpose can be accomplished without leaving in his subconscious mind so many vivid memories of these personal and, sometimes, more or less brutal physical encounters. Every year you put off winning the disciplinary fight with your offspring, you enormously increase the danger and likelihood of alienating his affections and otherwise destroying that beautiful and sympathetic relationship which should always exist between a child and his parents. In other words, the older the child, the less the good you accomplish by discipline and the more the personal resentment toward the parent is aroused on the part of the child.
CRIME AND INTEMPERANCE
While it is generally admitted that feeble-mindedness lies at the foundation of most crime, we must also recognize that failure on the part of parents to teach their children self-control is also responsible for many otherwise fairly normal youths falling into crime and intemperance. The parents of a nervous child must recognize that they will in all probability be subject to special danger along these lines as they grow up. The nervous child, as it grows up, is quite likely to be erratic, emotional, indecisive, and otherwise easily influenced by his associates and environment.
Nervous children are more highly suggestible than others, and if they have not been taught to control their appetites and desires, their wants and passions, they are going to form an especially susceptible class of society from which may be recruited high-class criminals, dipsomaniacs, and other unfortunates.
It is true that any spoiled child, however normal its heredity, may turn out bad in these respects if it is not properly trained; but what we are trying to accomplish here is to emphasize to parents that the nervous child is doubly prone to go wrong and suffer much sorrow in after life if he is not early and effectively taught self-control.
UNSPOILING THE CHILD
If the child of nervous tendencies forms the habit of crying, sulking, or otherwise misbehaving when it is denied its desires, or when something it wants done is not immediately attended to, it will be found an excellent plan simply to stand still and let the little fellow have it out with himself, in the meanwhile kindly reminding him to say, "please mamma," "please papa," etc. I well remember one nervous little girl who would yell at the top of her voice and become black in the face the moment she wanted a door opened or anything else. A few weeks of patience and firmness on the part of the mother entirely cured her of this unbecoming trait.
As a rule, it will be found best not to argue with the nervous child. The moment your commands are not heeded, when you have admonished the child once or twice without effect, take him quickly to the crib or the nursery and there leave him alone, isolated, until he is in a state of mind to manifest a kindly spirit and an obedient disposition. It is an excellent plan quietly and quickly to deprive such children of their pleasures temporarily, in order to produce thoughtfulness; and these methods are often more efficacious than the infliction of varying degrees of pain under the guise of punishment.
Nervous children must be taught to go to sleep by themselves. They are not to be rocked or allowed to hold the hand of the mother or the caretaker. The nervous baby should not be encouraged to exhibit its cuteness for the delectation of the family or the amusement of strangers and visitors. He should be especially trained in early and regular habits, taking particular pains to see that bed wetting and similar bad habits are early overcome; otherwise, he may drag along through early life and become the cause of great embarrassment both to himself and his parents.