feared for the child, that he rapidly becomes. Placid, comfortable
people who do not worry about their children find their children
sensible and easy to manage. Parents who take a pride in the daring
and naughty pranks of their children unconsciously convey the
suggestion to their minds that such conduct is characteristic of them.
Nervous and apprehensive parents who are distressed when the child
refuses to eat or to sleep, and who worry all day long over possible
sources of danger to him, are forced to watch their child acquire a
reputation for nervousness, which, as always, is passively accepted
and consistently acted up to. Differences in type, determined by
hereditary factors, no doubt, exist and are often strongly marked. Yet
it is not untrue to say that variations in children, dependent upon
heredity, show chiefly in the relative susceptibility or
insusceptibility of the child to the influences of environment and
management. It is no easy task to distinguish between the nervous
child and the child of the nervous mother, between the child who
inherits an unusually sensitive nervous system and the child who is
nervous only because he breathes constantly an atmosphere charged with
doubt and anxiety.


(_c_) THE CHILD'S LOVE OF POWER

Let us study briefly a third quality of the child which, for want of a
better name, I have called after the ruling passion of mankind, his
love of power. Perhaps it would be better to call it his love of being
in the centre of the picture. It is his constant desire to make his
environment revolve around him and to attract all attention to
himself. Somewhat later in life this desire to attract attention, at
all costs, is well seen in the type of girl popularly regarded as