attract attention. Here again the refusal of food, if due to this
cause, is never the sole manifestation of the fault. Just as the delay
in learning to swallow and to chew properly and to feed himself is
part of a general want of dexterity and capacity manifested in all his
actions, so it will seldom happen that the child's anxiety to oppose
is only seen at meal-times. Watch a nervous child in the nursery
before the dinner hour. He is cross and restless and inclined to cry.
The nurse hands him a doll, and he throws it away saying, "No, no
doll." At the same moment he may catch sight of his ball, and it too
is violently rejected, "No, no ball." Everything in turn is treated in
the same way. Finally he falls upon his nurse, crying and beating her
with his hands, saying, "No, no Nurse." If that long-suffering woman
at that moment summons him to dinner, it will be strange indeed if his
attitude is not "No, no dinner," and "No, no" to every mouthful
offered him. How strong this love of opposition may be is illustrated
by the case of a little boy who was brought to me for refusal of food.
Three weeks before, he had been taken in a motor-car to his
grandfather's to midday dinner on Sunday, when his absolute refusal of
food had spoiled the day and had occupied the attention and the
efforts of the whole party. Doubtless he had enjoyed himself, for
three weeks later, when he caught sight of the car which was to bring
him to me, and which he had not seen in the interval, he at once said,
"Not eat my dinner." This child's father told me that the sight or
sound of the preparation of a meal was enough to bring on a paroxysm
of opposition. Now this force of opposition, as we have seen, only
develops into a serious difficulty when the child's own will has been
opposed too much, when authority has been too freely exercised, and
when the child has been urged and entreated and reproved with too
great frequency. His opposition grows with all counter-opposition. And
he is not really naughty, only irritable and restless from the