pronounced manner.

Fright is a prolific cause of stuttering in small children and may
be traced in a great many cases to parents or nurses who persist
in telling children stories of a frightful nature, or who, as a
means of discipline, scare them by locking them up in the cellar,
the closet or the garret. To these scare-tales told to children
should be added the misguided practice of telling children that
"the bogey-man will get you" or "the policeman is after you" or
some such tale to enforce parental commands. An instance is
recalled of a woman who created out of a morbid imagination a
phantom of terrible mien, who abode in the garret and was
constantly lying in wait for the small children of the household
with the professed intention of "eating them alive."

Such disciplinary methods of parents savor much of the Inquisition
and the Dark Ages and should, for the good of the children and the
future generation they represent, be totally abolished. While
these methods do not, in every case, result in stuttering or
stammering, they make the child of a nervous disposition and lay
him liable in later years to the afflictions which accompany
nervous disorders. In some cases "tickling" a child has caused
stammering or stuttering. Care should be exercised here as well,
for prolonged tickling brings about intense muscular contraction
especially of the diaphragmatic muscles, which contraction is
accompanied by an agitated mental condition as well as extreme
nervousness, all of which approaches very closely to the
combination of abnormal conditions which are found to be present
in stammering or stuttering.