This forcible resentment of and resistance to the strong will of
another is a cause of great nervous suffering, the greater as the
expression of such feeling is repressed. Severe illness may easily
be the result.

To train a child to gain freedom from the various nervous irritants,
one must not only be gaining the same freedom one's self, but must
practise meeting the child in the way he is counselled to meet
others. One must refuse to be in any way a nervous irritant to the
child. In that case quite as much instruction is received as given.
A child, too, is doubly sensitive; he not only feels the intrusion
on his own individuality, but the irritable or self-willed attitude
of another in expressing such intrusion.

Similarly, in keeping a respectful distance, a teacher grows
sensitive to the child, and again the help is mutual, with sometimes
a balance in favor of the child.

This mistaken, parent-child attitude is often the cause of severe
nervous suffering in those whose only relation is that of
friendship, when one mind is stronger than the other. Sometimes
there is not any real superior strength on the one side; it is
simply by the greater gross-ness of the will that the other is
overcome. This very grossness blinds one completely to the
individuality of a finer strength; the finer individual succumbs
because he cannot compete with crowbars, and the parent-child
contraction is the disastrous result. To preserve for a child a
normal nervous system, one must guide but not limit him. It is a sad
sight to see a mother impressing upon a little brain that its owner
is a naughty, naughty boy, especially when such impression is