indication of depravity or wickedness.

[Illustration: The impulse to action early leads to "doing."]

Some of the directions in which the parents may profit from what the
specialists have worked out may be suggested. There is the question
of punishment, for example. How many of us have thought out a
satisfactory philosophy of punishment? In our personal relations
with our children we all too frequently cling to the theory of
punishment that justifies us in "paying back" for the trouble we
have been caused--if, indeed, we do any more than vent our temper at
the annoyance. It is not viciousness on our part; it is merely
ignorance. But the time is rapidly approaching when there will be no
excuse for ignorance, even if it is not yet time to say that
preventable ignorance is vicious.

How many mothers, for example, realize that the desire on the part
of the child to touch, to do--to get into mischief--is a fundamental
characteristic of childhood, and not an indication of perversity in
her particular Johnny or Mary? How many know that these instincts
are the most useful and the most usable traits that the child has;
that the checking of these impulses may mean the destruction of
individual qualities of great importance in the formation of
character? How many know how wisely to direct these instincts
without thwarting them?

How many mothers--good housewives--know anything at all about the
imagination, that crowning glory of the human mind? They admire the
poet's flights of fancy; but when, on being asked where his brother
is, Harry says, "He went off in a great, great, big airship," they