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Your Child: Today and Tomorrow by Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
page 66 of 190 (34%)
affection from the parents. There is involved something more
important than rewards and punishments. The young child would really
rather obey than be left to his own decisions. When he has no one to
tell him what to do, or to warn him against what he must not do, the
child feels his helplessness. And there is valuable tonic for the
child's body as well as for his will in the comfortable
consciousness of a superior authority upon which he can safely lean.

As the child becomes older he begins to assert his own desires in a
more positive fashion, and at about two and a half to three years
the problem of obedience takes on a new aspect. For now the child
has had experience enough to enable him to have his own purposes,
and these often come in conflict with the wishes of the mother.
Should obedience be now demanded? And should it be insisted upon?
There is more involved in this problem than the convenience of
administering the household, or the immediate safety and well-being
of the child. There is involved the whole question of the child's
future attitude toward life. Shall the child become one who
habitually obeys the commands of others, without questioning,
without resisting, and so perhaps become a pliant tool in the hands
of powerful but unscrupulous men? Or shall he be allowed to go his
own way and over-ride the wishes of others, to become, perhaps, a
wilful victim of his own whims and moods, presenting a stubborn
resistance to overwhelming forces that will in the end crush him?

In the case of the very young child absolute obedience must be
required, for the reason that the child is not in a position to
assume the responsibility for his conduct. The will of the mother
must be followed for the child's own safety and health, for the
child has no intelligence or experience,--that is, judgment,--or
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