you are unduly interfering with her, and if you continue in that
way, you will either make a defiant, disagreeable youngster or a
servile, cringing slave to arbitrary authority. On the other hand,
if Johnny should wish to play with a knife or a box of matches, it
manifestly devolves upon you to take these objects away from him, no
matter how strong his desire to have them may be. But it also
devolves upon you to see that such harmful objects are not very easy
for him to obtain and to see to it that plenty of other harmless
things are provided for him.

This suggests a common mistake parents and loving friends often make
in meeting the uncomfortable assertions of the child's will. When
the child cries for the moon, you try to get him interested in a
jack-in-the-box; and when he wants a fragile piece of bric-a-brac--
you try to substitute for it a tin whistle. With a very young child,
that is about all you can do. But a time comes when the child is old
enough to know the difference between that upon which he has set his
heart and that which you have substituted for it in his hand. At
this time you must stop offering substitutes. The child is now old
enough to understand that some things are _not_ to be had, and
that crying for them will not bring them. To offer him a substitute
is now not only an insult to his intelligence, but it is
demoralizing to his will; it makes for a loose hold upon the object
of his desire--and it is the firmness of this hold that is the
beginning of a strong will. It does not take the child long to learn
that he is not to have a knife or a lighted lamp; nor does it take
him long to get into the way of scattering his desires, so that he
has no will at all.

In the second place, the assumption that stubbornness is a sign of