was common-sense, practical, hard-headed training instead of
worry. Bend your sense, your intellect, your time, your energy, to
seeking how to train your children, instead of doing the senseless,
foolish, inane, and utterly useless thing of worrying about them.

Imagine being the child of an anxious parent, who sees sickness in
every unusual move or mood of her boy or girl. A little clearing of
the throat--"I'm sure he's going to have croup or diphtheria." The
girl unconsciously puts her hand to her brow--"What's the matter with
your head, dearie; got a headache?" A lad feels a trifle uncomfortable
in his clean shirt and wiggles about--"I'm sure Tom's coming down with
fever, he's so restless and he looks so flushed!"

God forbid that I should ever appear to caricature the wise care of a
devoted mother. That is not what I aim to do. I seek, with intenseness
of purpose, to show the folly, the absurdity of the anxieties, the
worries, the unnecessary and unreasonable cares of many mothers. For
the moment Fear takes possession of them, some kind of nagging is sure
to begin for the child. "Oh, Tom, you mustn't do this," or, "Maggie,
my darling, you must be careful of that," and the child is not only
nagged, but is thus _placed under bondage to the mother's unnecessary
alarm_. No young life can suffer this bondage without injury. It
destroys freedom and spontaneity, takes away that dash and vigor, that
vim and daring that essentially belong to youth, and should be the
unhampered heritage of every child. I'd far rather have a boy and
girl of mine get sick once in a while--though that is by no means
necessary--than have them subjected to the constant fear that
they might be sick. And when boys and girls wake up to the full
consciousness that their parents' worries are foolish, unnecessary,
and self-created, the mental and moral influence upon them is far more
pernicious than many even of our wisest observers have perceived.

There never was a boy or girl who was worried over, who was not
annoyed, fretted, injured, and cursed by it, instead of being
benefited. The benefit received from the love of the parent was in
spite of the worry, and not because of it. Worry is a hindrance, a
deterrent, a restraint; it is always putting a curbing hand upon the
natural exuberance and enthusiasm of youth. It says, "Don't, don't,"
with such fierce persistence, that it kills initiative, destroys
endeavor, murders naturalness, and drives its v