oice of the conscience of his parents
or teachers, its dictates must still be respected by these older and
wiser persons, and he must be permitted to do this thing which in
itself may be foolish, but which is not foolish, to him.

[Sidenote: Liberty]

And, on the other hand, the child who will have his own way even when
he knows it to be wrong should be allowed to have it within reasonable
limits. Richter says, leave to him the sorry victory, only exercising
sufficient ingenuity to make sure that it is a sorry one. What he must
be taught is that it is not at all a pleasure to have his own way,
unless his own way happens to be right; and this he can only be taught
by having his own way when the results are plainly disastrous. Every
time that a willful child does what he wants to do, and suffers
sharply for it, he learns a lesson that nothing but this experience
can teach him.

[Sidenote: Self-Punishment]

But his suffering must be plainly seen to be the result of his deed,
and not the result of his mother's anger. For example, a very young
child who is determined to play with fire may be allowed to touch the
hot lamp or a stove, whenever affairs can be so arranged that he is
not likely to burn himself too severely. One such lesson is worth all
the hand-spattings and cries of "No, no!" ever resorted to by anxious
parents. If he pulls down the blocks that you have built up for him,
they should stay down, while you get out of the room, if possible, in
order to evade all responsibility for that unpleasant result.

Prohibitions are almost useless. In order to convince yourself of
this, get some one to command you not to move your right arm or to
wink your eye. You will find it almost impossible to obey for even
a few moments. The desire to move your arm, which was not at all
conscious before, will become overpowering. The prohibition acts like
a suggestion, and is an implication that you would do the negative act
unless you were commanded not to. Miss Alcott, in "Little Men," well
illustrates this fact in the story of the children who were told not
to put beans up their noses and who straightway filled their noses
with beans.

[Sidenote: Positive Commands]

As we shall see in the next section, Froebel meets this difficulty by
substituting positive commands for prohibitions; that is, he tells the
child to do instead of telling him not to do. Tiedemann[E] says that
example is the first great evolutionary teacher, and l