article for the
nursery table is kept. He will fetch the tablecloth and help to put it
in place, spoons and cups and saucers will be carried carefully to the
table, and when the meal is over he will want to help to clear it all
away. All this is to him a great delight, and the good nurse will
encourage it in the children, because she sees that in doing so they
gain quickness and dexterity and poise of body. The first purposive
movements of the child should be welcomed and encouraged. It is
foolish and wrong to repress them, as many nurses do, because the
child in his attempts gets in the way, and no doubt for a time delays
rather than expedites preparations. The child who is made to sit
immobile in his chair while everything is done for him is losing
precious hours of learning and of practice. It is useless, and to my
mind a little distasteful, to substitute for all this wonderful child
activity the artificial symbolism of the kindergarten school in which
children are taught to sing songs or go through certain semi-dramatic
activities which savour too much of a performance acquired by precise
instruction. If such accomplishments are desired, they may be added
to, but they must not replace, the more workaday activities of the
little child. The child whose impulses towards purposive action are
encouraged is generally a happy child, with a mind at rest. When those
impulses are restrained, mental unrest and irritability are apt to
appear, and toys and picture books and kindergarten games will not be
sufficient to restore his natural peace of mind.

_(b)_ THE SUGGESTIBILITY OF THE CHILD

We may pass from considering the imitativeness of the child to study a
second and closely related quality, his suggestibility. His conception
of himself as a separate individual, of his ego, only gradually
emerges. It is profoundly modified by ideas derived from those around
him. Because of his lack of acquired experience, there is in the child
an extreme sensitiveness to impressions from outside. Take, for
example, a matter that is sometimes one of great difficulty, the
child's likes and dislikes for food. Many mothers make complaint that
there are innumerable articles of diet which the child will not take:
that he will not drink milk, or that he will not eat fat, or meat, or
vegetables, or milk puddings. There are people who believe that these
peculiarities of taste correspond with idiosyncrasies of digestion,
and that children instin