s force of opposition, as we have seen, only
develops into a serious difficulty when the child's own will has been
opposed too much, when authority has been too freely exercised, and
when the child has been urged and entreated and reproved with too
great frequency. His opposition grows with all counter-opposition. And
he is not really naughty, only irritable and restless from the
thwarting of his natural impulses, and unable to express his thoughts
and desires. Negativism will not often confine itself to meal-times.
It will show clearly in all the actions of the child, and to get him
to eat well and freely we must so change our management of him that
negativism disappears or at least diminishes. There is no other way.
No entreaty, no force, no threats of force will ever succeed, but will
only make him worse, and, since negativism is due to mental unrest,
the struggles and crying will only perpetuate the cause. The one way
to banish negativism and overcome the opposition is to cease to
oppose, and to practise this aloofness not so much at meal-times, for
somehow by patience the child must be got to take his food, but in all
our conduct to him. Repression and reproof, and thwarting of the
child's will, and coaxing and entreaty must cease. There is no fear
that we shall thereby make the child unduly disobedient. We have
already, in another chapter, decided that negativism is not strength
of will on the part of the child which must be broken, but is the
result of constant attempts to oppose his nature, and the consequent
nervous unrest. If we cease to oppose, the symptoms will tend rapidly
to disappear, the child will become busy and contented and happy in
his play, and we shall hear no more of his refusal of food. If
sometimes it recurs for a week or two, we shall know how to deal with
it.

In children, as with us, periods of nervous unrest and unhappiness are
apt to recur in a sort of cycle. This cyclical character of mental
disturbance is often a marked feature. We see it in epilepsy and
in what the French have called Folie Circulaire. We see it in the
dipsomaniac, in the intermittency of his craving for drink and of his
periodical outbursts, and we see it in ourselves in those periods of
depression which recur so often, we know not why. Little children too
sometimes get out on the wrong side of their beds, and never get right
the whole long day. Their own experience of the vagaries of mental
states should lead mothers