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Until he is three or four years old, no child tells a willful lie, although he may make mistakes simply because he does not know how to state a particular fact. After that age a child may lie to gain some advantage or to avoid some unpleasantness.
Children steal. Dr. Kanner finds, because they have not been taught that what they want is not always theirs to have, because other children date them to steal, because (particularly in adolescent girls) a momentary impulse prompts them to. Dr. Kanner advises against punishing such children for their first offense. Good associations and organized recreational activities will keep them from becoming habitual thieves.
Cruelty is a very serious trait in a child and should, say's Dr. Kanner. "be examined and treated with no lesser care and expertness than one would examine and treat pulmonary tuberculosis or rheumatic endocarditis."
In dealing with sexual difficulties Dr. Kanner gets best results by frankly and truthfully answering all the child's questions in words which the child can understand. However, he carefully avoids telling the child anything which the child cannot understand. The answers should be intellectual, not moral, because the healthy child is not naturally moral.
With this point of view, Dr. Kanner does not get excited about a small child exploring its genitals. Such explorations usually pass just as soon as the child has something else to occupy its unfolding intelligence.
Dr. Kanner does not believe that Alfred de Musset fell in love at 4, Byron at 8, Dante at 9, Goethe at 10. He believes that they, like many another very young child, had a "crush" on someone. Crushes are not reprehensible, says Dr. Kanner. But they may occasionally lead to sexual affairs, especially if the person adored is not well balanced emotionally.
Peeping may be a sexual aberration, the result of a child accidentally seeing adults at sexual acts and then trying to find out what it all means. When children display their naked bodies to one another, they do so to satisfy curiosity.
Dr. Kanner urges parents to be patient with bothersome children, to tell them all the truth they can understand, to lie never, to beat them never, to show them a composed, orderly example ever. If a parent provides such a common sense environment for his child to grow up in. and if the child is kept well and cured of physical imperfections, then Dr. Kanner promises the child will naturally grow up to be a perfect, healthy little lady or gentleman.
* By Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, 111. Price: $6.
**Approximately 10% of children learn to control their bladder before they are one year old; 30% by their 18th month; 65% to 80% by the end of their second year.