3.6.2 The Method of Disuse

This method is largely negative. It aims to safeguard an individual against ills by withholding stimuli. The mother aims to keep scissors out of reach and sight of the baby that it may not be lured into danger.

Some parents, upon discerning that the pugnacious instinct is manifesting itself vigorously in their boy, isolate him from other boys—keep him by himself through a period of a year or more that the tendency may not be accentuated.

Other parents, observing their daughter’s inclination to be frivolous, or seeing the instinct of sex begin to manifest itself in her interest in young men, send her away to a girl’s school—a sort of intellectual nunnery.

Frequently teachers follow this method in the conduct of their classes. The tendency to self-assertion and verbal combat, natural to youth, is smothered by an unwillingness on the part of the teacher to indulge questions and debate or by a marked inclination to do all the talking.

It is clear that this method of disuse has its place in the training of children, though grave dangers attend its too frequent indulgence. Children and others of immature judgment need the protection of withheld stimuli.

But clearly this is not a method to be recommended for general application. The boy who is never allowed to quarrel or fight may very possibly grow up to be a man afraid to meet the battles of life; the girl, if her natural emotions are checked, may lose those very qualities that make for the highest type of womanhood and motherhood.

Fortunately, in these days, it is pretty nearly impossible to bring boys and girls up in “glass houses.” Doubly fortunate, for they are made happy in their bringing up and are fitted for a world not particularly devoted to the fondling of humankind.

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