The difficulty in the education of young infants is largely the delicate balance required in the parent. Constant watchfulness and much labour are needed to avoid injury to health; these qualities will hardly exist in the necessary degree except where there is strong parental affection. But where this exists, it is very likely not to be wise. To the devoted parent, the child is immensely important. Unless care is taken, the child feels this, and judges himself as important as his parents feel him. In later life, his social environment will not regard him so fondly, and habits which assume that he is the centre of other people’s universe will lead to disappointment. It is therefore necessary, not only in the first year, but afterwards also, that the parents should be breezy and cheerful and rather matter-of-fact where the child’s possible ailments are concerned. In old days, infants were at once restricted and coddled: their limbs were not free, they were too warmly dressed, they were hampered in their spontaneous activities, but they were petted, sung to, rocked and dandled. This was ideally wrong, since it turned them into helpless pampered parasites.[4] The right rule is: encourage spontaneous activities, but discourage demands upon others. Do not let the child see how much you do for it, or how much trouble you take. Let it, wherever possible, taste the joy of a success achieved by its own efforts, not extracted by tyrannizing over the grown-ups. Our aim, in modern education, is to reduce external discipline to a minimum; but this requires an internal self-discipline which is much more easily acquired in the first year of life than at any other time. For example: when you want a child to sleep, do not wheel it up and down, or take it in your arms, or even stay where it can see you. If you do this once, the child will demand that you should do it next time; in an incredibly short space of time it becomes a terrific business to get the child to sleep. Make it warm and dry and comfortable, put it down firmly, and after a few quiet remarks leave it to itself. It may cry for a few minutes, but unless it is ill it will soon stop. If you then go to look, you will find that it is fast asleep. And it will sleep far more with this treatment than with petting and indulgence.