Sometimes he can do this by closely observing the behaviour of the child in his waking moments, and the trend of his waking thoughts. Or he can do it by gaining the child's confidence and questioning him as to any fears, worries, or griefs that may be disturbing him. If, as will often happen, the child insists, it may be in all sincerity, that nothing is troubling him, there is yet another avenue of information open to the parent--namely, by questioning the child about his dreams. Through studying his dreams, in fact, it is possible to gain clearer insight into his mental life than perhaps by any other means. Again and again, as we have seen, the modern psychologist has made use of dream-analysis with illuminating results. Parents can and should similarly analyse their children's dreams. And I feel justified in predicting that parents of the future, alert to detect and correct any undesirable trends in their children's mental and moral development, will make frequent use of dream-analysis as an aid in successful child-rearing. The helpfulness of dream-analysis to parents comes from the fact that the dreams of children usually relate either to things which the children dread, or things which they desire. This is also true of the dreams of adults, as shown by the analysis of thousands of dreams. In the case of adults, however, the fear or the desire mirrored by the dream is nearly always masked by the variety and seeming absurdity or incongruity of the dream-images. As when, for example, a complicated, fantastic dream of adventure in an out-of-the-way part of the world is found, on examination, to be connected with a secret longing for marriage. Accordingly, prolonged and tedious analysis is often needed to get at the true meaning of an adult's dreams. In the case of children's dreams, the opposite is the rule. There is little repression or distortion, the dream dealing directly with what is uppermost in the dreamer's waking mind, and emphasising the fears or fulfilling the wishes of his waking life. This is what makes dream-analysis both easy and profitable to parents. Once aware of the wish-fulfilling rôle of dreams, no parent need experience difficulty in interpretation if his small boy reports to him a series of dreams like the following: "It was after school, and I went with other boys to a candy store, and the storekeeper told us we could have anything we wanted. We had a fine time. I filled my pockets with chocolates and caramels and peanut candy, besides what I ate while I was in the store. "I was at a party, and there was plenty to eat and drink. We had sandwiches and lemonade, ice cream and cake. After it was over, they told us we could take away all the food that was not eaten. "There was a fire in the next street, and I went to see the firemen at work. It was rainy and cold, and somebody brought out coffee and cake for the firemen. There was more than they could eat, so they gave me some."