Handicaps of ChildhoodBruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington)
Science
Handicaps of Childhood
Bruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington)
Child development; Education
"My little Jack is so fond of me that he cannot bear to see me show
attention to any other child. It is really amusing how displeased he gets.
He will push the other child away, climb into my lap, and almost smother
me with kisses. If I persist in paying attention to somebody else, he will
pout in the cutest way until I take him in my arms again."
It may, to be sure, be difficult at times to refrain from smiling at the
absurd behaviour of jealous children. Just the same, jealousy is never a
smiling matter and is always something which parents should try to root
out without delay. The jealous child, if uncorrected, is all too likely to
grow into a jealous adult, with tendencies which bring misery to himself,
and which, if it becomes a question of sex-jealousy, may bring death to
others. The parent who fails to attack jealousy when it first shows itself
need not be surprised at any distortion of character or vagary of conduct
that appears in later life. Jealousy, indeed, may have strange and
startling physical consequences. Here, for example, is a story from the
experience of a veteran physician:
"I was once summoned to visit a lady who was represented as being very
ill. On my arrival I was shown to the so-called sick-room, where three
persons were present--an old lady, her daughter, and the daughter's
husband. All of them seemed in good health. When I inquired which was my
patient, there was silence for a moment. Then the daughter said:
"'I am the patient, and my complaint is jealousy. I am jealous of my
husband, and if you do not give me something to relieve me I shall go out
of my mind.'
"This, on the face of it, seemed preposterous. She was a tall, fair,
beautiful woman of about thirty. The husband, on the contrary, was several
years older, a short, swarthy, plain man. It seemed to me more reasonable
to suppose that he might have cause to be jealous of his wife, rather than
she of him. But she persisted in her statement, and declared that she had
good reason to feel jealous.
"The husband insisted he had done nothing to justify her jealousy. She
reasserted he had. In the midst of an outburst, distressing to listen to,
she fell into a queer fit. With rhythmic regularity, she went through
various spasmodic convulsions. At one moment she would stand at full
length, her body arched forward. The next instant she was in a sitting
position, with her legs drawn up, her hands clutching her throat, and a
guttural noise coming from her mouth. Then she would wildly throw her
arms and legs around; after which she would rise to go through the same
performance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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