A significant fact was the frequently repeated assertion that the children were whipped because they were too young to understand anything else. An interesting state of transition was seen in some of the thirty-three families who had abandoned whipping but had not given up the idea of absolute obedience. It is evidenced in comments like the following: "They are not whipped. Father threatens with a strap." Or, "It [whipping] is not necessary. Father speaks, and children obey." Some families had relaxed the discipline sufficiently to be apparent to our investigators, who made such comments as "Children are making a terrible noise, but nobody seemed to mind." It has already been said that whatever the reaction, the training of the children usually takes place without visible disaster to the family group. This is especially true while the children are young. As they grow older the dangers that are inherent in such a situation become more marked. The figures on juvenile delinquency show that an unduly large proportion of juvenile offenders are children of foreign-born parents. This subject will be discussed more fully at a later point in the chapter in connection with the problem of the older boy and girl. It is important to emphasize here that the foundation for later trouble is often laid while the children are young, and hence consideration of the effect of modern ideas on discipline and training should begin with the very young child. LEARNING TO PLAY One of the needs of the growing child that is much emphasized in modern ideas of child culture is an opportunity for wholesome play. The foreign-born mother, from a rural district in Europe, where children were put to work helping the parents as soon as they could be in any way useful, frequently does not recognize this need, and hence does not even do those things within her power to secure it. From some opportunities which she and the children might enjoy together, she is cut off by lack of knowledge of English. A Bohemian woman, for example, said that she did not go with her husband and the children to the moving pictures, as she could not read the English explanations and often did not understand the pictures. Even when the need is recognized it is still a very difficult problem. In the old country, when the child was too little to work, he could play in the fields quite safe, in sight of his mother at her work. In the city, however, especially in the congested districts, which are the only ones known to immigrants when they first come, the child cannot play in his own yard, for there is nothing that can be called a yard. The alternatives are the city streets with their manifold dangers, or the public playground. From the point of view of physical safety as well as in giving a place for more wholesome play, the public playground is obviously the more desirable.