Yet I think that we ought to be very slow to pronounce any child unmanageable. I know full well that in the case of these small growing things there are all kinds of hidden physical commotions which breed caprices, ruffle the temper, and make them the opposite of docile. The peevish child who will do nothing, will listen to no suggestion, is assuredly a difficult subject to deal with. But such moodiness and cross-grainedness springing from bodily disturbances will be allowed for by the discerning mother, who will be too wise to bring the severer measures of discipline to bear on a child when subject to their malign influence. Waiving these disturbing factors, however, I should say that a good part, certainly more than one half, of the difficulty of training children is due to our clumsy bungling modes of going to work. Sensible persons know that there is a good and a bad way of approaching a child. The wrong ways of trying to constrain children are, alas, numerous. I am not writing an ‘advice to parents,’ and am not called on therefore to deal with the much-disputed question of the rightness and wrongness of corporal punishment. Slaps may be needful in the early stages, even though they do lead to little tussles. A mother assures me that these battles with her several children have all fallen between the ages of sixteen months and two years. It is, however, conceivable that such fights might be avoided altogether; yet a man should be chary of dogmatising on this delicate matter.