About this time, three or four months old, the child begins to tear paper into pieces, and may be easily taught to let the piece, that have found their way into his mouth be taken out again. Now, too, he begins to throw things, or to drop them; then he wants to get them back again, and the patient mother must pick them up and give them back many times. Sometimes a baby is punished for this proclivity, but it is really a part of his development, and at least once a day he should be allowed to play in this manner to his heart's content. It is tact, not discipline, that is needed, and the more he is helped the sooner he will live through this stage and come to the next point where he begins to throw things. [Sidenote: Throwing] In this stage, of course, he must be given the proper things to throw--small, bright-colored worsted balls, bean-bags, and other harmless objects. If he is allowed to discover the pleasure there is in smashing glass and china, he will certainly be, for a time, a very destructive little person. When later he is able to creep throw his ball and creep after it--he will amuse himself for hours at a time, and so relieve those who have patiently attended him up to this time. _In general we may lay down the rule, that the more time and attention of the right sort is to a young child, the less will need to be given as he grows older_. It is poor economy to neglect a young child, and try to make it up on the growing boy or girl. This is to substitute a complicated and difficult problem for a simple one. [Sidenote: The Grasping Instinct] It is some time before a child's will can so overcome his newly-acquired tendency to grasp every possible object that he can keep his hand off of anything that invites him. The many battles between mothers and children it the subject of not touching forbidden things are at this stage a genuine wrong and injustice to the child. So young a child is scarcely more responsible for touching whatever he can reach that is a piece of steel for being drawn toward a powerful magnet. Preyer says that it is years before voluntary inhibitions of grasping become possible. The child has not the necessary brain machinery. Commands and sparring of the hands create bewilderment and tend to build up a barrier between mother and child. Instead of doing such thing, simply put high out of reach and sight whatever the child must not touch. Another way in which young children are often made to suffer because of the ignorance of parents is the leaving of undesired food on the child's plate. Every child, when he does not want his food, pushes the plate away from him, and many mothers push it back and scold. The real truth is that the motor suggestion of the food upon the plate is so strong that the child feels as if he were being forced to eat it every time he looks at the plate; to escape from eating it he is obliged to push it out of sight. [Sidenote: The Three Months' Baby]