You no doubt find it easy enough to recognize and to encourage ideals that are in harmony with your own, or that seem to you worthy and likely to have a favorable influence upon your child's career or character. When five-year-old Freddy says that he wants to become a lawyer or a doctor, you encourage him. You say, "That's fine, my boy," and in your mind's eye you see him climbing to fame and fortune. But when Freddy says that he wants to be a policeman and marry the candy-lady, you laugh at him, and you certainly do _not_ encourage him. But in Freddy's mind doctor and lawyer mean no more than policeman; they involve no more important social service, they mean no more dignity in personal position, they suggest nothing more of anything that is worth while. For whatever it is that Freddy wants to be at any moment is to him the sum of all that is to him worth while--and that is just what an ideal ought to be. This is not a plea to cruel parents in behalf of smoothing Freddy's path toward the coveted post--or the course of his courtship of the candy-lady's daughter. It is simply an effort to point out how important it is to avoid shattering early in life that precious mirror in which alone visions are to be seen. When you have ridiculed the policeman out of further consideration, you are likely with the same act to have weakened Freddy's faith in ideals--and to this extent you have loosened one of the safest props of his character. We need not be afraid of the crude and short-sighted ideals of the young child. With the growth of his experience his ideals will expand. We should fear rather to infect him with the vulgar disrespect for all ideals. In a few years Freddy has his heart set on charting the blank spaces on his geography map, and he has never a thought for the girls. It is the same Freddy, but he has in the meanwhile roamed far from the home neighborhood--in imagination--and has discovered new heroes and new types of heroism. The policeman and the candy-lady are still at their old posts, but Freddy ignores them because his ideals have grown with his experience and his information, as well as with his bodily growth and development.