If discipline is needed, therefore, it is much more effective, in the long run, to withhold favors and withdraw privileges. This policy will impress upon him the impropriety of his conduct without submitting him to the indignity of physical punishment. Another responsibility of the mother, particularly during these early years, is to subject the child as much as possible to the influence of good music and rhythm. All created things are the embodiments of the great Cosmic Word continually resounding through the universe. Although we cannot hear the music of the spheres, we can work on the child's body by terrestrial music.
Nursery rhymes have wonderful rhythm.
The more a child is taught to say, sing, and repeat them, to dance and to march to them, and the more music is incorporated into his daily life, the stronger and healthier will his body be in later years. Children under the age of fourteen are in a way still a part of their parents, because in the thymus gland is stored an essence of the parental blood which the child uses in manufacturing its own blood during the years of childhood. The thymus gland of the infant is largest just before birth and diminishes as time goes on. At about the fourteenth year the Ego is ready to assert itself and is able to manufacture its own blood. The wise mother understands this and accords them what would be proper respect in her child's eyes, even though she herself is unaware a their presence.