The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-23

sWeE your leCCers 1ouE case 10
 typical of many others, and is one of the most difficult to handle.
 Children whose mothers are so self ish grow up to be the neurotics and inconsistencies and psychastehnic who 20 through life never quite understand ing that if things aren't right they can't simply go to mother and she will make them right.
 One of the worst crimes against any child is to get its emotions stirred up over some family quarrel. What the child should be doing is playing with other little boys and girls, swimming and wrestling and fighting and all that kind of thing; and his daddy can teach him to box and new strokes in swim ming and new holds in wrestling and how to "get set" in running. Oh, l tell you, his daddy can find plenty of ways to interest the boy.
 You will have totmake your own opportunities, though, in your case, am afraid. Ask the boy and his mother on a picnic down to the beach and actually show him how to beat John Browns little boy by swimming on his side or using the crawl. Or get him into canoe and show him how the Indians used to paddle and how to move the body so as to save the arms. Frankly, you will have to have a very serious talk with your wife, because if she will give you some cooperation you will get results just that mach faster.
 Another thing: if your family life is going to be much upset by constant bickerings and quarrels, you had bet ter arrange some other way of meet ing the situation. Children brought up in such an atmosphere feel it keenly and their emotions are so much dis turbed that all kinds of mental and physical disturbances result.
 As you know, anger and grief and hate and melancholy are very real things, and because they effect 'the individual 90 profoundly, they are gradually coming to be regarded as at least as bad as tuberculosis of chrome constipation or what-not. The autonO- mic nervous system and the vlcera are intimately related to the central nerv- ous system, so that disturbance in one will affect the other.
 Your wife simply must be made to ralize that prejudice is in sober truth a kind of poison, which permeates one's whole life, and a child is par ticularly sensitive to its virulence, be- cause experience has not developed the anti-toxin, namely, the habit of open mindedness. Think for moment ot what incalculable harm parents do when they bring child up so as to see only one side of any vital ques- tion-whether it be religious or social or logical. Hatred between churches, between races-political mud .slinging and huncombe, wars, intolerance of all kinds-that is what prejudice causes.
 After all, perhaps nothing but a thunder shower will clear the air. Your child has a Divine right to be brought up as a normal, healthy ln- diyidual and just because a few mean ingless words have been mumbled and a few scrawled hieroglyhics made on naper is no intelligent excuse for liv- ing three lives as anything less than normal efficiency and happiness.
 , Think it over. Get off by yourself somewhere and ponder it over by your- self. After all, no one can live your life for you and no one knows as much as you do about conditions. Then talk it over with your wife, and real friends-and then shape up your plan of action. Better separate than to bring up the boy in an atmosphere Of emotional stress, quarrels, and pre- judices.
 On a warm day you are trifle' un- comfortably and on cold day per haps you are slightly chilled; but by putting one-half of your body Tn warm air and half in cold air-do you i'm agiue you would be comfortable? How a6out the child? 1t is up to you to devise a scheme whereby, perhaps, he will not be absolutely ideally situated, hut at least such a scheme as will not tear him to pieces between two clash ing clements. Do you see what l mean?
 I wonder what your wife will have to say to all this.