Evening star., 1935-05-15
Right Place
Is Required
In Training
Course of Protection
Must Be Adopted
for Growth.
BY ANGELO PATRI.

A PLANT out Of It's place Is weed
in the gardeners notion Of things
and believe that a child out Of its
place In the scheme Of life Is in very
much the same position. Being out
of It's place 1t Is certainly unhappfy
placed and that means that the child
Is hindered in It's development.
Grown people often take children
out Of their places by treating them
in the wrong way. When a child
is treated as though he were an
adult, needing the same food, the
same clothes, the same entertainment,
he Is pushed out of his rightful place.
When a mistaken adult credits a child
with emotions unknown to the child,
though very disturbing to, the adult
himself, he is being pushed out Of his
place. Whenever a child is treated
as though he were an adult-as the
most adult member of the family-he
is being misplaced and in time he
must pay a severe penalty for that
mistake, a mistake for which he IS
in no way responsible.
Il hate TO go TO the movies and
leave him home. It looks so selfish
to be enjoying myself and leaving him
at home" The movie that the grown
up person enjoys is usually unsuited
to the child who Is happily engaged
in his own concerns. BY taking him
from his own place and pushing him
into the adults, he becomes a mis-
placed child.
How can I let Jane have a horse
week ends when Marie cannot have
one too? She would feel that We
were favoring her sister" Would she? !?
II Marie cannot ride, or does not
wish to ride, and her sister can and
needs to. why credit Marie with a
desire that she has not got and take
from her sister something she needs?
Children do not crave the same things,
do not experience the same emotions
their brothers and sisters experience.
Crediting them with such feelings
is misplacing the group to their dis
advantage. The feeling Is your own,
not the childs.
II love to sit up after the family
are in bed and read, but Emily insists
that If I can do that she has the
same right and, Of course, she can't
do 1t, because she has to 90 to school,
and besides, she needs her sleep"
Why should a child of 13 talk to her
mother in such a strain? What made
her think she had a right" to do
whatever her mother did? Her atti-
tude reflected past experience. She
had been treated as an adult, given
to understand that she had a right
to share in her mothers adult tastes
and habits. She was a misplaced
child and the effect of her rearing
was showing itself in this impossible
attitude.
The first right Of childhood Is pro-
lection. Protection from ignorance
and inexperience. Protection from the
weaknesses Of grown-up people. Pro-
lection from the adult world in all
its phases. A child must be a child
in tastes, habits and activities. 1t
must eat what is good for it, not
what the adult eats. 1t must wear
what Is suitable for its comfort and
health. not what grown-up people
prefer. 1t must enjoy pleasures that
spring from personal feeling, not those
that come down secondhand from
experienced adults. A child who is
permitted to be a child is happy, easy
to direct and easy to live with, but
the child who is misplaced and pushed
into the adults world is unhappy be-
cause he is not adjusted to his pc
culiar self. Each Of us, old or young,
must make his own world. We are
so constituted as to be able to live
in no other, children especially so.