The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-03-20
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 Your Children
Ny Olive Roberts Barton

The first time T ever had a golf club in my hand it felt like a plow, which indeed 1t turned out to be. was told very nonchalantly to drive" over @ ravine full of trees to the opposite hill. I thought my companions were fooling, but they weren't. Actually 1t was an easy shot from the tee, no harder than to lift the ball from the fairway to the green with . little wrist stroke.
 It was my first mental hazard. It remained 50 always. By asso- ciation of ideas and that first Waterloo, I never lost my fear of the game. If someone had said, We usually try to get over the ditche, but don't you try 1t. Just give the ball a little bat if you can and see if you can touch it." Then I would not have shivered, hammered the ball down in the mud or ruined my chance as golfer. Mental hazard spoils more golf than mine.
 Playmates Implant Terror
 The child starts to school. Now adays educators realize the danger of the hazard and let him go at 1t easily and scientifically, which sounds terrible but which is quite simple. New methods of teaching take all these things into considera- ton. But hazard can still exist and does; and of all places, right in the home.
 Even before he starts other children may say to him as my experienced friends did, You have to take a pencil and write long, hard words" Or something to that effect.
 Parents themselves can add to mental terrors. Innocently, Of course, without knowing what they are doing. Sometimes it is by comparing the slow one to the smarter brother or sister. Perfec- ton ise always discouraging. The experienced audience never en- couraged an amateur yet. Who can play to gallery of his superb ors? Not anyone I ever met or hope to meet.
 When child is working at something new in his lessons and fails at first to grasp the point, his teacher may anticipate 1t. She knows that fair proportion of her pupils will have difficulty for a while, and allows for 1t. The child is working with his peers. He needs encouragement, not dis couragement. Yet an older brother or sister, or parents themselves, may look at his paper and comment on poor work. The eye of experience always sees too much.
 Expecting Too Much of Child
 When a child is put ahead into an advanced grade to make his way because he seems capable, sometimes 1t takes him weeks TO months to prove to the others and even to the | teacher that he was worthy of the trial.
 "Why, that dummy doesn't know anything" seems the voice of exper- fence, those other oracles of wis dom in the room who hahve been | in fractions long enough to get all the right answeres. Johnny has to live down his first terrors, if ever. At any rate he will not do his best work, usually, because he is up against an unfair comparison and knows 1t.
 Praise is better help than criti- cism in many cases. Most of us do | things more capably near the Blar- ney Stone than at Delphi. If Johnny is really lazy, and soldiers every | chance he gets, 1t would be silly to use the Jack Horner method of | "good-boying" him. But when he is trying and needs real break, why not give him a boost to jack up l his pride?
 Copyright, 1886, NEA Service, Incl