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Show Stime," mother informed him cab ly. "You didn't come when ; called you and now everythir.?; put away and the dishes are l washed." The young laggard spent an i comfortable hungry afternoon to day, which had more effect tfc all the previous reminders and re-criminations. re-criminations. And besides he ti: the inner satisfaction of figiira; out for himself the effect of hs own conduct. $of shaking hands polietly on his 3 own initiative and feels annoyance ,at having this initiative taken away from him. His unconscious revenge is to do just the opposite oppo-site of what he has been told to do, too often. Letting a child act on his own initiative is an important part of his growing up. As soon as possible pos-sible she should have a chance to react to circumstances for which no previous pattern has been set. One mother we know tried this out on her seven year old son with a very satisfactory result. He had been increasingly reluctant to interrupt in-terrupt his outdoor play to come in for lunch. Each noon found the impatient mother calling him .again and again. When he finally ( obeyed her calls, she punctuated his meal with scoldings about how much trouble his lateness had caused her. It got to be a question of whether she or the little boy dreaded lunchtime the more. Then, one day, mother decided on .a new course of action. She called her little lad once and once only. When hunger or possibly curiosity at not hearing his name and the familiar "You come in right now" in continued shouting finally brought him to the house an hour or so later, he found neither neith-er set table nor stream of maternal scolding awaiting him. "Where's my lunch?" he asked with surprised sur-prised 1 interest. "It's past lunch- SUCCESSFUL PARENTHOOD By Mrs. Catherine Conrad Edwards, Ed-wards, Associate Editor, Parents' Par-ents' Magazine. A GOOD MANY PARENTS pour advice and instruction upon their children as if they were testing test-ing out the old adage that constant dripping will wear away stone. Actually, harping on any topic wears away only the patience of the listener. Parents are well aware of this when the shoe is on the other foot and it is a child who is hammering hammer-ing away with a point. "Why can't I, Mother?" or "Daddy, please let me!" whined in repeated protest against a parental ruling can stretch adult tempers too thin for control. But the same adults seem to forget that by the same token, their own reiterations can irritate a child into open revolt. The over-zealous over-zealous mother who admonishes her youngster to shake hands like a little lady or gentleman, each time she entertains a visitor, may wonder why her usually friendly tot scowls, hangs his head or scuffs his feet instead of obeying orders. Perhaps his rudeness, is the result re-sult of having had the same advice ad-vice dinned into his ears so frequently fre-quently that he has come to hear it only as a disagreeable noise. Perhaps he had every intention |