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ants and animals. Ovaries of plants and nests of birds and squirrels were all set forth in terms of the child's experience of home life, home-building, home-protecting, and feeding the baby. Doubtless the design of the author was to lead the child to an understanding and appreciation of its own home life and love by showing it home life in its origins and elements. But an equally important implication lay in the fact that the child was brough

child, as time goes on and as its own sexual life increasingly awakens, may tend to imitate animals, may attempt to justify the natural and unrestrained promiscuousness of its own i

life. The family life of animals is constituted of animal instinct freely followed. The family life of man would be ruined by the free foll

it is important that a true philosophy lie back of this instruction. Man is not only a higher order of mammalia; he is a worshiper of God and capable of practicing his presence. And from th

all phases of a child's education. The little book which I mentioned at the beginning does just this,-it introduces the child to the home life of animals, it interprets animal life in ideal terms. It lays a basis for relating later information of sex functions to the home life of plants and animals. At the proper time in a child's development, he is prepared to place a true and intelligent value upon the differences between the home life of animals and the home life of human beings, and to jus

matters, it need only be kept from the invasion of wrong ideas from outside. But the sex life of a child begins long before puberty,-both physically and mentally. In the child, the physical signs are more or less detached from the mental signs,-at this or that phase of a child's life, the one or the other may have precedence; but the two are subtly interrelated, and tend to contribute to each other. In the human being a sex life

at age the child received them, if no lies were conveyed. But because the child's physical and mental sex life awakens early, and because every child has latent tendencies to abnormality and latent responsiveness to the abnormal, it is of critical importance that we decide who shall teach the individual child, when the child shall be informed, and what the child shall be told. It is of critical importance because, if the instruction comes w

importance), the facts of the last two paragraphs lay the ground for this general statement: that in the case of a child whose moral and sexual environment has

would be much smoother if every child asked its mother or father this question, or if every child began with this particular question, or if every child asked any question at all. Sometimes the child asks the nurse this question; sometimes the child is an only child or for some other reason this question never occurs to it; sometim

l a child. A child's questions about the baby should be answered truthfully; all such replies as escape by the stork, cabbage-patch, or grocer-boy route should be avoided. It goes without saying th

uld be frankly a postponement, and the parent should answer the question at some later time chosen by the parent and upon the parent's own motion. If the child never affords the parent a natural opening for

dren. It is a mistake to suppose that very much need be said to the young child. If the child's normal curiosity is satisfied in a clean way from the right source, that is sufficient. Especially should it be advised of the truth about those facts concerning which it is l

his; but what is more likely, it may receive harm by calling out uninformed and hurtful conversation from the other side. For this reason, a parent in talking to children shou

ded with the confidence between parent and child. In opposing the harmful kind of secrecy, there are those who very wrongly, as I believe, object to any secrecy; who say, "All things are clean; why should any difference whatever be made between the lungs or the stomach, and the sex organs; it is often the very making of any distinction that causes and helps cause all the trouble." N

al secrecy between parent and child. For in so doing, you not only prevent the undesirable secrecy, but you build normally on modesty; you lay foundations fo

f that by the proper attitude, conversation, and practice in the child's familiar domestic functions. Pru

knows from its parents' lips that it came into the world from its mother's body, first growing there "beneath its mother's heart" until it was strong enough to be born; and that the mother would never have wished to have her child grow in her body had it not been that there was a strong man who would care for both mother and little child with

light at a bureau drawer or chest full of the beautiful little garments waiting and ready for an expected child can never doubt the wis

evasive answers in reply to its innocent questions? It may be said in passing that if the parent has thus evasively answered the child's first questions, he will never be bothered in all probabilit

dy awakened. And the parent does not know to what extent the child may know "what ain't so." It is a mistake in most cases for the parent to try to find answers to these questions by questioning the child. For just as a parent may start wrong by deceiving the child

ely to be interrupted or distracted or is eager at the moment to be somewhere else and doing something else. The mother and daughter quie

e Santa Claus and that Santa Claus is a fairy story-and so you have probably already learned how the baby came. The baby really grows in the mother's body-did you know that? Do you know how long it takes for it to grow there? No? It takes nine months. Before you were born, you were growing inside of your mother's body. The blood from your mother's body flowed into your body; in this way your body grew. When the baby co

this is the pistil. Do you notice the powder on the end of the stamen? That is called pollen. If you put that powder under magnifying glass, each grain will look like a grain of wheat. Now, do you notice that the pistil spreads out here at the base like a vase with a narrow neck and big bowl? I am going to cut the thick part open. Do you notice those tiny things like seeds? Yes, those are seeds, but they would not grow just by themselves. A grain of that pollen gets on to the end of the pistil (sometimes the wind, sometimes a bee puts it there), and immediately it begins to send a long thread from itself right down the center of the pistil, and this thread carries at the fron

,-and there are few books prepared for children which are not at some point or other unwise. Only, in all this process of definite instruction in which analogies from the life of plants and animals are used, the instructor must make sure that the illustrations are thought of as analogies for the anatomy and biology only, and guards must be reserved, implicitly and explicitly, against the child's

e parents together and to try to teach them how. Besides meetings for parents (fathers and mothers together), excellent results

ces. The school authorities should be cautious. But when those who apply are intelligent and honest and above question as to their standing and judgment, school boards ought not only to consent, but to support and co?perate. A grudging consent, mixed with indifference, finds its way by capillary attraction to the school principals and teachers and constitutes a real hindrance. When the consent of the school authorities has been obtained, the next step is the selection and training of speakers and the not

al of the school should introduce the layman, accompanying the physician, to be chairman of the evening. The chairman should make a brief address, as outlined in the syllabus provided by the Committee on Education of the Society, introducing the physician. The physician should make a brief address as outlined in the syllabus, and then, after proper explanation

boy four years old. When ought I

en the child a

at do you m

ose the child asks whe

you say if the

it that the baby grows in

ars old to whom I have never talked a

e boy is not likely to be interrupted. Refer to some newly arrive

ve already told him that

story like the Santa Claus story, but that now he is

these things and I am afraid my child mi

ill be handed you, which you can read, and par

child asks me a ques

rankly with a promise that when you can you will answer, or that you will

t it until he gets answers in simple, understandable terms. If the physician uses "function" or "co?ordinate" or "puberty" or "adolescence" or other academic terms, the layman must force simple words at every turn; and in any attempts to describe what a parent should say to

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