ictims to deception,
fraud, and secrecy to gain what they feel to be natural, reasonable
and desirable ends.

I verily believe that the parent who forever is saying "Don't" to
her children, is as dangerous as a submarine and as cruel as an
asphyxiating bomb. Life is for _expression_, not _repression_.
Repression is always a proof that a proper avenue for expression has
not yet been found. Quit your "don't-ing," and teach your child to
"do" right. Children absolutely are taught to dread, then dislike, and
finally to hate their parents when they are refused the opportunity of
"doing"--of expressing themselves.

Rather seek to find ways in which they may be active. Give them
opportunities for pleasure, for employment, for occupation. And
remember this, there is as much distance and difference between
"tolerating," "allowing," "permitting" your children to do things, and
"encouraging," "fostering" in them the desire to do them, as there is
distance between the poles. Don't be a dampener to your children, a
discourager, a "don'ter," a sign the moment you appear that they must
"quit" something, that they must repress their enthusiasm, their fun,
their exuberant frolicsomeness, but let them feel your sympathy with
them, your comradeship, your good cheer, that "Father, Mother, is
a jolly good fellow," and my life for it, you will doubtless save
yourself and them much worry in after years.

Hans Christian Andersen's story of _The Ugly Duckling_ is one of the
best illustrations of the uselessness and needlessness of much of the
worry of parents with which I am familiar. How the poor mother duck
worried because one of her brood was so large and ugly. At first she
was willing to accept it, but when everybody else jeered at it, pushed
it aside, bit at it, pecked it on the head, and generally abused it,
and the turkey-cock bore down upon it like a ship in full sail, and
gobbled at it, and its brothers and sisters hunted it, grew more and
more angry with it, and wished the cat would get it and swallow it up,
she herself wished it far and far away. And as the worries grew around
the poor duckling, it ran away. It didn't know enough to have faith
in itself and its own future. The result was the worries of others
affected it to the extent of urging it to flee. For the time being
this enlarged its worries, until at length, falling in with a band of
swans, it felt a strange thrill of fellowship with them in spite of
their grand and bea