health is because we have been steeped
in poor-health thought from infancy. We have been saturated with the
idea that pain, physical suffering, and disease, are a part of life;
necessary evils which can not be avoided. We have had it so instilled
into us that robust health is the exception and could not be expected
to be the rule that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition
of things as a sort of fate from which we can not hope to get away.

The child hears so much sick talk, is cautioned so much about the
dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that he grows up with the
conviction that physical discords, aches, pains, all discomfort and
suffering, are a necessary part of his existence, that at any time
disease is liable to overtake him and ruin his happiness and thwart his
career.

Think of what the opposite training would do for the child; if he were
taught that health is the ever-lasting fact and that disease is but the
manifestation of the absence of harmony! Think what it would mean to
him if he were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full,
complete, instead of sickness, that certainty instead of uncertainty
were his birthright! Think what it would mean for him to _expect_ this
during all his growing years, instead of building into his
consciousness the opposite, instead of being saturated with the sick
thought and constantly being cautioned against disease and the danger
of contracting it!

The child should be taught that God never created disease, and never
intended that we should suffer; that we were made for abounding health
and happiness, made for enjoyment not for pain--made to be happy, not
miserable, to express harmony, not discord.

Children are extremely credulous. They are inclined to believe
everything that an adult tells them, especially the nurse, the father
and mother, and their older brothers and sisters. Even the things that
are told them in jest they take very seriously; and their imaginations
are so vivid and their little minds so impressionable that they magnify
everything. They are often punished for telling falsehoods, when the
fault is really due to their excessively active imagination.

Many ignorant or thoughtless parents and nurses constantly use fear as
a means of governing children. They fill their little minds full of
all sorts of fear stories and terror pictures which may mar their whole
lives. They often buy soothing syrups and all sorts of slee