?

4. What was Christ's way of dealing with such people?

5. What are the common habits that most trouble us? How can they be best
prevented or overcome?

HABITS OF INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD

_The First Physical Habits Acquired by the Child Are of Vast Importance and
Require Heroic Treatment on the Part of the Mother_

From the beginning both physical and mental habits will be acquired by the
child. At first, attention must be given chiefly to the regularity of
caring for the physical needs of the infant such as giving food at stated
intervals, and having a regular time for sleeping, bathing, and for being
dressed. It is astonishing how little trouble is caused by the infant when
it is trained in correct physical habits from the beginning, compared with
the babe that is treated in a spasmodic fashion--everything overdone
sometimes and nothing at all done at other times. In the former case the
little one is quiet and peaceful and sleeps, as it should, most of the
time, especially at night; in the latter case the child is fretful and
cross and requires the father to trudge it about at night much to his
discomfort and loss of temper.

Nature has given the infant a voice which is not only lusty but which is
apt to be used from the first with unnecessary liberality. It is the little
one's only means of responding to stimuli that cause discomfort; at first
the infant's cry is reflex and unconscious; but if every time it cries
something happens, a sort of dim consciousness is soon awakened and the
habit of crying for nothing or on the slightest provocation is soon
established, and thereafter the child will rule the household like a Czar.
If, on the other hand, the mother understands that the crying reflex is
largely unnecessary at the present time, since she has learned to
administer to the infant's every requirement with clock-like regularity,
she will, when assured that nothing ails the child, let it cry if it wants
to without giving it the least attention. One can scarcely believe how soon
the crying reflex will disappear under such treatment. If, on the other
hand, the child is taken up whenever it cries and walked and rocked and
fondled, it quickly learns that individuals were made solely to wait on it,
and the great instinct of selfishness is aroused which is likely to carry
in its wake a world of trouble and disappointment. Who has not heard a
crying child in an adjoining room stop suddenly to listen for the sake