S.

This fault likewise often has a physical cause, seated very frequently
in the liver. See that the child's food is not too heavy. Give him
much fruit, and insist upon vigorous exercise out of doors. Or he may
perhaps not have enough childish pleasures. For while most children
are overstimulated, there still remain some children whose lives are
unduly colorless and eventless. A sullen child is below the normal
level of responsiveness. He needs to be roused, wakened, lifted out of
himself, and made to take an active interest in other persons and in
the outside world.

[Sidenote: Inheritance and Example]

In many cases sullenness is an inherited disposition intensified by
example. It is unchildlike and morbid to an unusual degree and very
difficult to cure. The mother of a sullen child may well look to her
own conduct and examine with a searching eye the peculiarities of her
own family and of her husband's. She may then find the cause of the
evil, and by removing the child from the bad example and seeing to it
that every day contains a number of childish pleasures, she may win
him away from a fault that will otherwise cloud his whole life.

LYING

All lies are not bad, nor all liars immoral. A young child who cannot
yet understand the obligations of truthfulness cannot be held morally
accountable for his departure from truth. Lying is of three kinds.

(1.) _The imaginative lie._ (2.) _The evasive lie._ (3.) _The politic
lie._

[Sidenote: Imaginative "Lying"]

(1.) It is rather hard to call the imaginative lie a lie at all. It is
so closely related to the creative instinct which makes the poet
and novelist and which, common among the peasantry of a nation,
is responsible for folk-lore and mythology, that it is rather an
intellectual activity misdirected than a moral obliquity. Very
imaginative children often do not know the difference between what
they imagine and what they actually see. Their minds eye sees as
vividly as their bodily eye; and therefore they even believe their own
statements. Every attempt at contradiction only brings about a fresh
assertion of the impossible, which to the child becomes more and more
certain as he hears himself affirming its existence.

Punishment is of no use at all in the attempt to regulate this
exuberance. The child's large statements should be smiled at and
passed over. In the meantime, he should be encouraged in every
possible way to get a firm, grasp of the a