Sensitive Children

Though nervous children are often very sensitive, there are many little people not deficient in moral and physical courage who are yet extremely sensitive and self conscious. These are defects - it is hardly fair to call them faults - particularly difficult to uproot and often misunderstood, for which reason the sensitive child later on in life often remains the sensitive man or woman.

But a parent who recognizes this position can by judicious care effect an improvement. The sensitive child cannot bear a word of sarcasm or ridicule. If a task is unsatisfactorily performed, she must be told so in gentle, direct and yet encouraging fashion. To make it the subject of cynical reproof wounds the little heart most deeply and only renders the child more sensitive and I shrinking and more unable to do herself justice.

I know one mother - and as a matter of fact, she is absolutely devoted to her children - who said to a 10-year-old daughter when she had been practicing unsteadily at the piano "I am  extremely obliged for the concert you have given us. I thought your teacher must be playing all the time. And it is very good of you to turn to such capital account the money I spend on your musical education." A high spirited, dashing. unthinking child may take such a remark in good part, but the sensitive little one to whom it was ' dressed went scarlet, as if some one had  struck her a blow. Her lip quivered, and she choked back a sob as she hastily left the room to brood and feel miserable over this reproof, whereas a kindly. "I wish you would practice more carefully, dear ; I was disappointed in your playing today, " would leave no sting.

Above all, a sensitive child must always be corrected in private. It may be an unhealthy vanity which cannot brook discouragement before a third party, but the trait is so marked that a mother does very wrong if she takes the sensitive one of her flock to task before the others who are cast in bolder mold.

Little mannerisms should pass unnoticed as far as possible. Your sensitive child may have a way of knitting her fingers or twisting a button or crossing her feet, and if she is teased about the habit it only grows worse, I and she feels hopeless of checking it.  There are sensitive boys, too. lads who are sent to boarding school and who fall asleep sad at heart each night cause they miss the parents' good night kiss or who cannot accustom themselves to enjoy football or any very rough sport and who are often the butts of  the school. Unless the peculiarity of  such a boy's disposition is recognized and he is treated accordingly he will grow up painfully sensitive and shrinking.

It seems an unimportant point to have a child sensitive and self conscious, but the evil lies in the fact that the trait grows ever bigger and makes boys and girls. when they have outgrown childhood, morbid, unhappy. dissatisfied and poor company for - selves and their circle.