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DIFFICULT CHILDREN
Question:—What have you to say this year about so-called "difficult
children" ?
Answer:—The cartoon on the opposite page is reproduced with the kind
permission of the proprietors of "Punch".
This cartoon teaches, on one small page, more than I have been able to say
or write in many years.
The look on the face of the boy is absolutely typical, and I think it wonderful
how the artist has portrayed a resemblance between the child and his father—
particularly the drooping mouth—which is proper to the father's age and the
circumstances in which he finds himself, but which is altogether unnatural in a
boy of this age.
For years I have striven to say it is wrong to blacken the character of these
little children and, indeed, of children who are not quite so little, and that to call
them delinquent children, difficult children, and maladjusted children, is wicked.
Only when we are able to face the tragic truth that we grown-ups are at fault
are we likely to get to grips with the problem of children who, by reason of our
mistakes and our sins, find themselves in unhappy circumstances.
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