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Handle the Child's Fragile Trust with Care
When this person was about four years old. his mother took him shopping with her. He wanted to be a "Big Boy" so she gave him the money for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. She placed a shilling in his right hand and said. "This is for the bread," then a shilling in his left hand and said. "This is for the milk." He ran happily into the store. After about ten minutes his mother got worried and came into the store to find her child in tears because he couldn't remember which shilling was for the milk and which for the bread. "Oh darling! It didn't matter! The price is the same." the mother laughed with great amusement. The child didn't find it funny. The mother should have simply explained to the child that one shilling was for milk and one for bread? The child saw himself rudely cheated in return for having trusted the mother unquestionably. He tried to remember and follow, her instructions precisely having been made to believe that the shilling for bread was different from the shilling for milk! It is not surprising that after some sixty years the child, now an aged person. cannot wipe off from the memory this incident, which appeared petty to the parent, but emotionally up-setting for any child. Ripple Effects. This father urges his child to join him in the swimming pool for the child's first experience in the mass of water assuring him that he is safe in his father's hands. The child eventually yields and joins only to find that the father was scaring him to death with the theatrics (pretense) of drowning him. It was a great fun to the father worth