Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/89

 their boy's clothes and companions, and courses of study. They map out his future and all but do his work for him. They think for him, and smooth out the way for him, and leave him no chance to develop self-direction or initiative. They get him up in the morning, and tell him when to go to bed at night. If he has a task to perform, they regularly set him to it; if he has duties and obligations he is reminded of them before he has an opportunity to rely upon his own memory or think out his own plan of procedure. He is never allowed to forget to be polite or prompt or thoughtful or regular when mother is by, and knowing that he will not be, he comes to depend upon the fact that if there is anything he ought to do mother will remind him of it or call his attention to it in plenty time even if it is nothing more than speaking to a caller or changing his underwear, and so he never learns to depend upon himself or to tax his memory with the slightest obligation either mental or moral. In her abnormal fear that he will omit some duty, the over-conscientious mother robs her son of the power, when he leaves her, of doing any duty.

A refined, educated mother sat in my office only a few weeks ago. Her only son had failed, and she wanted to know why. She had watched over him and directed him, and kept him immaculate physically; he had wanted nothing that he did not get. He had never made a sacrifice. She had petted him and loved him and scarcely ever let him get out of her sight. He was a good boy, she knew, she said, before he came to college. How had it all happened? But the facts were that he was not a good boy, and