If the case is well established before it comes under our notice, the mother, the nurse, the schoolmaster, or whoever is responsible for the child’s management, must understand clearly the nature of the trouble.  The suggestion acting on the child’s mind must be altered, and self-confidence restored.  The child must learn to see that the thing is not so desperately tragic.  He should be told that the trouble always gets well, and that it only goes on now because he is worried about it and keeps thinking of it.  If the whole environment of the child is bad, so that such a change of suggestion is not possible, and if enuresis is but one of many symptoms of mental or moral instability, it may be necessary to remove the child and place him under the influence of some one else.  Sometimes the prescription of a rubber urinal, which the child can slip on at night, is directly curative.  A public school boy, who was about to be sent away from school for this failing, fortified by the possession of this apparatus, wrote six months later to say that he knew now that it must be all worry that caused the trouble, because with the urinal in position he had not once had the incontinence.

In inveterate cases hypnotic suggestion is always, I think, successful.  It is obvious, however, that in many cases there are objections to its use.  Often enuresis is evidence that the child’s home environment has been at fault, and that his mental and moral development has been retarded.  It is the management which must be modified or the home, if necessary, changed.  Hypnotic suggestion will make this one symptom disappear promptly enough, but it will rather perpetuate than combat the cause—­that undue susceptibility to suggestion, which is characteristic alike of the little child and of many older neuropathic persons.

CHAPTER VII

TOYS, BOOKS, AND AMUSEMENTS

Any one who has an opportunity of watching little children must have observed that they are happiest and most contented when playing alone.  The education of the little child is carried on by means of games and toys.  Handling the various objects which we give him, imparting movement to them, transferring them from hand to hand and from one situation to another, he learns dexterity and precision of movement, and in the process hand and brain grow in power.  When at play, his whole energies should be absorbed to the exclusion of everything else.  He will often be oblivious to everything that is going on around him, intent only on the purpose of the moment.  In order to permit this fervour of self-education it is necessary that the child should be accustomed to playing alone, and it is well, if only for convenience’ sake, that he should be accustomed to playing in a room by himself.  Something is wrong if the child cannot be left for a few moments without breaking into tears or displaying bad temper.  Engrossed in his own tasks, he should be content to leave his