Very soon after the beginning of her conversations with me, the girl realized that her fear was really a disguised desire that something might be planted within and grow.  With her new understanding of herself, her compulsions promptly slipped away.  She began to eat and sleep, and to live a happy, natural life.

=Chronic Repression.= It takes first-hand acquaintance with nervous patients to realize how common are stories like these.  Unnecessary repressions based on false training are the cause of many a physical symptom and mental distress which a little parental frankness might have forestalled.[36]

[Footnote 36:  Parents who are eager to handle this subject in the right way are often sincerely puzzled as to how to go about it.  No matter how complete their education, it is very likely to fail them at this critical point.  For the benefit of such parents, let it be said with all possible emphasis that the first and most important step must be a change in their own mental attitude.  If there is left within them the shadow of embarrassment on the subject of sex, their children will not fail to sense the situation at once.  A feeling of hesitation or a tendency to apologize for nature makes a far deeper impression on the child-mind than do the most beautiful of half-believed words on the subject.  And this impression, subtle and elusive as it may seem, is a real and vital experience which is quite likely to color the whole of the child’s life.  If you would give your children a fair start, you must first get rid of your own inner resistances.  After that, all will be clear sailing.

In the second place, take the earliest opportunity to bring up the subject in a natural way.  A young father told me recently that his little daughter had asked her mother why she didn’t have any lap any more.  “And of course your wife took that chance to tell her about the baby that is coming,” I said.  “Oh, no,” he answered, “she did nothing of the kind.  Mary is far too young to know about such things.”  There are always chances if we are on the look out for them—­and the earlier the better.  It has been noticed that children are never repelled by the idea of any natural process unless the new idea runs counter to some notion which has already been formed.  The wise parent is the one who gets in the right impression before some other child has had a chance to plant the wrong one.

Then, too, we elders are judged quite as much by what we do not say as by what we do.  Happy is the child who is not left to draw his own conclusions from the silence and evasiveness of his parents.  The sex-instruction which children are getting in the schools is often good, but it usually comes too late—­the damage is always done before the sixth year.