[Illustration: FERTILE SOIL FOR MISCHIEF]
The attitude of the usual family is that obedience is not to be expected of one so young, consequently nobody is disappointed, and the effect on the child is telling. He quickly learns his power, and becomes in turn the trainer and the ruler of the household. In fact, he is a small king, with only a soft ring of dark hair for a crown, and a chop-stick in his chubby fist for a scepter. His lightest frown or smile is a command to all the house, from the poodle with the ingrown nose to the bent old grandmother. But more willing subjects never bent before a king of maturer growth. Father and mother, with a train of relatives, yield glad obedience and stand ever ready for action at the merest suggestion of a wish.
Alas! for the tried and true theories on early training that have held for generations in other countries! Alas! for the scores of learned volumes on child culture! Useless the work of the greatest psychologists, who sound grave warning as to the direful results should one fail to observe certain hard-and-fast rules in the training of mind and body. Grant a few months to a fat, well-fed Japanese baby, and with one wave of his pink heels he will kick into thin air every tested theory that scholarly men have grown gray in proving. He snaps in twain the old saw, “As the twig is bent,” and sends to eternal oblivion that oft-repeated legend, “Give me a child till its seventh year, and neither friend nor foe can change his tendencies.” Even the promise of old, “Children, obey your parents,” loses its value as a recipe for long life when applied to the baby citizen of old Nippon. It is a rare exception if he obeys. He lives neither by rule nor regulation, eats when, where, and what he pleases, then cuddles down to sleep in peace.
[Illustration: “SPECIAL LESSONS FOR THE YOUNG IN HOW TO BOW”]
To the specialist, one such ill-regulated day in a baby’s life would augur a morning after with digestion in tatters and a ragged temper. He does not take into account the strange mental and physical contradictions of the race. Unchecked, the baby has been permitted to shatter every precept of health, but he awakens as happy as a young kitten. Fresh, sweet, and wholesome, he crawls from his soft nest of comfortables and goes about seeking some object on which to bestow his adorable smile. He is ready to thrive on another lawless day.