Chapter 2 - The Beginnings of Fear - p.3

WE are so overpowered by the force of fear, that we are unable to look upon it objectively. We continue to encourage the existence of this arch enemy of man, and indeed begin very early to impress it upon the tender mind of the young. We bring up our children under the shadow of fear. We inculcate fear from the very earliest stages of their training. We teach them to fear the heat, the cold, the wind and the rain. We teach them to look upon strangers with suspicion and apprehension. We teach them to shrink from our domestic animals; it is no uncommon sight to see a child cower with terror at the approach of a friendly dog. We attempt to exact instant obedience through shocking tales of goblin and bogey men, torturing their placid, susceptible imaginations with the most dreadful fears. Above all, we teach them to fear pain and sickness, and thus infest their minds with poisonous germs long before they contract them from any physical source.

No good purpose has ever been served by disturbing the nerves of our little ones with the emotion of fear. A child, for example, may suffer more from the fear of a fall than from the fall itself. While it is true that the early steps of a child must be watched, and its early experiences guided, yet a guardianship based on the instilling of fear into the young soul, is far more harmful than any baleful experience which the unguarded child may encounter. It is seldom that an accident befalls a child through its own lack of care or experience; the instinct for self-preservation works strongly and unconsciously from the very earliest stages of childhood. God has created His creatures with the necessary provisions for the protection of life.