CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sia,—In your " News of the Week " of April -5th, a writer deals with " Rivals in Motherhood " from the point of view of Child Psychology. So he says, but I may be allowed to say that anyone who refers, in speaking or writing, to a child as " it " has still to learn his first lesson in child psychology. The child is a human being, not a pawn in the adults' game; not a cog in the machine, not the shuttle banged to and fro in the educational or social loom, and should be spoken of, and written of, as a human being, as " he,"—or if you.will as " she." No one to whom the child is neuter, a thing, can have any claim to deal sympathetically with the problems or the attitude of the child. I know what willbe said—that to say. " he " excludes " she," and that the writer referred to either sex but what be forgets is that " it " applies to neither and not equally to either. If he had really understood child psy- chology, if he had really thought himself into the skin of the child, could he ever have written, as he does, " If it is trans- ferred against its will to a claimant .who is a. stranger to it " ? No. One whO writes thus shows clearly that he is looking from the outside, and not from within out.—I am, Sir, Edinburgh. W. G. S.
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