ABSTRACT
Ursula Wise comments that concerns about behaviour and discipline are "as old as parenting itself" – it is perhaps not surprising that the majority of letters are on this theme. The readers noticed from the other letters which have appeared that severe difficulties of obstinacy and tantrums are quite common in children who have just been displaced by the birth of a little rival, so that one would not be justified in putting down the whole of child's difficulties to their own irritability. Wise gives her reasons for believing that children should not be smacked. There are a great many reasons for considering that smacking a child is a very bad method of training. The reasons rest upon the whole psychology of the growing child, and of the relation between mother and child. Wise states that the real point to realise is that positive methods of real patient training are the ones that repay both mother and child.
