His mother: "These shoes are not yours, Ghassan. We do not play with your shoes, nor do we use your room for our things. Put these shoes back in their place now, and I will show you how to make a finer train than this one in your room, out of your own things." Ghassan was delighted that his mother would join him in his play, and he hastened to return the shoes as she wished. His mother gave him time enough to finish his task alone to the very end, and did not hurry him lest he grow flustered and leave the work incomplete... She led him by the hand, and there in his little room she sat with him on the mat and made him a train out of his toys, adding emphatically as she left the room: "There is no harm in loading your own shoes on this train, but Mama's and Papa's shoes are none of your business..." And Ghassan grasped her meaning clearly. Two years later the mother entered Ghassan's room and found him arranging his things himself, allowing no one to tidy what he calls his "library" — a small table in the corner of the room — but arranging it himself, never forgetting his little vase, whose water he changes every day and whose flowers he renews whenever they wilt. He sings the praises of its beauty and declares that the sight of it cheers him while he works... He may enter his parents' room now and then for some purpose, but he touches none of its things.
The most important element in the formation of a habit is imitation, or mimicry. The child is by nature the greatest of imitators, especially of those he loves. How careful, then, must parents be to avoid anything liable to undo a good habit in the child! Whenever a mother wishes to accustom her child to washing his hands before eating, it is absolutely impermissible for her to allow herself to break this law even once — and let her be assured that her child is more observant than she is in matters of this kind.
(3) The doctor prescribed cod-liver oil for Samir and Ghada before meals, and their mother made it appealing to them and described its benefit to their bodies, until they came to wait for mealtime out of sheer eagerness to take it. It happened that their father passed by them one morning while they were drinking it, and he showed some disgust and declared to his wife, within the children's hearing, that his own mother had never once succeeded in giving him cod-liver oil, however badly he needed it... This brief remark was enough to turn the situation upside down, and the two children would no longer take their cod-liver oil except by force. How much more fitting it would have been for the father to urge them to keep on drinking it and to magnify its benefits to their bodies, hiding his own weakness and pretending that the chief cause of his strength and tall stature was his taking cod-liver oil as a child... How Samir's and Ghada's desire to drink it with appetite and relish would then have doubled!...
Let truthfulness and candor be our guide in planting good habits in our children, so as to win their absolute love, so that their imitation of us may rest on trust and faith.
(4) The kindergarten doctor saw the necessity of inoculating all the children against fever. She stood
them in a single line, told them what she intended to do, and explained to them the necessity of it in order to avoid their catching the disease. She spoke in a military tone, saying: "You are now, children, like soldiers. Let every child roll up his sleeve — like this, like me — and wait his turn quietly, exactly as soldiers do. We shall begin with the teachers." And she inoculated the teachers while the children watched their courage closely... Then their turn came, and all fifty children were inoculated without a single cry. The blood would rush to a child's face at the moment the needle was given, but his color would soon clear, and he would look at his neighbor and say: "It doesn't hurt!" And the next would step forward under the influence of this idea, not daring to utter a sound for fear of failing before his comrades — for he is a soldier! And a soldier is not afraid of the prick of a needle; is it permissible that his courage should betray him, alone of them all, when the whole affair is a matter of bearing pain for a single moment!!? And courage became a habit like all other habits. The doctor afterward inoculated the children against whooping cough and against smallpox, and met with not the least resistance.
(5) I visited one of my friends in mid-morning, and her child received me in his nightclothes, hair disheveled, face and limbs dirty, amusing himself with a bunch of grapes, eating one and tossing two into the air... When his mother appeared, in full adornment, she scolded him for his impudence and shouted for the maid to take him away and make him fit to appear before people; she blamed the maid for neglecting to keep him clean, and blamed her child for his dirtiness — as though by this she had removed all blame from herself, from her own shortcoming and her failure to accustom her child to cleanliness...