Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love ! sweet Love ! was thought a crime.
William Blake

It was Wilhelm Reich who pointed out that, in sudden fear, we all catch our breath for the moment, and that the child who lives in fear has a life of catching its breath ... and holding it. The sign of a well-reared child is his free, uninhibited breathing. It shows that he is not afraid of life.

Some years ago, I visited my friend Wilhelm Reich in Maine. His son, Peter, was three years old. The lake at the doorstep was deep. Reich and his wife simply told Peter that he should not go near the water. Having had no hateful training and therefore having trust in his parents, Peter did not go near the water. The parents knew that they need not worry. Parents who discipline with fear and authority would have lived on the lakeshore with their nerves on edge. Children are so accustomed to being lied to that when mother says that water is dangerous, they simply don't believe her. They have a defiant wish to go to the water.

In his well-known work, Character Analysis, Wilhelm Reich pointed out that a moralistic training not only warps the thinking process, but enters structurally into the body itself, armouring it literally with stiffness in posture and contraction of pelvis. I agree with Reich. I have observed, during many years of dealing with a variety of children at Summerhill, that when fear has not stiffened the musculature, the young walk, run, jump and play with a wonderful grace.