Child Guidance

In this book, Dr. Moodie presents a simple explanation of Child Guidance for the benefit of doctors, teachers and magistrates. He explains in the introduction that " Child Guidance sets out not only to help the individual child who, through handicap or dullness, unstable temperament, or unsettling environment, must bear more than his fair load of difficulty, but to relieve the community of the need to treat, manage, and partially or wholly support these individuals who have become ineffective, disturbing, and a burden because their difficulties were not realized in time in other words that Child Guidance has a preventive as well as a therapeutic value in the community. He explains that very few of the children seen at a Child Guidance clinic are mentally disordered; most of them being " involved in complicated family situations or emotional tangles " from which they are unable to extricate themselves. The book attempts to answer some of the more common criticisms levelled against Child Guidance and expresses the opinion that doctors, magistrates, teachers and parents are now more ready to seek advice and help from such clinics.