Ron Says…
“In auditing children, you have to get over minding the way other adults hanging around the children snicker and laugh and mock the idea that the child can understand you, if you talk to the child. Communication to a child seems very silly to most adults. They don’t talk to the child.
“Little baby, maybe five, six months old—I’ve had nursemaids—they get over this very rapidly; something cures them. I’d walk up to a little baby five, six months old, something like this, and say, ‘Hello, how are you getting along?’ I talk to them perfect, you know vis-à-vis, and little kid levels out and looks at me, you know, and looks relaxed. Explain to some little kid what’s going to happen now, you know, some baby, maybe only a two-months-old baby and say, ‘I’m going to take your picture now’ and walk up to a little child and tell him what’s going to happen.
“For instance, little Arthur the other day—medico had him with his mouth open looking down his throat to find a watch somebody had lost or something. And he—little kid was a little shocky. You know, he was,’What-ah-ah.’
“I walked over and I picked him up and said, ‘Now, it’s all right. They’re through with you now.’
“He’d been watching and he—’Whew!’ you know. ‘That’s good!’ you know.
“And the medico caught this out of the corner of his eye and he looked. Something had happened. He had seen a communication where he didn’t suspect a communication existed. And so you do, generally, get a reaction from people when you start talking to children as though they’re people. You have to learn not to Q and A with this, because all they’re doing is not-ising communication with children—their sniggers, embarrassment, discouragement, so forth.
“Usually nursemaids get over this by—I make up a practical demonstration. I usually show them conclusively that the baby is smarter than they are.”
L. Ron Hubbard
from Academy Lectures lecture
“Processing of Children”
29 April 1959