Study of Child Life written by Marion Foster Washburne
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Marion Foster Washburne >> Study of Child Life
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STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
by
MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
THE LIBRARY OF HOME ECONOMICS
A COMPLETE HOME-STUDY COURSE
ON THE NEW PROFESSION OF HOME-MAKING AND ART OF RIGHT LIVING;
THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THE MOST RECENT ADVANCES
IN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES TO HOME AND HEALTH
PREPARED BY TEACHERS OF RECOGNIZED AUTHORITY
FOR HOME-MAKERS, MOTHERS, TEACHERS, PHYSICIANS, NURSES, DIETITIANS,
PROFESSIONAL HOUSE MANAGERS, AND ALL INTERESTED
IN HOME, HEALTH, ECONOMY AND CHILDREN
TWELVE VOLUMES
NEARLY THREE THOUSAND PAGES, ONE THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS
TESTED BY USE IN CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION
REVISED AND SUPPLEMENTED
[Illustration: AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS]
CHICAGO
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS
1907
[Illustration: A MODERN MADONNA.]
AUTHORS
ISABEL BEVIER, Ph.M.
Professor of Household Science, University of Illinois. Author
U.S. Government Bulletins, "Development of the Home Economics
Movement in America," etc.
ALICE PELOUBET NORTON, M.A.
Assistant Professor of Home Economics, School of Education,
University of Chicago; Director of the Chautauqua School of
Domestic Science.
S. MARIA ELLIOTT
Instructor in Home Economics, Simmons College; Formerly
Instructor School of Housekeeping, Boston.
ANNA BARROWS
Director Chautauqua School of Cookery; Lecturer Teachers'
College, Columbia University, and Simmons College; formerly
Editor "American Kitchen Magazine;" Author "Home Science Cook
Book."
ALFRED CLEVELAND COTTON, A.M., M.D.
Professor Diseases of Children, Rush Medical College,
University of Chicago; Visiting Physician Presbyterian
Hospital, Chicago; Author of "Diseases of Children."
BERTHA M. TERRILL, A.B.
Professor in Home Economics in Hartford School of Pedagogy;
Author of U.S. Government Bulletins.
KATE HEINTZ WATSON
Formerly Instructor in Domestic Economy, Lewis Institute;
Lecturer University of Chicago.
MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
Editor "The Mothers' Magazine;" Lecturer Chicago Froebel
Association; Author "Everyday Essays", "Family Secrets," etc.
MARGARET E. DODD
Graduate Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Teacher of
Science, Woodward Institute.
AMY ELIZABETH POPE
With the Panama Canal Commission; Formerly Instructor in
Practical and Theoretical Nursing, Training School for Nurses,
Presbyterian Hospital, New York City.
MAURICE LE BOSQUET, S.B.
Director American School of Home Economics; Member American
Public Health Association and American Chemical Society.
CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS
ELLEN H. RICHARDS
Author "Cost of Food," "Cost of Living," "Cost of Shelter,"
"Food Materials and Their Adulteration," etc., etc.; Chairman
Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics.
MARY HINMAN ABEL
Author of U.S. Government Bulletins, "Practical Sanitary and
Economic Cooking," "Safe Food," etc.
THOMAS D. WOOD, M.D.
Professor of Physical Education, Columbia University.
H.M. LUFKIN, M.D.
Professor of Physical Diagnosis and Clinical Medicine,
University of Minnesota.
OTTO FOLIN, Ph.D.
Special Investigator, McLean Hospital, Waverly, Mass.
T. MITCHELL PRUDDEN, M.D., LL.D.
Author "Dust and Its Dangers," "The Story of the Bacteria,"
"Drinking Water and Ice Supplies," etc.
FRANK CHOUTEAU BROWN
Architect, Boston, Mass.; Author of "The Five Orders of
Architecture," "Letters and Lettering."
MRS. MELVIL DEWEY
Secretary Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics.
HELEN LOUISE JOHNSON
Professor of Home Economics, James Millikan University,
Decatur.
FRANK W. ALLEN, M.D.
Instructor Rush Medical College, University of Chicago.
* * * * *
MANAGING EDITOR
MAURICE LE BOSQUET, S.B.
Director American School of Home Economics.
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS
* * * * *
MRS. ARTHUR COURTENAY NEVILLE
President of the Board.
MISS MARIA PARLOA
Founder of the first Cooking School in Boston; Author of "Home
Economics," "Young Housekeeper," U.S. Government Bulletins,
etc.
MRS. MARY HINMAN ABEL
Co-worker in the "New England Kitchen," and the "Rumford Food
Laboratory;" Author of U.S. Government Bulletins, "Practical
Sanitary and Economic Cooking," etc.
MISS ALICE RAVENHILL
Special Commissioner sent by the British Government to report
on the Schools of Home Economics in the United States; Fellow
of the Royal Sanitary Institute, London.
MRS. ELLEN M. HENROTIN
Honorary President General Federation of Woman's Clubs.
MRS. FREDERIC W. SCHOFF
President National Congress of Mothers.
MRS. LINDA HULL LARNED
Past President National Household Economics Association;
Author of "Hostess of To-day."
MRS. WALTER McNAB MILLER
Chairman of the Pure Food Committee of the General Federation
of Woman's Clubs.
MRS. J.A. KIMBERLY
Vice President of the National Household Economics
Association.
MRS. JOHN HOODLESS
Government Superintendent of Domestic Science for the province
of Ontario; Founder Ontario Normal School of Domestic Science,
now the MacDonald Institute.
[Illustration: A MADONNA OF THE WILD.
A Takima mother, with papoose]
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
BY
MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
Associate Editor Mother's Magazine; Author "Everyday Essays," "Family
Secrets," etc.; Lecturer to Chicago Froebel Association
[Illustration: AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS]
CHICAGO AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS 1907
CONTENTS
AN OPEN LETTER
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD
FAULTS AND THEIR REMEDIES
CHARACTER BUILDING
PLAY
OCCUPATIONS
ART AND LITERATURE IN CHILD LIFE
STUDIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
FINANCIAL TRAINING
RELIGIOUS TRAINING
APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES
OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN
THE SEX QUESTION
FATHERS
THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SUPPLEMENTAL STUDY PROGRAM
INDEX
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS
CHICAGO
January 1, 1907.
My dear Madam:
In beginning this subject of the "Study of Child Life" there may
be lurking doubts in your mind as to whether any reliable rules can
really be laid down. They seem to arise mostly from the perception of
the great difference between children. What will do for one child will
not do for another. Some children are easily persuaded and gentle,
others willful, still others sullen unresponsive. How, then, is
it possible that a system of education and training can be devised
suitable for their various dispositions?
We must remember that children are much more alike than they are
different. One may have blue eyes, another gray, another black, but
they all have two. We are, therefore, in a position to make rules for
creatures having two eyes and these rules apply to eyes of all colors.
Children may be nervous, sanguine, bilious, or plethoric, but they all
have the same kind of internal organs end the same general rules of
health apply to them all.
In this series of lessons I have endeavored to set forth principles
briefly and to confirm them by instances within the experience of
every observer of childhood. The rules given are such as are held at
present by the best educators to be based upon sound philosophy, not
at variance with the slight array or scientific facts at our command.
Perhaps you yourself may be able to add to the number of reliable
facts intelligently reported that must be collected before much
greater scientific advance is possible.
There is, to be sure, an art of application of these rules both in
matters of health of body and of health of mind and this art must be
worked out by each mother for each individual child.
We all recognize that it is a long endeavor before we can apply to our
own lives such principles of conduct as we heartily acknowledge to be
right. Why, then, expect to be able to apply principles instantly
and unerringly to a little child? If a rule fails when you attempt
to apply it, before questioning the principle, may it not be well to
question your own tact and skill?
So far as I can advise with you in special instances of difficulty, I
shall be very glad to do so; not that I shall always know what to do
myself, but that we can get a little more light upon the problems by
conferring together. I know well how difficult a matter this of child
training is, for every day, in the management of my own family of
children, I find each philosophy, science and art as I can command
very much put to the test.
Sincerely yours,
[Signature: Marion Foster Washburne.]
Instructor
[Illustration: FREIDRICH FROEBEL
By courtesy of The Perry Pictures Co., Malden, Mass.]
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
PART I.
The young of the human species is less able to care for itself than
the young of any other species. Most other creatures are able to walk,
or at any rate stand, within a few hours of birth. But the human baby
is absolutely dependent and helpless, unable even to manufacture all
the animal heat that he requires. The study of his condition at birth
at once suggests a number of practical procedures, some of them quite
at variance with the traditional procedures.
HOW THE CHILD DEVELOPS
[Sidenote: Condition at Birth]
Let us see, then, exactly what his condition is. In the first place,
he is, as Virchow, an authority on physiological subjects declares,
merely a spinal animal. Some of the higher brain centers do not yet
exist at all, while others are in too incomplete a state for service.
The various sensations which the baby experiences--heat, light,
contact, motion, etc.--are so many stimuli to the development of these
centers. If the stimulus is too great, the development is sometimes
unduly hastened, with serious results, which show themselves chiefly
in later life. The child who is brought up a noisy room, is constantly
talked to and fondled, is likely to develop prematurely, to talk and
walk at an early age; also to fall into nervous decay at an early age.
And even if by reason of an unusually good heredity he escapes these
dangers, it is almost certain that his intellectual power is not
so great in adult life as it would have been under more favorable
conditions. A new baby, like a young plant, requires darkness and
quiet for the most part. As he grows older, and shows a spontaneous
interest in his surroundings, he may fittingly have more light, more
companionship, and experience more sensations.
[Sidenote: Weight at Birth]
The average boy baby weighs about seven pounds at birth; the average
girl, about six and a half pounds. The head is larger in proportion
to the body than in after life; the nose is incomplete, the legs short
and bowed, with a tendency to fall back upon the body with the knees
flexed. This natural tendency should be allowed full play, for the
flexed position is said to be favorable to the growth of the bones,
permitting the cartilaginous ends of the bones to lie free from
pressure at the joints.
The plates of the skull are not complete and do not fit together at
the edges. Great care needs to be taken of the soft spot thus left
exposed on the top of the head--the undeveloped place where the edges
of these bones come together. Any injury here in early life is liable
to affect the mind.
[Sidenote: State of Development]
The bony enclosures of the middle ear are unfinished and the eyes also
are unfinished. It is a question yet to be settled, whether a
new-born baby is blind and deaf or not. At a rate, he soon acquires a
sensitiveness to both light and sound, although it is three years
or more before he has amassed sufficient experience to estimate with
accuracy the distance of objects seen or herd. He can cry, suck,
sneeze, cough, kick, and hold on to a finger. All of these acts,
though they do not yet imply personality, or even mind, give evidence
of a wonderful organism. They require the co-operation of many
delicate nerves and muscles--a co-operation that has as yet baffled
the power of scientists to explain.
Although the young baby is in almost constant motion while he is
awake, he is altogether too weak to turn himself in bed or to escape
from an uncomfortable position, and he remains so for many weeks. This
constant motion is necessary to his muscular development, his control
of his own muscles, his circulation, and, very probably, to the
free transmission of nervous energy. Therefore, it is of the first
importance that he has freedom to move, and he should be given time
every day to move and stretch before the fire, without clothes on. It
is well to rub his back and legs at the same time, thus supplementing
his gymnastics with a gentle massage.
[Sidenote: Educational Beginnings.]
By the time he is four or five weeks old it is safe to play with him,
a little every day, and Froebel has made his "Play with the Limbs" one
of his first educational exercises. In this play the mother lays the
baby, undressed, upon a pillow and catches the little ankles in her
hands. Sometimes she prevents the baby from kicking, so that he has
to struggle to get his legs free; sometimes she helps him, so that
he kicks more freely and regularly; sometimes she lets him push hard
against her breast. All the time she laughs and sings to him, and
Froebel has made a little song for this purposes. Since consciousness
is roused and deepened by sensations, remembered, experienced, and
compared, it is evident that this is more than a fanciful play; that
it is what Froebel claimed for it--a real educational exercise. By
means, of it the child may gain some consciousness of companionship,
and thus, by contrast, a deeper self-consciousness.
[Sidenote: First Efforts]
The baby is at first unable to hold up its head, and in this he is
just like all other animals, for no animal, except man, holds up its
head constantly. The human baby apparently makes the effort, because
he desires to see more clearly--he could doubtless see clearly enough
for all physical purposes with his head hung down, but not enough to
satisfy his awakening mentality. The effort to hold the head up and to
look around is therefore regarded by most psychologists as one of
the first tokens of an awakening intellectual life. And this is true,
although the first effort seems to arise from an overplus of nervous
energy which makes the neck muscles contract, just as it makes other
muscles contract. The first slight raisings of the head are like the
first kicking movements, merely impulsive; but the child soon sees the
advantage of this apparently accidental movement and tries to master
it. Preyer[A] considers that the efforts to balance the head among the
first indications that the child's will is taking possession of his
muscles. His own boy arrived at this point when he was between three
and four months old.
[Sidenote: Reflex Grasping]
The grasp of the new-born baby's hand has a surprising power, but the
baby himself has little to do with it. The muscles act because of
a stimulus presented by the touch of the fingers, very much as the
muscles of a decapitated frog contract when the current of electricity
passes over them. This is called reflex grasping, and Dr. Louis
Robinson,[B] thinking that this early strength of gasp was an
important illustration of and evidence for evolution, tried
experiments on some sixty new-born babies. He found that they could
sustain their whole weight by the arms alone when their hands were
clasped about a slender rod. They grasped the rod at once and could
be lifted from the bed by it and kept in this position about half a
minute. He argued that this early strength of arm, which soon begins
to disappear, was survival from the remote period when the baby's
ancestors were monkeys or monkey-like people who lived in trees.
[Sidenote: Beginnings Of Will Power]
However this may be, during the first week the baby's hands are much
about his face. By accident they reach, the mouth, they are sucked;
the child feels himself suck its own fist; he feels his fist being
sucked. Some day it will occur to him that that fist belongs to
the same being who owns the sucking mouth. But at this point, Miss
Shinn[C] has observed, the baby is often surprised and indignant that
he cannot move his arms around and at the same time suck his fist.
This discomfort helps him to make an effort to get his fist into his
mouth and keep it there, and this effort shows his will, beginning to
take possession of his hands and arms.
[Sidenote: Growth of Will]
Since any faculty grows by its own exercise, just as muscles grow by
exercise, every time the baby succeeds in getting his hands to his
mouth as a result of desire, every time that he succeeds in grasping
an object as result of desire, his will power grows. Action of this
nature brings in new sensations, and the brain centers used for
recording such sensations grow.
As the sensations multiply, he compares them, and an idea is born. For
the beginnings of mental development no other mechanism is actually
needed than a brain and a hand and the nerves connecting them. Laura
Bridgeman and Helen Keller, both of them deaf and blind, received
their education almost entirely through their hands, and yet they
were unusually capable of thinking. The child's hands, then, from the
beginning, are the servants of his brain-instruments by means of
which he carries impressions from the outer world to the seat of
consciousness, and by which in turn he imprints his consciousness upon
the outer world.
[Sidenote: Intentional Grasping]
The average baby does not begin to grasp objects with intention before
the fourth month. The first grasping seems to be done by feeling,
without the aid of the eye, and is done with the fingers with no
attempt to oppose the thumb to them. So closely does the use of the
thumbs set opposite the fingers in grasping coincide with the first
grasping with the aid of sight, that some observers have been led to
believe that as soon as the baby learns to use its thumb in this way
he proves that he is beginning to grasp with intention.
[Sidenote: Order of Development]
The order of development seems to be, _first_, automatism, the muscles
contracting of themselves in response to nervous stimuli; _second_,
instinct, the inherited wisdom of the race, which discovered ages ago
that the hand could be used to greater advantage when the thumb
was separated from the fingers; and _thirdly_, the child's own
intelligence and will making use of this natural and inherited
machinery. This order holds true of the development, not only of the
hand, but of the whole organism.
[Sidenote: Looking]
A little earlier than this, during the third month, the baby first
looks upon his own hands and notices them. Darwin tells us that his
boy looked at his own hands and seemed to study them until his eyes
crossed. About the same then the child notices his foot and uses his
hand to carry it to its mouth. It is some time later that he discovers
that he can move his feet without his hands.
[Sidenote: Tearing]
About this time, three or four months old, the child begins to tear
paper into pieces, and may be easily taught to let the piece, that
have found their way into his mouth be taken out again. Now, too, he
begins to throw things, or to drop them; then he wants to get them
back again, and the patient mother must pick them up and give them
back many times. Sometimes a baby is punished for this proclivity,
but it is really a part of his development, and at least once a day he
should be allowed to play in this manner to his heart's content. It
is tact, not discipline, that is needed, and the more he is helped
the sooner he will live through this stage and come to the next point
where he begins to throw things.
[Sidenote: Throwing]
In this stage, of course, he must be given the proper things to
throw--small, bright-colored worsted balls, bean-bags, and other
harmless objects. If he is allowed to discover the pleasure there is
in smashing glass and china, he will certainly be, for a time, a very
destructive little person. When later he is able to creep throw his
ball and creep after it--he will amuse himself for hours at a time,
and so relieve those who have patiently attended him up to this time.
_In general we may lay down the rule, that the more time and attention
of the right sort is to a young child, the less will need to be given
as he grows older_. It is poor economy to neglect a young child, and
try to make it up on the growing boy or girl. This is to substitute a
complicated and difficult problem for a simple one.
[Sidenote: The Grasping Instinct]
It is some time before a child's will can so overcome his
newly-acquired tendency to grasp every possible object that he can
keep his hand off of anything that invites him. The many battles
between mothers and children it the subject of not touching forbidden
things are at this stage a genuine wrong and injustice to the child.
So young a child is scarcely more responsible for touching whatever he
can reach that is a piece of steel for being drawn toward a powerful
magnet. Preyer says that it is years before voluntary inhibitions
of grasping become possible. The child has not the necessary brain
machinery. Commands and sparring of the hands create bewilderment and
tend to build up a barrier between mother and child. Instead of doing
such thing, simply put high out of reach and sight whatever the child
must not touch.
Another way in which young children are often made to suffer because
of the ignorance of parents is the leaving of undesired food on the
child's plate. Every child, when he does not want his food, pushes the
plate away from him, and many mothers push it back and scold. The real
truth is that the motor suggestion of the food upon the plate is so
strong that the child feels as if he were being forced to eat it every
time he looks at the plate; to escape from eating it he is obliged to
push it out of sight.
[Sidenote: The Three Months' Baby]
But this difficulty comes later. Now we are concerned with a
three-months-old baby. At this stage the child is usually able to
balance his head, to sit up against pillows, to seize and grasp
objects, and to hold out his arm, when he wishes to be taken.
Although he may have made number of efforts to sit erect, and may have
succeeded for a few minutes at a time, he still is far from being able
to sit alone, unsupported. This he does not accomplish until the fifth
or the month.
[Sidenote: Danger of Forcing]
There is nothing to be gained by trying to make him sit alone sooner;
indeed, there is danger in it--danger in forcing young bones and
muscles to do work beyond their strength, and danger also to the
nerves. It is safe to say that _a normal child always exercises all
its faculties to the utmost without need of urging, and any exercise
beyond the point of natural fatigue, if persisted in, is sure to bring
about abnormal results_.
[Sidenote: Creeping]
The first efforts toward creeping often appear in the bath when the
child turns over and raise, himself upon his hands and knees. This is
sign that he might creep sooner, if he were not impeded by clothing.
He should be allowed to spread himself upon a blanket every day for
an hour or two, and to get on his knees as frequently as he pleases.
Often he needs a little help to make him creep forward, for most
babies creep backward at first, their arms being stronger than their
legs. Here the mother may safely interfere, pushing the legs as they
ought to go and showing the child how to manage himself; for very
often he becomes much excited over his inability to creep forward.
The climbing instinct begins to appear by this time--the seventh
month--and here the stair-case has its great advantages. It ought not
to be shut from him by a gate, but he should be taught how to climb
up and down it in safety. To do this, start him at the head of the
stairs, and, you yourself being below him, draw first one knee and
then the other over the step, thus showing him how to creep backward.
Two lessons of about twenty minutes each will be sufficient. The
only danger is creeping down head foremost, but if he once learns
thoroughly to go backward, and has not been allowed the other way at
all, he will never dream of trying it. In going down backward, if he
should slip, he can easily save himself by catching the stairs with
his hands as he slips past.
The child who creeps is often later in his attempts to walk than the
child who does not; and, therefore, when he is ready to walk, his legs
will be all the stronger, and the danger of bow-legs will be past. As
long as the child remains satisfied with creeping, he is not yet ready
either mentally or physically for walking.
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