PARENTHOOD AND CHILD NURTURE CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF THE CHILD To most parents the study of the child is an engrossing pastime. The first cry, the dawning smile, the sound that resembles ma-ma, the waving of the tiny hand, the early attempts to toddle are strange and unexpected phenomena when they appear. Often there has been no intelligent child study either preceding or accompanying the child's advent in the home. Consequently the parent does not know what to look for or when to look for it. In other words there is no chart that helps the father or the mother to tell whether the child's progress is normal, and they lack any knowledge as to how they may guide his development. While parents need to study the behavior of their own children in order to understand them since no two children are alike, they need to check that study by the study of childhood for which there are to-day many fine sources. RESOURCES OF CHILD STUDY More than a score of years ago G. Stanley Hall introduced formally a new subject, child study. It has increased in popularity steadily until to-day there are hundreds of books, pamphlets and magazine articles available under this general heading. Only a part of this material is thoroughly scientific because the observations of chil dren have not been sufficiently accurate, have not extended over a long enough period of time, and have not included enough children to warrant the generalizations that are made. However, every effort has had its influence in calling attention to childhood and in setting this period of life apart from the adult world for contemplation and appreciation. Gradually a body of fairly reliable information has been built up to which parents may turn for help and enlightenment in the care of their children. FICTION AN AID There has also developed a distinct type of fiction picturing the life of the child; Emmy Lou, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Understood Betsy, Penrod are favorite stories of this kind. These tales are full of the quaint humor, the vivid imagination, the engrossing interests, the comedies and tragedies of childhood, and touching as they do the emotions of the adult, they aid greatly in helping him to enter the kingdom of childhood. Then there are the poems about little children by Field, Riley, Longfellow and others, all of which contribute toward a loving appreciation of the small sinner who creates the bear that "Alex ist killed his own self," or the small saint who slips off to dreamland with "Wynken, Blynken and Nod." It pays to spend time upon this literature, for nothing else will enable one to come so close in feeling to the little child. YOUR OWN CHILDHOOD Every grown-up was a child himself at one time although many adults seem to forget this fact. They do not remember the day when in pink sunbonnet or straw hat they sneaked out of the back door and away to the fields or the meadows in search of wild flowers or butterflies or berries, and hence they have no patience with the small son or daughter who seeks adventure by ways forbidden. They forget when they took apart the clock or the music box or velocipede, and the wrath of the gods is invoked upon the meddlesome youngster who tries this experiment. The grown-up has little sympathy with the curiosity and wander-lust of the young, although at one time his behavior as well as the behavior of every other child showed similar manifestations. It is necessary to understand in order to deal wisely in checking any undesirable act on the part of the child. Many a child remembers with bitterness a deserved punishment not because of the punishment but because his motive was not appreciated. He was gripped by some powerful instinct, and his father judged him wilfully disobedient. Let us recall our own childhood in the lives of our children and be charitable, while with a firm hand we lead the way out of forbidden paths. OBSERVATION OF CHILDREN Not only should the father and mother study their own children but they can gain added insight by watching other children. The street, the cars, the stores, the playgrounds and the parks are excellent observation centers. There will be points of resemblance and of difference. The resemblances will serve to temper any imagined superiority of one's own offspring as well as to mitigate any exaggerated sense of his depravity. Your child will be more understandable as you see him in the light of the universal child. A careful observation of other children will, however, reveal a multitude of differences. Physical differences such as color of hair, stature, shape of hands and feet because so evident are easily recognized. The great mental differences not so outwardly apparent have been a subject for conjecture and have never until quite recently been taken seriously or properly considered in planning a program of education for the child. It has required recent psychological tests and experiments to reveal the individual differences that do exist as well as the cause for these differences in a highly differentiated nervous mechanism which varies from child to child. We might say that we have one type "man" as distinguished from the animals, but within that type, although we have several rough divisions as exceptional, good, average, fair and poor, there is really an infinite shading from one group to another and in every characteristic and ability possessed by any individual in any one of these groups. These variations are of course due to different ancestry, race, sex, maturity and training. Any child who is markedly different from other children, slower, keener, with some physical handicap, should be taken to a clinical psychologist for examination. Parents can often profit immeasurably by such advice, saving time, energy and sometimes shipwreck in the home and school education. Every child should be considered to some extent a separate problem and treated accordingly. A note of warning needs to be sounded here, however; to be a separate problem does not mean to be a law unto himself allowed to develop without proper relation to the other members of the family and coöperation with them. QUALITIES OF THE GOOD OBSERVER There are certain qualities that mark the good observer. The first of these is sympathy. In the presence of an unsympathetic person no little child is ever himself, for children are keenly sensitive to atmosphere and have an almost uncanny power of recognizing their friends. A young kindergartner told of the naïve conversation which her niece of seven had held with a little friend as they played with their dolls near the chair where she sat sewing. She said that the child's mother was amazed when the conversation was repeated to her; she said, "I never |