THE FIRST YEAR
The first year of life was formerly regarded as lying outside the
sphere of education. At least until the infant could speak, if not
longer, it was left to the entirely unchecked care of mothers and
nurses, who were supposed to know by instinct what was good for the
child. As a matter of fact, they did not know. An enormous proportion
of children died during the first year, and of the remainder many were
already ruined in health. By bad handling, the foundations had been
laid for disastrous habits of mind. All this has only recently been
realized. The invasion of the nursery by science is often resented,
because it disturbs the sentimental picture of mother and child. But
sentimentality and love cannot coexist; the parent who loves his or her
child will wish it to live, even if it should be necessary to employ
intelligence for the purpose. Accordingly we find this sentimentality
strongest in childless people and in people who, like Rousseau, are
willing to leave their children to the Foundling Hospital. Most
educated parents are eager to know what science has to say, and
uneducated parents, also, learn from maternity centres. The result is
shown in the remarkable diminution of infant mortality. There is reason
to think that, with adequate care and skill, very few children would
die in infancy. Not only would few die, but the survivors would be
healthier in mind and body.
Questions of physical health, strictly speaking, lie outside the scope
of this book, and must be left to medical practitioners. I shall touch
on them only where they have psychological importance. But physical and
mental are scarcely distinguishable in the first year of life. Moreover
the educator in later years may find himself handicapped by purely
physiological mistakes in handling the infant. We cannot therefore
altogether avoid trespassing upon ground which does not of right belong
to us.
The new-born infant has reflexes and instincts, but no habits. Whatever
habits it may have acquired in the womb are useless in its new
situation: even breathing sometimes has to be taught, and some children
die because they do not learn the lesson quickly enough. There is one
well-developed instinct, the instinct of sucking; when the child is
engaged in this occupation, it feels at home with its new environment.
But the rest of its waking life is passed in a vague bewilderment,
from which relief is found by sleeping most of the twenty-four hours.
At the end of a fortnight, all this is changed. The child has acquired
expectations from regularly recurring experiences. It is already a
conservative--probably a more complete conservative than at any later
time. Any novelty is met with resentment. If it could speak, it would
say: “Do you suppose I am going to change the habits of a lifetime
at my time of life?” The rapidity with which infants acquire habits
is amazing. Every bad habit acquired is a barrier to better habits
later; that is why the first formation of habits in early infancy is
so important. If the first habits are good, endless trouble is saved
later. Moreover habits acquired very early feel, in later life, just
like instincts; they have the same profound grip. New contrary habits
acquired afterwards cannot have the same force; for this reason, also,
the first habits should be a matter of grave concern.
Two considerations come in when we are considering habit-formation in
infancy. The first and paramount consideration is health; the second
is character. We want the child to become the sort of person that will
be liked and will be able to cope with life successfully. Fortunately,
health and character point in the same direction: what is good for one
is good also for the other. It is character that specially concerns
us in this book; but health requires the same practices. Thus we are
not faced with the difficult alternative of a healthy scoundrel or a
diseased saint.
Every educated mother nowadays knows such simple facts as the
importance of feeding the infant at regular intervals, not whenever it
cries. This practice has arisen because it is better for the child’s
digestion, which is an entirely sufficient reason. But it is also
desirable from the point of view of moral education. Infants are far
more cunning than grown-up people are apt to suppose; if they find that
crying produces agreeable results, they will cry. When, in later life,
a habit of complaining causes them to be disliked instead of petted,
they feel surprised and resentful, and the world seems to them cold and
unsympathetic. If, however, they grow up into charming women, they will
still be petted when they are querulous, and the bad training begun
in childhood will be intensified. The same thing is true of rich men.
Unless the right methods are adopted in infancy, people in later life
will be either discontented or grasping, according to the degree of
their power. The right moment to begin the requisite moral training is
the moment of birth, because then it can be begun without disappointing
expectations. At any later time it will have to fight against contrary
habits, and will therefore be met by resentful indignation.
In dealing with the infant, therefore, there is need of a delicate
balance between neglect and indulgence. Everything necessary for health
must be done. The child must be picked up when it suffers from wind, it
must be kept dry and warm. But if it cries when there is no adequate
physical cause, it must be left to cry; if not, it will quickly develop
into a tyrant. When it is attended to, there should not be too much
fuss: what is necessary must be done, but without excessive expressions
of sympathy. At no period of its life must it be regarded as an
agreeable pet, somewhat more interesting than a lap-dog. It must from
the very first be viewed seriously, as a potential adult. Habits which
would be intolerable in an adult may be quite pleasant in a child.
Of course the child cannot actually have the habits of an adult, but
we should avoid everything that places an obstacle in the way of the
acquisition of these habits. Above all, we should not give the child
a sense of self-importance which later experience will mortify, and
which, in any case, is not in accordance with the facts.
The difficulty in the education of young infants is largely the
delicate balance required in the parent. Constant watchfulness and
much labour are needed to avoid injury to health; these qualities will
hardly exist in the necessary degree except where there is strong
parental affection. But where this exists, it is very likely not to be
wise. To the devoted parent, the child is immensely important. Unless
care is taken, the child feels this, and judges himself as important as
his parents feel him. In later life, his social environment will not
regard him so fondly, and habits which assume that he is the centre of
other people’s universe will lead to disappointment. It is therefore
necessary, not only in the first year, but afterwards also, that the
parents should be breezy and cheerful and rather matter-of-fact where
the child’s possible ailments are concerned. In old days, infants were
at once restricted and coddled: their limbs were not free, they were
too warmly dressed, they were hampered in their spontaneous activities,
but they were petted, sung to, rocked and dandled. This was ideally
wrong, since it turned them into helpless pampered parasites.[4] The
right rule is: encourage spontaneous activities, but discourage demands
upon others. Do not let the child see how much you do for it, or how
much trouble you take. Let it, wherever possible, taste the joy of a
success achieved by its own efforts, not extracted by tyrannizing over
the grown-ups. Our aim, in modern education, is to reduce external
discipline to a minimum; but this requires an internal self-discipline
which is much more easily acquired in the first year of life than at
any other time. For example: when you want a child to sleep, do not
wheel it up and down, or take it in your arms, or even stay where
it can see you. If you do this once, the child will demand that you
should do it next time; in an incredibly short space of time it becomes
a terrific business to get the child to sleep. Make it warm and dry
and comfortable, put it down firmly, and after a few quiet remarks
leave it to itself. It may cry for a few minutes, but unless it is ill
it will soon stop. If you then go to look, you will find that it is
fast asleep. And it will sleep far more with this treatment than with
petting and indulgence.
The new-born infant, as we observed before, has no habits, but only
reflexes and instincts. It follows that his world is not composed of
“objects”. Recurrent experiences are necessary for recognition, and
recognition is necessary before the conception of an “object” can
arise. The feel of the cot, the feel and smell of the mother’s breast
(or the bottle), and the mother’s or nurse’s voice will soon come to
be familiar. The visual appearance of the mother or the cot comes
somewhat later, because the new-born child does not know how to focus
so as to see shapes distinctly. It is only gradually, through the
formation of habits by association, that touch and sight and smell and
hearing come together and coalesce in the common-sense notion of an
object, of which one manifestation leads to the expectation of another.
Even then, for a time, there is hardly any feeling of the difference
between persons and things; a baby which is partly breast-fed and
partly bottle-fed will, for a time, have similar feelings towards
mother and bottle. During all this time, education must be by
purely physical means. Its pleasures are physical--chiefly food and
warmth--and its pains also are physical. Habits of behaviour arise
through seeking what is associated with pleasure and avoiding what is
associated with pain. A child’s crying is partly a reflex connected
with pain, partly an act performed in the pursuit of pleasure. At
first, of course, it is only the former. But since any real pain
that the child may be suffering must, if possible, be removed, it is
inevitable that crying should come to be associated with pleasant
consequences. The child therefore soon begins to cry because it
desires a pleasure, not because it feels a physical pain; this is one
of its first triumphs of intelligence. But try as it may, it cannot
give quite the same cry as when it is in actual pain. The attentive
ear of the mother knows the difference, and if she is wise she will
ignore the cry that is not an expression of physical pain. It is easy
and agreeable to amuse an infant by dandling it or singing to it.
But it learns with amazing rapidity to demand more and more of such
amusements, which soon interfere with necessary sleep--and sleep ought
to occupy almost all the day except meal-times. Some of these precepts
may seem harsh, but experience shows that they make for the child’s
health and happiness.
But while the amusements which grown-up people provide should be kept
within certain limits, those which the infant can enjoy for itself
should be encouraged to the utmost. From the first, it should have
opportunities to kick and practise its muscles. How our ancestors can
have so long persisted in the practice of swaddling-clothes is almost
inconceivable, it shows that even parental affection has difficulty
in overcoming laziness, since the infant whose limbs are free needs
more attention. As soon as the child can focus, it finds pleasure in
watching moving objects, especially things that wave in the wind. But
the number of possible amusements is small until the child has learned
to grasp objects that it sees. Then, immediately, there is an enormous
accession of pleasure. For some time, the exercise of grasping is
enough to secure the happiness of many waking hours. Pleasure in a
rattle also comes at this stage. Slightly earlier is the conquest of
the toes and fingers. At first, the movement of the toes is purely
reflex; then the baby discovers that they can be moved at will. This
gives all the pleasure of an imperialist conquering a foreign country:
the toes cease to be alien bodies and become incorporated in the
ego. From this time onward, the child should be able to find many
amusements, provided suitable objects are within his reach. And a
child’s amusements, for the most part, will be just what its education
requires--provided, of course that it is not allowed to tumble, or to
swallow pins, or otherwise injure itself.
The first three months of life are, on the whole, a somewhat dreary
time for the infant, except during the moments when it is enjoying
its meals. When it is comfortable, it sleeps; when it is awake, there
is usually some discomfort. The happiness of a human being depends
upon mental capacities, but these can find little outlet in an infant
under three months, for lack of experience and muscular control. Young
animals enjoy life much sooner, because they depend more upon instinct
and less upon experience; but the things an infant can do by instinct
are too few to provide more than a minimum of pleasure and interest.
On the whole, the first three months involve a good deal of boredom.
But the boredom is necessary if there is to be enough sleep; if much is
done to amuse the child, it will not sleep enough.
At about the age of two to three months, the child learns to smile, and
to have feelings about persons which are different from its feelings
about things. At this age, a social relation between mother and child
begins to be possible: the child can and does show pleasure at the
sight of the mother, and develops responses which are not merely
animal. Very soon a desire for praise and approval grows up; in my
own boy, it was first shown unmistakably at the age of five months,
when he succeeded, after many attempts, in lifting a somewhat heavy
bell off the table, and ringing it while he looked round at everybody
with a proud smile. From this moment, the educator has a new weapon:
praise and blame. This weapon is extraordinarily powerful throughout
childhood, but it must be used with great caution. There should not be
any blame at all during the first year, and afterwards it should be
used very sparingly. Praise is less harmful. But it should not be given
so easily as to lose its value, nor should it be used to overstimulate
a child. No tolerable parent could refrain from praising a child
when it first walks and when it first says an intelligible word. And
generally, when a child has mastered a difficulty after persistent
efforts, praise is a proper reward. Moreover it is well to let the
child feel that you sympathize with his desire to learn.
But on the whole an infant’s desire to learn is so strong that parents
need only provide opportunity. Give the child a chance to develop,
and his own efforts will do the rest. It is not necessary to teach a
child to crawl, or to walk, or to learn any of the other elements of
muscular control. Of course we teach a child to talk by talking to it,
but I doubt whether any purpose is served by deliberate attempts to
teach words. Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to
try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life,
is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties
must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to
stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle.
It is by what we do ourselves that we learn. What grown-up people
can do is to perform some simple action that the child would like to
perform, such as rattling a rattle, and then let the child find out how
to do it. What others do is merely a stimulus to ambition; it is never
in itself an education.
Regularity and routine are of the utmost importance in early
childhood, and most of all in the first year of life. In regard to
sleep, food, and evacuation, regular habits should be formed from the
start. Moreover familiarity of surroundings is very important mentally.
It teaches recognition, it avoids overstrain, and it produces a feeling
of safety. I have sometimes thought that belief in the uniformity
of nature, which is said to be a postulate of science, is entirely
derived from the wish for safety. We can cope with the expected, but
if the laws of nature were suddenly changed we should perish. The
infant, because of its weakness, has need of reassurance, and it will
be happier if everything that happens seems to happen according to
invariable laws, so as to be predictable. In later childhood, the
love of adventure develops, but in the first year of life everything
unusual tends to be alarming. Do not let the child feel fear if you
can possibly help it. If it is ill, and you are anxious, hide your
anxiety very carefully, lest it should pass to the child by suggestion.
Avoid everything that might produce excitement. And do not minister
to the child’s self-importance by letting it see that you mind if it
does not sleep or eat or evacuate as it should. This applies not only
to the first year of life, but still more to the subsequent years.
Never let the child think that a necessary normal action, such as
eating which ought to be a pleasure, is something that you desire,
and that you want it to do so to please you. If you do, the child soon
perceives that it has acquired a new source of power, and expects to
be coaxed into actions which it ought to perform spontaneously. Do not
imagine that the child has not the intelligence for such behaviour.
Its powers are small and its knowledge is limited, but it has just as
much intelligence as a grown-up person where these limitations do not
operate. It learns more in the first twelve months than it will ever
learn again in the same space of time, and this would be impossible if
it had not a very active intelligence.
To sum up: Treat even the youngest baby with respect, as a person who
will have to take his place in the world. Do not sacrifice his future
to your present convenience, or to your pleasure in making much of him:
the one is as harmful as the other. Here, as elsewhere, a combination
of love and knowledge is necessary if the right way is to be followed.