TOYS, BOOKS, AND AMUSEMENTS
Any one who has an opportunity of watching little children must have
observed that they are happiest and most contented when playing alone.
The education of the little child is carried on by means of games and
toys. Handling the various objects which we give him, imparting
movement to them, transferring them from hand to hand and from one
situation to another, he learns dexterity and precision of movement,
and in the process hand and brain grow in power. When at play, his
whole energies should be absorbed to the exclusion of everything else.
He will often be oblivious to everything that is going on around him,
intent only on the purpose of the moment. In order to permit this
fervour of self-education it is necessary that the child should be
accustomed to playing alone, and it is well, if only for convenience'
sake, that he should be accustomed to playing in a room by himself.
Something is wrong if the child cannot be left for a few moments
without breaking into tears or displaying bad temper. Engrossed in his
own tasks, he should be content to leave his nurse to move in and out
of the room without protest. If this fault has appeared and the child
cannot be left alone, our whole educational system is undermined, and
play will be profitless and over-exciting, because it demands the
constant participation of grown-up people. As a preliminary to all
improvement in the management of a nervous child, we must see to it
that he becomes accustomed to being alone. We must so arrange his
nursery that he can do no damage to himself. Scissors and matches must
not be left lying about, and a fireguard must be fixed in position so
that it cannot be disturbed. Then, disregarding his protests, the
nurse must leave him to himself, at first only for a moment or two,
re-entering the room in a matter-of-fact way without speaking to him,
and again leaving it. Soon he will learn that a temporary separation
does not mean that we have abandoned him for all time. Then the period
of absence can be gradually lengthened till all difficulty disappears.
Once his attention is removed from the grown-up people who mean so
much to him, his natural impulse to explore and experiment with his
playthings will show itself. Those toys are best which are neither
elaborate nor expensive. For a little child a small box containing a
miscellaneous collection of wooden or metal objects, none of them
small enough to be in danger of being swallowed, forms the material
for which his soul craves. Everything else in the room may be out of
his reach. A dozen times he will empty the box and then replace each
object in turn. He will arrange them in every possible combination,
and then sweep the whole away to start afresh.
At eighteen months of age observation and imitative capacity will
have made more complex pursuits possible. As a rule the objects which
are most prized and which have most educative value are those which
lend themselves best to the actions with which alone the child is
familiar. Hence the supreme importance of the doll and the doll's
perambulator. The doll will be treated exactly as the child is treated
by the nurse. It will be washed, and dressed, and weighed, and put to
bed in faithful reproduction of what the child has daily experienced.
Dusting, and sweeping, and laying the table will be exactly copied. If
a child has no opportunity of being familiar with horses, if he has
not seen them fed, and watered, and groomed, and harnessed, he may not
find any great satisfaction in a toy horse, or pay much attention to
it, no matter how costly or realistic it may be.
In the third year more precise tasks, such as stringing beads,
drawing, and painting, will play their part, while at the same time
the increased imaginative powers will give attraction to toy soldiers
or a toy tea-service. Playing at shop, robbers, and rafts are
developments of still later growth. In the child's games we recognise
the instinct of imitation--playing with dolls, sweeping and dusting,
playing at shop or visitors; the instinct of constructiveness--making
mud pies and sand castles, drawing or whittling a stick; and the
instinct of experiment--letting objects fall, rattling, hammering,
taking to pieces. All this activity must be encouraged, never unduly
repressed or destroyed. But whatever form it takes, the bulk of the
play must be carried on without the intervention of grown-up persons,
or it will lose its educative value and prove too exacting. If
grown-up people attempt to take part, the child will lose interest in
the play and turn his attention to them.
Children differ very much in their attitude towards books. One child
quite early in the second year will be happy poring over picture
books, while another will seldom glance at the contents and finds
pleasure only in turning over the pages, opening and shutting them,
and carrying them from place to place. Such differences are natural
enough and foreshadow perhaps the permanent characteristics that
divide men and women, and produce in later life men of thought and men
of action, women who are Marthas and women who are Marys.
Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that there is danger in a
training that is too one sided, and that books and toys have both
their part to play in developing the powers of the child. All the
activities of the child should be used in as varied a way as possible.
The eye is but one doorway to knowledge and understanding, the ear is
another, the hand a third.
From pictures an imaginative child will derive very strong
impressions, and mothers should be careful in their choice. It is
foolish to confuse the growth of æsthetic perceptions by presenting
children with books which depict children as grotesquely ugly beings
with goggle eyes and heads like rubber balls. Children love animals
and endow them with all their own reasoning attributes, and in
stories of the home life of rabbits, and bears, and squirrels they
take a pure delight. Books of the "Struwwelpeter" type are less to be
recommended. The faults which they are intended to eradicate become
peculiarly attractive from much familiarity. A little boy of two and a
half who resolutely refused all food for some days was in the end
detected to be playing the part of that Augustus, once so chubby and
fat, who reduced himself to a skeleton, saying, "Take the nasty soup
away; I don't want any soup to-day." Tales of naughty children who
meet with a distressing fate may either frighten the child unduly, or
else produce in a child of inquiring mind the desire to brave his fate
and put the matter to the test. Pictures should not be terrifying or
horrible. Ogres devouring children are out of place as subjects for
pictures and may cause night-terrors.
Children should be taught to be careful of books and toys. The
indestructible book, generally falsely so called, is often responsible
for the immediate dissolution of all others less protected which come
to hand. The sympathy which little children have with the sufferings
of all inanimate objects and their habit of endowing them with their
own sensations may be made of use in teaching them care and
gentleness. They are naturally prone to sympathise with the doll that
has been crushed or the book that has been torn. They will learn very
easily to be kind to a pet animal and to be solicitous for its
feelings, and the lesson so learnt will be applied to inanimate
objects as well.
There is, however, another side to the question. It is true that if
the child is not to be over-stimulated upon the psychical side, we
must see to it that his play, for the most part, is not dependent upon
the participation of grown-up persons. In practice this excessive
stimulation is the common fault with which we meet. There are few
children in well-to-do homes, with loving mothers and devoted nurses,
who suffer from too little mothering and nursing. Too many show signs
of too much. To observe the opposite fault we must seek the infants
and children who for a long time are inmates of institutions,
orphanages, infirmaries, hospitals, and so forth. In such surroundings
the mental life of the child may languish. His physical wants are
cared for, but there the matter ends. In a rigid routine he is washed
and fed, but he may not be talked to or played with or stimulated in
any way. His day is spent passively lying in his cot, unnoticed and
unnoticing. I have seen a poor child of three years just released from
such a life, and after eighteen months returned to his mother, unable
to talk and almost unable to walk, crying pitifully at the novelty and
strangeness of the noisy life to which he had returned, worried by
contact with the other children, and without any desire or power to
occupy himself in the home. For an hour in the day mothers may devote
themselves wholeheartedly to the children, and if they set them
romping till they are tired out, so much the better. In the garden or
in an airy room with the windows open, a game with a ball or a toy
balloon, or a game of hide-and-seek, will be all to the good, and the
children may climb and be rolled over and swung about to their heart's
content. With an only child, especially with a child whose home is in
town, and whose outings are limited to a sedate airing in the park,
such free play is especially necessary. It may help more than anything
else to quiet restless minds and tempers that are on edge all day long
from excessive repression.
On the other hand, those forms of entertainment which are known as
"children's parties" are generally fruitful of ill results, at any
rate with nervous and highly-strung children. Sometimes they entail a
postponement of the usual bedtime, and nearly always they involve
over-heated and crowded rooms. Perverse custom has decreed that these
gatherings shall take place most commonly in the winter, when dark and
cold add nothing to the pleasure and a great deal to the risk of
infection which must always attend the crowding of susceptible
children together in a confined space with faulty ventilation. There
is clearly on the score of health much less objection to summer garden
parties for children, but these for some reason are less the vogue. As
a rule parties are not enjoyed by nervous children. There is intense
excitement in anticipation, and when at length the moment arrives,
there is apt to be disillusion. Either the excitement of the child may
pass all bounds and end in tears and so-called naughtiness, or the
unfamiliar surroundings may leave him distrait with a strange sense of
unreality and unhappiness. It is not always fair to blame the want of
wisdom in his hostess's choice of eatables, if the excited and
overstimulated child fails in the work of digestion and returns to the
nursery to suffer the reaction, with pains and much sickness.
The same arguments may be urged against taking little children to the
theatre. The nerve strain is apt to be out of proportion to the
enjoyment gained. If children must go to theatres and parties, the
treat should be kept secret from them until the moment of its
realisation, in order that the period of mental excitement should be
contracted as much as possible, and grown-up people should be advised
to treat the whole expedition in a matter-of-fact sort of way that
does nothing to add to the excitement or increase the risk of
subsequent disillusion.