Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
The Book of the Child
The
Book of the Child
An Attempt to set down what
is in the mind of Children
By Frederick Douglas How
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
31 WEST 23RD STREET, NEW YORK
1907
PRINTED BY
SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD.,
BATH, ENGLAND.
(2319)
Preface
I am rather shy about this little book.
If it were not for the kindness of some few friends whose knowledge
of children far exceeds my own, it would never have seen the light.
For their encouragement and for the gift of their experiences and
advice I am deeply grateful. I know that they would rather I did not
mention them by name.
The thoughts which I have tried to put together have been growing in
my mind for years. Some, in fact, I have quoted from articles I wrote
some time ago for a magazine no longer in existence.
Perhaps my best excuse for letting this book appear is that, though I
have no children of my own, other people’s children have always been
very good to me.
F. D. HOW.
_May, 1907._
Contents
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE CHILD—ITS ARRIVAL 9
II. THE CHILD—ITS MEMORY 24
III. THE CHILD—ITS IMAGINATION 37
IV. THE CHILD—ITS RELIGION 66
V. THE CHILD—ITS IMITATION 96
VI. THE CHILD—ITS PLEASURES 112
VII. THE CHILD—ITS PATHOS 136
VIII. WAYSIDE CHILDREN 162
IX. CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 176
X. APPENDIX 187
The Book of the Child
CHAPTER I
THE CHILD—ITS ARRIVAL
Children have come into greater prominence during the last quarter
of a century than ever before in the history of this country. Many
things have been written about them, many things have been done
for them,—some foolish and some wise, but all suggested by a newly
aroused sense of the vital importance attached to their proper
upbringing.
[Sidenote: The Cause of the Children.]
[Sidenote: Legislation for Children.]
It is, of course, true that the Cause of the Children has been used
by both political parties for their own purposes, but, for all
that, there has been a large amount of most valuable legislation
on the subject during the last twenty years.[1] The helplessness
of children and their rights as citizens of this country have been
better understood and provided for, while their impressionable nature
has been realised, and the rigour of their training and discipline
considerably modified.
[Sidenote: The Better Position of Children.]
It may be that there has been too great a change in some directions.
There may be a freedom of intercourse between children and their
parents or teachers that borders on disrespect. But taking one thing
with another the position of children has altered for the better,
and it is no bad thing that few subjects have greater interest at
the present day than that of Children. It is an interest, too, that
has come to stay. Of a distinctly softening and refining nature like
the taste for gardening, which has brought into the world so many
books during the last few years, it is only now beginning to reveal
its true importance, and it will increase as from year to year more
people perceive its fascination and trace its results.
[Sidenote: Old-fashioned Discipline.]
Sixty or seventy years ago the chief interest in children shown by
parents and teachers was of an extremely disciplinary nature. Many
children were not allowed to sit down without permission when in
their parents’ presence, and it was in many families the rule that
the father and mother should be addressed as “Sir” and “Ma’am.”
Teachers of both sexes ruled mainly by fear, and allowed no intimacy
between themselves and their pupils. The rigour of such upbringing
and education must have withered many a tender-natured child as a
cold black wind in spring will shrivel the opening blossoms of the
fruit trees.
[Sidenote: Children of the Poor.]
[Sidenote: Metropolitan Working Classes’ Association.]
Among the working classes, until the Church began to establish its
schools, the children grew up anyhow, and could in few cases read or
write. Infant mortality and unhealthy conditions of childhood were
prevalent. So much was this the case that in 1847, while little was
yet being thought or written about Children, the Metropolitan Working
Classes’ Association for Improving the Public Health actually put
out a pamphlet on their proper rearing and training. This document
had some considerable circulation, but its usefulness must have been
greatly curtailed by the inability of so many people in those days to
read.
[Sidenote: Literature Concerning Children.]
Before this publication the literature on the subject of children was
extremely scanty. Not only was this the case but those people who did
from time to time write on the subject seem to have been ashamed
of doing so, and their works, appearing once or twice in a century,
are for the most part anonymous.
[Sidenote: The Office of Christian Parents.]
There exists a treatise printed by Cantrell Legge, printer to
the University of Cambridge, in the year 1616, with the title
“The Office of Christian Parents, showing how Children are to be
governed throughout all ages and times of their life. With a brief
Admonitorie addition unto children to answer in dutie to their
Parents’ office.”
[Sidenote: Personal Care of the Mother.]
[Sidenote: Possible Extinction of Boarding Schools.]
The writer, whoever he may have been, appears to have at that very
early date grasped the importance of his subject, for he says, “The
Parent is put in trust to governe the chiefest creature under heaven,
to train up that which is called the Generation of God.” Being thus
impressed with the value of children, it is natural to find the
author of the treatise giving advice that is being more and more
strongly urged upon parents at the present day. Eminent doctors
insist upon the advantage to infants of being personally cared for
by the mother, and not handed over wholesale to a nurse. Educational
experts are more and more inclined to take the view that children
should be kept at home as long as possible. So far, indeed, has this
theory advanced that there is a suggestion of the ultimate extinction
of our great public boarding schools in favour of a larger number of
schools so situated that children may attend them as day scholars
while still living at home under parental care and influence.
[Sidenote: Interference of the Grandmother.]
The old writer of 1616 made a strong point of the child being cared
for by its parents from birth onwards. He (possibly from personal
experience) did not even approve of the interference of the
grandmother, for he quaintly observes, “In some places there comes in
the child-wive’s mother. She will not have her daughter troubled with
the noursing: and the Father cannot abide the crying of the child:
therefore a nurse is sent for in all hast”—a course of action of
which he entirely disapproves.
When the child is a little older he still thinks that its committal
to the care of a servant should be avoided.
“When a child beginneth to know his mother from another, there
groweth two absurdities, either the mother’s fondness maketh it a
crying child and restless, or els her careless committing it to a
servant spills it.”
[Sidenote: The Spoiling of Children.]
Here comes in also his first advice as to the disciplining of a
child. He appears to have held strong views as to the necessity of
firmness, but not to have been in favour of the great severity which
often obtained in those days. His observations are too valuable even
now to be passed over. What could be better than the following? “Here
cometh in the cockling of the parents to give the child the sway of
his owne desires to have whatsoever it pointeth to, and so it maketh
the parents and all the house slaves, and there is no end of noyse,
of crying, and wraling; or els there is such severitie as the heart
of the child is utterly broken.” Or again, “When parents do either
too much cockle their children, or by home example do draw them to
worser things, or els neglect the due discipline and good order, what
I pray you can come to passe? but as we see in trees which beeing
neglected at the first are crooked and unfruitful; contrarily, they
which by the hand and art of the husbandman are proined, stayed up,
and watered, are made upright, faire, and fruitfull.”
[Sidenote: Parents to Superintend their Children’s Upbringing.]
It will be observed that this writer implies in all the advice he
gives that the parent is the proper person to bring up a child, not
a servant at home or a teacher at a distance. “Parents,” he says,
“should watch and attend upon their children for the avoiding of evil
occasions and to see all duties rightly performed.”
How far have we got nowadays from this ideal! How greatly modern
habits of life have interfered with any such possibility! What the
ancient moralist quoted above would have said to the upbringing of
most children at the present day it is difficult to imagine. He sums
up his own point of view very pithily in the words, “The egges are
badly hatched when the bird is away; and the children are unluckily
nurtured whose parents are made careles, being absent through
pleasure.”
[Sidenote: Old-fashioned Severity Leads to Dissimulation.]
More than a century later, in 1748, there appeared another anonymous
publication on the subject. This had for its title “Dialogues on the
Passions, Habits, and Affections peculiar to Children.” The writer
was imbued with ideas so far in advance of his time that fear of
ridicule may have caused him to conceal his name. His sentiments
about the proper treatment of children are very much those at which
most people have arrived to-day, when the subject has received much
prominent attention for a quarter of a century. He combats the
prevailing opinion of that date that the right way to deal with
children is by a system of formal repression and severity. Thus he
makes one of his characters say, “I think it necessary that Children
should be kept at some distance. They are apt to grow pert, sawcy,
and ungovernable if we make too free with them, or permit them the
full liberty of speech in our Company.” To this the reply is made:
“To discover the Diseases of the mind ought to be and must be your
principal study. But in this you will never be successful if you set
out with a practice which teaches them to conceal every bad symptom.”
[Sidenote: A Phase of Lying.]
The truth contained in these words is very generally recognised
nowadays. If a parent wants to make a child untruthful it can be
done at once by causing fear, under the guise perhaps of respect,
to be the ruling sentiment. Children are only too ready to learn!
“As soon as they are born they go astray and speak lies.” It is a
tendency of childhood in every class. A gentleman whose work consists
in preparing little boys for the great public schools once said that
almost every small boy passes through a phase of lying. The mistress
of a little village school declared not long ago that there was only
one child there upon whose word she could absolutely rely.
It follows then that those in charge of children, and especially the
parents, should note the advice of the writer of the Dialogues. He
insists again and again upon the evil effects of fear.
[Sidenote: Children Susceptible of Fear.]
“Fear,” he says, “I think is the first Passion which we can
distinctly trace in the Mind of a Child. They are susceptible of it
almost sooner than they can conceive the Nature of Danger; and it
is the Misfortune of Numbers that the Nurses find this so easily
improved to their purposes that Children find the effects of this
passion as long as they live.”
Again, “As to Dread of Punishment which I have observed to be the
lowest and most grovelling kind of Fear, you must by gentle usage
remove it from the apprehension of such as have imbibed it from harsh
Parents or tyrannical Nurses.”
It is exceedingly remarkable to find a writer in the middle of the
eighteenth century who had studied children to such purpose, and who
ventured to advance opinions such as those quoted above.
[Sidenote: Literature of the last Half Century.]
The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rush of literature
concerning children. It is possible that the great public efforts
made by the various agencies for bettering the lot of homeless,
starving, and ill-treated children began to call special attention to
the treatment of all children. It may be that the general tendency
of the age to level all distinctions between one and another helped
to gain greater consideration for the younger members of the
community. It may even be that a more general appreciation of the
Gospel teaching helped forward this result. Or, as some will say,
it may be simply that a wave of sentiment swept over the country and
brought with it a tenderer regard for little children. It does not
much matter what was the cause. The fact remains that a new interest
was awakened, the people of England wanted to understand childhood
better, and books and magazine articles on the subject appeared in
considerable numbers.
This result, even though some people have thought the supply
excessive, has been of great service. The future of a country largely
depends upon the proper upbringing of its children. This in its turn
depends upon a proper knowledge of the nature of childhood. This
knowledge has been stimulated and increased to an unprecedented
degree by the works of the best of the writers who have recently
dealt with the subject of children.
[Sidenote: Books About Children.]
To mention only two or three. Which of us has not been the wiser and
the better for the books of Kenneth Graham, for such an inimitable
character study as the Rebecca of Kate Douglas Wiggin, and for the
marvellously tender insight into the mystery of the mind of a little
child which has been shown by William Canton in the “Invisible
Playmate” and “W. V. her Book”?
It may be hoped that what is practically a new science may be studied
with even greater diligence in the future, and may be given its
proper position as of paramount importance.
Up to the present date more time and pains have been expended and
more literature published on the rearing and training of horses and
dogs than of the little children upon whom the future destiny of the
world depends.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Appendix.