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"The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne The Project Gutenberg eBook, Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Study of Child Life Author: Marion Foster Washburne Release Date: September 15, 2004 [eBook #13467] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDY OF CHILD LIFE*** E-text prepared by Stan Goodman, Leah Moser, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team 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 -1- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne TWELVE VOLUMES NEARLY THREE THOUSAND PAGES, ONE THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS TESTED BY USE IN CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION REVISED AND SUPPLEMENTED CHICAGO AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS 1907 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. -2- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne 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." -3- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne 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. -4- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne 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 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 -5- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne 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 -6- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne 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, Instructor 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. -7- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne HOW THE CHILD DEVELOPS 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. 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. 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. -8- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne 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. 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. 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. 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 -9- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Study of Child Life, by Marion Foster Washburne will, beginning to take possession of his hands and arms. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 l..."

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