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+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.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Study of Child Life
+
+Author: Marion Foster Washburne
+
+Release Date: September 15, 2004  [eBook #13467]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDY OF CHILD LIFE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Stan Goodman, Leah Moser, and the Project Gutenberg
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+
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+
+
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
+
+by
+
+MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+TWELVE VOLUMES
+
+NEARLY THREE THOUSAND PAGES, ONE THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS
+TESTED BY USE IN CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION
+REVISED AND SUPPLEMENTED
+
+[Illustration: AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS]
+
+CHICAGO
+AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS
+1907
+
+
+[Illustration: A MODERN MADONNA.]
+
+
+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.
+
+    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."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: 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
+
+
+
+[Illustration: AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS]
+
+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
+
+  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
+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,
+
+[Signature: Marion Foster Washburne.]
+
+    Instructor
+
+[Illustration: FREIDRICH FROEBEL
+By courtesy of The Perry Pictures Co., Malden, Mass.]
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE CHILD DEVELOPS
+
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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 will, beginning to
+take possession of his hands and arms.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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.
+
+[Sidenote: 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 least once a day he
+should be allowed to play in this manner to his heart's content. It
+is tact, not discipline, that is needed, and the more he is helped
+the sooner he will live through this stage and come to the next point
+where he begins to throw things.
+
+[Sidenote: Throwing]
+
+In this stage, of course, he must be given the proper things to
+throw--small, bright-colored worsted balls, bean-bags, and other
+harmless objects. If he is allowed to discover the pleasure there is
+in smashing glass and china, he will certainly be, for a time, a very
+destructive little person. When later he is able to creep throw his
+ball and creep after it--he will amuse himself for hours at a time,
+and so relieve those who have patiently attended him up to this time.
+_In general we may lay down the rule, that the more time and attention
+of the right sort is to a young child, the less will need to be given
+as he grows older_. It is poor economy to neglect a young child, and
+try to make it up on the growing boy or girl. This is to substitute a
+complicated and difficult problem for a simple one.
+
+[Sidenote: The Grasping Instinct]
+
+It is some time before a child's will can so overcome his
+newly-acquired tendency to grasp every possible object that he can
+keep his hand off of anything that invites him. The many battles
+between mothers and children it the subject of not touching forbidden
+things are at this stage a genuine wrong and injustice to the child.
+So young a child is scarcely more responsible for touching whatever he
+can reach that is a piece of steel for being drawn toward a powerful
+magnet. Preyer says that it is years before voluntary inhibitions
+of grasping become possible. The child has not the necessary brain
+machinery. Commands and sparring of the hands create bewilderment and
+tend to build up a barrier between mother and child. Instead of doing
+such thing, simply put high out of reach and sight whatever the child
+must not touch.
+
+Another way in which young children are often made to suffer because
+of the ignorance of parents is the leaving of undesired food on the
+child's plate. Every child, when he does not want his food, pushes the
+plate away from him, and many mothers push it back and scold. The real
+truth is that the motor suggestion of the food upon the plate is so
+strong that the child feels as if he were being forced to eat it every
+time he looks at the plate; to escape from eating it he is obliged to
+push it out of sight.
+
+[Sidenote: The Three Months' Baby]
+
+But this difficulty comes later. Now we are concerned with a
+three-months-old baby. At this stage the child is usually able to
+balance his head, to sit up against pillows, to seize and grasp
+objects, and to hold out his arm, when he wishes to be taken.
+Although he may have made number of efforts to sit erect, and may have
+succeeded for a few minutes at a time, he still is far from being able
+to sit alone, unsupported. This he does not accomplish until the fifth
+or the month.
+
+[Sidenote: Danger of Forcing]
+
+There is nothing to be gained by trying to make him sit alone sooner;
+indeed, there is danger in it--danger in forcing young bones and
+muscles to do work beyond their strength, and danger also to the
+nerves. It is safe to say that _a normal child always exercises all
+its faculties to the utmost without need of urging, and any exercise
+beyond the point of natural fatigue, if persisted in, is sure to bring
+about abnormal results_.
+
+[Sidenote: Creeping]
+
+The first efforts toward creeping often appear in the bath when the
+child turns over and raise, himself upon his hands and knees. This is
+sign that he might creep sooner, if he were not impeded by clothing.
+He should be allowed to spread himself upon a blanket every day for
+an hour or two, and to get on his knees as frequently as he pleases.
+Often he needs a little help to make him creep forward, for most
+babies creep backward at first, their arms being stronger than their
+legs. Here the mother may safely interfere, pushing the legs as they
+ought to go and showing the child how to manage himself; for very
+often he becomes much excited over his inability to creep forward.
+
+The climbing instinct begins to appear by this time--the seventh
+month--and here the stair-case has its great advantages. It ought not
+to be shut from him by a gate, but he should be taught how to climb
+up and down it in safety. To do this, start him at the head of the
+stairs, and, you yourself being below him, draw first one knee and
+then the other over the step, thus showing him how to creep backward.
+Two lessons of about twenty minutes each will be sufficient. The
+only danger is creeping down head foremost, but if he once learns
+thoroughly to go backward, and has not been allowed the other way at
+all, he will never dream of trying it. In going down backward, if he
+should slip, he can easily save himself by catching the stairs with
+his hands as he slips past.
+
+The child who creeps is often later in his attempts to walk than the
+child who does not; and, therefore, when he is ready to walk, his legs
+will be all the stronger, and the danger of bow-legs will be past. As
+long as the child remains satisfied with creeping, he is not yet ready
+either mentally or physically for walking.
+
+[Sidenote: Standing]
+
+If the child has been allowed to creep about freely, he will soon
+be standing. He will pull himself to his feet by means of any chair,
+table, or indeed anything that he may get hold of. To avoid injuring
+him, no flimsy chairs or spindle-legged tables should be allowed in
+his nursery. He will next begin to sidle around a chair, shuffling his
+feet in a vague fashion, and sometimes, needing both of his hands to
+seize some coveted object, he will stand without clinging, leaning on
+his stomach. An unhurried child may remain at this stage for weeks.
+
+[Sidenote: Walking]
+
+Let alone, as he should be, he will walk without knowing how he does
+it, and will be the stronger for having overcome his difficulties
+himself. He should not be coaxed to stand or walk. The things in his
+room actually urge him to come and get them. Any further persuasion is
+forced, and may urge him beyond his strength.
+
+Walking-chairs and baby-jumpers are injurious in this respect. They
+keep the child from his native freedom of sprawling, climbing, and
+pulling himself up. The activity they do permit is less varied and
+helpful than the normal activity, and the child, restricted from the
+preparatory motions, begins to walk too soon.
+
+[Sidenote: Alternate Growth]
+
+A curious fact in the growth of children is that they seem to grow
+heavier for a certain period, and then to grow taller for a similar
+period. That is, a very young baby, say, two months old, will grow
+fatter for about six weeks, and then for the next six weeks will grow
+longer, while the child of six years changes his manner of growth
+every three or four months. These periods are variable, or at least
+their law has not yet been established, but the observant mother can
+soon make the period out for herself in the case of her own child. For
+two or three days, when the manner of growth seems to be changing
+from breadth to length, and vice versa, the children are likely to
+be unusually nervous and irritable, and these aberrations must, of
+course, be patiently borne with.
+
+[Sidenote: Precocity]
+
+[Sidenote: Early Ripening]
+
+In all these things some children develop earlier than others, but too
+early development is to be regretted. Precocious children are always
+of a delicate nervous organization. Fiske[D] has proved to us that the
+reason why the human young is so far more helpless and dependent than
+the young of any other species is because the activities of the human
+race have become so many, so widely varied, and so complex, that they
+could not fix themselves in the nervous structure before birth. There
+a only a few things that the chick needs to know in order to lead a
+successful chicken life; as a consequence these few things are well
+impressed upon the small brain before ever he chips the shell; but the
+baby needs to learn a great many things--so many that there is no
+time or room to implant them before birth, or indeed, in the few years
+immediately succeeding birth. To hurry the development, therefore,
+of certain few of these faculties, like the faculties of talking,
+and walking, of imitation or response, is to crowd out many other
+faculties perhaps just beginning to grow. Such forcing will limit the
+child's future development to the few faculties whose growth is thus
+early stimulated. Precocity in a child, therefore, is a thing to be
+deplored. His early ripening foretells a early decay and a wise mother
+is she who gives her child ample opportunity for growing, but no
+urging.
+
+[Sidenote: Ample Opporunity for Growth]
+
+Ample opportunity for growth includes (1) Wholesome surroundings, (2)
+Sufficient sleep, (3) Proper clothing, (4) Nourishing food. We will
+take up these topics in order.
+
+
+[Footnote A: W. Preyer. Professor of Physiology, of Jena, author of
+"The Mind of the Child." D. Appleton & Co.]
+
+[Footnote B: Dr. Robinson. Physician and Evolutionist, paper in The
+Eclectic, Vol. 29.]
+
+[Footnote C: Miss Millicent Shinn, American Psychologist, author of
+"Biography of a Baby."]
+
+[Footnote D: John Fiske, writer on Evolutionary Philosophy. His theory
+of infancy is perhaps his most important contribution to science.]
+
+
+
+
+WHOLESOME SURROUNDINGS
+
+
+The whole house in which the child lives ought to be well warmed and
+equally well aired. Sunlight also is necessary to his well-being. If
+it is impossible to have this in every room, as sometimes happens in
+city homes, at least the nursery must have it. In the central States
+of the Union plants and trees exposed to the southern sun put forth
+their leaves two weeks sooner than those exposed to the north. The
+infant cannot fail to profit by the same condition, for the young
+child may be said to lead in part a vegetative as well as an animal
+life, and to need air and sunshine and warmth as much as plants do.
+The very best room in the house is not too good for the nursery, for
+in no other room is such important and delicate work being done.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN FISKE]
+
+[Sidenote: Temperature]
+
+The temperature is a matter of importance. It should not be decided
+by guess-work, but a thermometer should be hung upon a wall at a
+place equally removed from draft and from the source of heat. The
+temperature for children during the first year should be about 70
+degrees Fahrenheit during the day and not lower than 50 degrees at
+night. Children who sleep with the mother will not be injured by a
+temperature 5 to 20 degrees lower at night.
+
+[Sidenote: Fresh Air]
+
+It is important to provide means for the ingress of fresh air. It is
+not sufficient to air the room from another room unless that other
+room has in it an open window. Even then the nursery windows should
+be opened wide from fifteen minutes to half an hour night and morning,
+while the child is in another room; and this even when the weather is
+at zero or below. It does not take long to warm up room that has been
+aired. Perhaps the best means of obtaining the ingress of fresh air
+without creating a draft upon the floor, where the baby spends so much
+of his time, is to raise the window six inches at the top or bottom
+and insert a board cut to fit the aperture.
+
+[Sidenote: Daily Outing]
+
+But no matter how well ventilated the nursery may be, all children
+more than six weeks old need unmodified outside air, and need it every
+day, no matter what the weather, unless they are sick.
+
+The daily outing secures them better appetites, quiet sleep, and
+calmer nerves. Let them be properly clothed and protected in their
+carriages, and all weathers are good for them.
+
+Children who take their naps in their baby-carriages may with
+advantage be wheeled into a sheltered spot, covered warmly, and left
+to sleep in the outer air. They are likely to sleep longer than in the
+house, and find more refreshment in their sleep.
+
+
+
+
+SUFFICIENT SLEEP.
+
+
+Few children in America get as much sleep as they really need. Preyer
+gives the record of his own child, and the hours which this child
+found necessary for his sleep and growth may be taken for a standard.
+In the first month, sixteen, in full, out of twenty-four hours were
+spent in sleep. The sleep rarely lasted beyond two hours at a time.
+In the second month about the same amount was spent in sleep, which
+lasted from three to six hours at a time. In the sixth month, it
+lasted from six to eight hours at a time, and began to diminish to
+fifteen hours in the twenty-four. In the thirteenth month, fourteen
+hours' sleep daily; it the seventeenth, prolonged sleep began, ten
+hours without interruption; in the twentieth, prolonged sleep became
+habitual, and sleep in the day-time was reduced to two hours. In the
+third year, the night sleep lasted regularly from eleven to twelve
+hours, and sleep in the daytime was no longer required.
+
+[Sidenote: Naps]
+
+Preyer's record stops here. But it may be added that children from
+three to eight years still require eleven hours' sleep; and, although
+the child of three nay not need a daily nap, it is well for him, until
+he is six years old, to lie still for an hour in the middle of the
+day, amusing himself with a picture book or paper and pencil, but
+not played with or talked to by any other person. Such a rest in the
+middle of the day favors the relaxation of muscles and nerves and
+breaks the strain of a long day of intense activity.
+
+
+
+
+PROPER CLOTHING.
+
+
+Proper clothing for a child includes three things: (a) Equal
+distribution of warmth, (b) Freedom from restraint, (c) Light weight.
+
+_Equal distribution of warmth_ is of great importance, and is seldom
+attained. The ordinary dress for a young baby, for example, leaves
+the arms and the upper part of the chest unprotected by more than one
+thickness of flannel and one of cotton--the shirt and the dress. About
+the child's middle, on the contrary, there are two thicknesses of
+flannel--a shirt and band--and five of cotton, i.e., the double bands
+of the white and flannel petticoats, and the dress. Over the legs,
+again, are two thicknesses of flannel and two of cotton, i.e., the
+pinning blanket, flannel skirt, white skirt, and dress. The child in
+a comfortably warm house needs two thicknesses of flannel and one of
+cotton all over it, and no more.
+
+[Sidenote: The Gertrude Suit]
+
+The practice of putting extra wrappings about the abdomen is
+responsible for undue tenderness of those organs. Dr. Grosvenor, of
+Chicago, who designed a model costume for a baby, which he called the
+Gertrude suit, says that many cases of rupture are due to bandaging of
+the abdomen. When the child cries the abdominal walls normally expand;
+if they are tightly bound, they cannot do this, and the pressure upon
+one single part, which the bandages may not hold quite firmly, becomes
+overwhelming, and results in rupture. Dr. Grosvenor also thinks that
+many cases of weak lungs, and even of consumption in later life, are
+due to the tight bands of the skirts pressing upon the soft ribs of
+the young child, and narrowing the lung space.
+
+[Sidenote: Objection to the Pinning Blanket]
+
+_Freedom from restraint._. Not only should the clothes not bind the
+child's body in any way, but they should not be so long as to prevent
+free exercise of the legs. The pinning-blanket is objectionable on
+this account. It is difficult for the child to kick in it; and as we
+have seen before, kicking is necessary to the proper development of
+the legs. Undue length of skirt operates in the same way--the weight
+of cloth is a check upon activity. The first garment of a young baby
+should not be more than a yard in length from the neck to the bottom
+of the hem, and three-quarters of a yard is enough for the inner
+garment.
+
+The sleeves, too, should be large and loose, and the arm-size should
+be roomy, so as to prevent chafing. The sleeves may be tied in at the
+wrist with a ribbon to insure warmth.
+
+_Lightness of weight._ The underclothing should be made of pure wool,
+so as to gain the greatest amount of warmth from the least weight.
+In the few cases where wool would cause irritation, a silk and wool
+fixture makes a softer but more expensive garment. Under the best
+conditions, clothes restrict and impede free development somewhat, and
+the heavier they are the more they impede it. Therefore, the effort
+should be to get the greatest amount of warmth with the least possible
+weight. Knit garments attain this most perfectly, but the next
+best thing is all-wool flannel of a fine grade. The weave known as
+stockinet is best of all, because goods thus made cling to the body
+and yet restrict its activity very little.
+
+The best garments for a baby are made according to the accompanying
+diagram.
+
+[Sidenote: Princess Garment]
+
+They consist of three garments, to be worn one over the other, each
+one an inch longer in every way than the underlying one. The first is
+a princess garment, made of white stockinet, which takes the place of
+shirt, pinning-blanket, and band. Before cutting this out, a box-pleat
+an inch and a half wide should be laid down the middle of the front,
+and a side pleat three-fourths of an inch wide on either side of the
+placket in the back. The sleeve should have a tuck an inch wide. These
+tucks and pleats are better run in be hand, so that they may be easily
+ripped. As the baby grows and the flannel shrinks, these tucks and
+pleats can be let out.
+
+[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE "GERTRUDE" SUIT.]
+
+The next garment, which goes over this, is made in the same way, only
+an inch larger in every measurement. It is made of baby flannel, and
+takes the place of the flannel petticoat with its cotton band. Over
+these two garments any ordinary dress may be worn. Dressed in this
+suit, the child is evenly covered with too thicknesses of flannel
+and one of cotton. As the skirts are rather short, however, and he is
+expected to move his legs about freely, he may well wear long white
+wool stockings.
+
+As the child grows older, the principles underlying this method of
+clothing should be borne in mind, and clothes should be designed and
+adapted so as to meet these three requirements.
+
+
+
+
+FOOD.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Natural Food]
+
+[Sidenote: Bottle-fed Babies]
+
+The natural food of a young baby is his mother's milk, and no
+satisfactory substitute for it has yet been found. Some manufactured
+baby foods do well for certain children; to others they are almost
+poison; and for none of them are they sufficient. The milk of the cow
+is not designed for the human infant. It contains too much casein, and
+is too difficult of digestion. Various preparations of milk and grains
+are recommended by nurses and physicians, but no conscientious nurse
+or physician pretends that any of them begins to equal the nutritive
+value of human milk. More women can nurse their babies than now think
+they can; the advertisements of patent foods lead them to think the
+rather of little importance, and they do not make the necessary
+effort to preserve and increase the natural supply of milk. The family
+physician can almost always better the condition of the mother who
+really desires to nurse her own child, and he should be consulted and
+his directions obeyed. The importance of a really great effort to this
+direction is shown by the fact that the physical culture records,
+now so carefully kept in many of our schools and colleges, prove that
+bottle-fed babies are more likely to be of small stature, and to have
+deficient bones, teeth and hair, than children who have been fed on
+mother's milk.
+
+[Sidenote: Simple Diet]
+
+The food question is undoubtedly the most important problem to the
+physical welfare of the child, and has, as well, a most profound
+effect upon his disposition and character. Indiscriminate feeding is
+the cause of much of the trouble and worry of mothers. This subject is
+taken up at length in other papers of this course, and it will suffice
+to say here that the table of the family with young children should be
+regulated largely by the needs of the growing sons and daughters. The
+simplified diet necessary may well be of benefit to other members of
+the family.
+
+
+
+
+FAULTS AND THEIR REMEDIES.
+
+
+The child born of perfect parents, brought up perfectly, in a perfect
+environment, would probably have no faults. Even such a child,
+however, would be at times inconvenient, and would do and say things
+at variance with the order of the adult world. Therefore he might
+seem to a hasty, prejudiced observer to be naughty. And, indeed,
+imperfectly born, imperfectly trained as children now are, many of
+their so-called faults are no more than such inconvenient crossings of
+an immature will with an adult will.
+
+[Illustration: JEAN PAUL RICHTER]
+
+[Sidenote: The Child's World and the Adult's World]
+
+No grown person, for instance, likes to be interrupted, and is likely
+to regard the child who interrupts him wilfully naughty. No young
+child, on the contrary, objects to being interrupted in his speech,
+though he may object to being interrupted in his play; and he
+cannot understand why an adult should set so much store on the quiet
+listening which is so infrequent in his own experience. Grown persons
+object to noise; children delight in it. Grown persons like to have
+things kept in their places; to a child, one place as good as another.
+Grown persons have a prejudice in favor of cleanliness; children like
+to swim, but hate to wash, and have no objections whatever to grimy
+hands and faces. None of these things imply the least degree of
+obliquity on the child's part; and yet it is safe to say that
+nine-tenths of the children who are punished are punished for some
+of these things. The remedy for these inconveniences is time
+and patience. The child, if left to himself, without a word of
+admonishment, would probably change his conduct in these respects,
+merely by the force of imitation, provided that the adults around
+him set him, a persistent example of courtesy, gentleness, and
+cleanliness.
+
+[Sidenote: Real Faults]
+
+The faults that are real faults, as Richter[A] says, are those faults
+which increase with age. These it is that need attention rather than
+those that disappear of themselves as the child grows older. This
+rule ought to be put in large letters, that every one who has to train
+children may be daily reminded by it; and not exercise his soul and
+spend his force in trying to overcome little things which may perhaps
+be objectionable, but which will vanish to-morrow. Concentrate your
+energies on the overcoming of such tendencies as may in time develop
+into permanent evils.
+
+[Sidenote: Training the Will]
+
+To accomplish this, you most, of course, train the child's own will,
+because no one can force another person into virtue against his will.
+The chief object of all training is, as we shall see in the next
+section, to lead the child to love righteousness, to prefer right
+doing to wrong doing; to make right doing a permanent desire.
+Therefore, in all the procedures about to be suggested, an effort is
+made to convince the child of the ugliness and painfulness of wrong
+doing.
+
+[Sidenote: Natural Punishment]
+
+Punishment, as Herbert Spencer[B] agrees with Froebel[C] in pointing
+out, should be as nearly as possible a representation of the natural
+result of the child's action; that is, the fault should be made to
+punish itself as much as possible without the interference of any
+outside person; for the object is not to make the child bend his
+will to the will of another, but make him see the fault itself as an
+undesirable thing.
+
+[Sidenote: Breaking the Will]
+
+The effort to break the child's will has long been recognized as
+disastrous by all educators. A broken will is worse misfortune than a
+broken back. In the latter case the man is physically crippled; in
+the former, he is morally crippled. It is only a strong, unbroken,
+persistent will that is adequate to achieve self-mastery, and mastery
+of the difficulties of life. The child who is too yielding and
+obedient in his early days is only too likely to be weak and
+incompetent in his later days. The habit of submission to a more
+mature judgment is a bad habit to insist upon. The child should be
+encouraged to think out things for himself; to experiment and discover
+for himself why his ideas do not work; and to refuse to give them up
+until he is genuinely convinced of their impracticability.
+
+[Sidenote: Emergencies]
+
+It is true that there are emergencies in which his immature judgment
+and undisciplined will must yield to wiser judgment and steadier will;
+but such yielding should not be suffered to become habitual. It is
+a safety valve merely, to be employed only when the pressure of
+circumstances threatens to become dangerous. An engine whose safety
+valve should be always in operation could never generate much power.
+Nor is there much difficulty in leading even a very strong-willed
+and obstinate child to give up his own way under extraordinary
+circumstances. If he is not in the habit of setting up his own will
+against that of his mother or teacher, he will not set it up when the
+quick, unfamiliar word of command seems to fit in the with the unusual
+circumstances. Many parents practice crying "Wolf! wolf!" to their
+children, and call the practice a drill of self-control; but they meet
+inevitably with the familiar consequences: when the real wolf comes
+the hackneyed cry, often proved false, is disregarded.
+
+[Illustration: Herbert Spencer]
+
+[Sidenote: Disobedience]
+
+When the will is rightly trained, disobedience is a fault that rarely
+appears, because, of course, where obedience is seldom required, it is
+seldom refused. The child needs to obey--that is true; but so does his
+mother need to obey, and all other persons about him. They all need to
+obey God, to obey the laws of nature, the impulses of kindness, and
+to follow after the ways of wisdom. Where such obedience is a
+settled habit of the entire household, it easily, and, as it were,
+unconsciously, becomes the habit of the child. Where such obedience is
+not the habit of the household, it is only with great difficulty that
+it can become the habit of the child. His will must set itself against
+its instinct of imitativeness, and his small house, not yet quite
+built, must be divided against itself. Probably no cold even rendered
+entire obedience to any adult who did not himself hold his own wishes
+in subjection. As Emerson says, "In dealing with my child, my Latin
+and my Greek, my accomplishments and my money, stead me nothing,
+but as much soul as I have avails. If I a willful, he sets his will
+against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation
+of beating him by my superiority of strength. But, if I renounce my
+will and act for the soul, setting that up as an umpire between us
+two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves
+with me."
+
+[Sidenote: Negative Goodness]
+
+Suppose the child to be brought to such a stage that he is willing to
+do anything his father or mother says; suppose, even, that they never
+tell him to do anything that he does not afterwards discover to be
+reasonable and just; still, what has he gained? For twenty years
+he has not had the responsibility for a single action, for a single
+decision, right or wrong. What is permitted is right to him; what
+is forbidden is wrong. When he goes out into the world without his
+parents, what will happen? At the best he will not lie, or steal, or
+commit murder. That is, he will do none of these things in their bald
+and simple form.
+
+But in their beginnings these are hidden under a mask of virtue and
+he has never been trained to look beneath that mask; as happened to
+Richard Feveril,[D] sin may spring upon him unaware. Some one else,
+all his life, has labeled things for him; he is not in the habit of
+judging for himself. He is blind, deaf, and helpless--a plaything of
+circumstances. It is a chance whether he falls into sin or remains
+blameless.
+
+[Sidenote: Real Disobedience]
+
+Disobedience, then, in a true sense, does not mean failure to do as he
+is told to do. It means failure to do the things that he knows to
+be right. He must be taught to listen and obey the voice of his own
+conscience; and if that voice should ever speak, as it sometimes
+does, differently from the voice of the conscience of his parents
+or teachers, its dictates must still be respected by these older and
+wiser persons, and he must be permitted to do this thing which in
+itself may be foolish, but which is not foolish, to him.
+
+[Sidenote: Liberty]
+
+And, on the other hand, the child who will have his own way even when
+he knows it to be wrong should be allowed to have it within reasonable
+limits. Richter says, leave to him the sorry victory, only exercising
+sufficient ingenuity to make sure that it is a sorry one. What he must
+be taught is that it is not at all a pleasure to have his own way,
+unless his own way happens to be right; and this he can only be taught
+by having his own way when the results are plainly disastrous. Every
+time that a willful child does what he wants to do, and suffers
+sharply for it, he learns a lesson that nothing but this experience
+can teach him.
+
+[Sidenote: Self-Punishment]
+
+But his suffering must be plainly seen to be the result of his deed,
+and not the result of his mother's anger. For example, a very young
+child who is determined to play with fire may be allowed to touch the
+hot lamp or a stove, whenever affairs can be so arranged that he is
+not likely to burn himself too severely. One such lesson is worth all
+the hand-spattings and cries of "No, no!" ever resorted to by anxious
+parents. If he pulls down the blocks that you have built up for him,
+they should stay down, while you get out of the room, if possible, in
+order to evade all responsibility for that unpleasant result.
+
+Prohibitions are almost useless. In order to convince yourself of
+this, get some one to command you not to move your right arm or to
+wink your eye. You will find it almost impossible to obey for even
+a few moments. The desire to move your arm, which was not at all
+conscious before, will become overpowering. The prohibition acts like
+a suggestion, and is an implication that you would do the negative act
+unless you were commanded not to. Miss Alcott, in "Little Men," well
+illustrates this fact in the story of the children who were told not
+to put beans up their noses and who straightway filled their noses
+with beans.
+
+[Sidenote: Positive Commands]
+
+As we shall see in the next section, Froebel meets this difficulty by
+substituting positive commands for prohibitions; that is, he tells the
+child to do instead of telling him not to do. Tiedemann[E] says that
+example is the first great evolutionary teacher, and liberty is the
+second. In the overcoming of disobedience, no other teachers are
+needed. The method may be tedious; it may be many years before the
+erratic will is finally led to work in orderly channels; but there is
+no possibility of abridging the process. There is no short and sudden
+cure for disobedience, and the only hope for final cure is the steady
+working of these two great forces, _example_ and _liberty._
+
+To illustrate the principles already indicated, we will consider some
+specific problems together with suggestive treatment for each.
+
+
+[Footnote A: Jean Paul Richter, "Der einsige." German writer and
+philosopher. His rather whimsical and fragmentary book on education,
+called "Levana," contains some rare scraps of wisdom much used by
+later writers on educational topics.]
+
+[Footnote B: Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher and Scientist. His
+book on "Education" is sound and practical.]
+
+[Footnote C: Freidrich Froebel, German Philosopher and Educator,
+founder of the Kindergarten system, and inaugurator of the new
+education. His two great books are "The Education of Man" and "The
+Mother Play."]
+
+[Footnote D: "The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," by George Meredith.]
+
+[Footnote E: Tiedemann, German Psychologist.]
+
+
+
+
+QUICK TEMPER.
+
+
+This, as well as irritability and nervousness, very often springs from
+a wrong physical condition. The digestion may be bad, or the child
+may be overstimulated. He may not be sleeping enough, or may not
+get enough outdoor air and exercise. In some cases the fault appears
+because the child lacks the discipline of young companionship. Even
+the most exemplary adult cannot make up to the child for the influence
+of other children. He perceives the difference between himself
+and these giants about him, and the perception sometimes makes him
+furious. His struggling individuality finds it difficult to maintain
+itself under the pressure of so many stronger personalities. He makes,
+therefore, spasmodic and violent attempts of self-assertion, and these
+attempts go under the name of fits of temper.
+
+The child who is not ordinarily strong enough to assert himself
+effectively will work himself up into a passion in order to gain
+strength, much as men sometimes stimulate their courage by liquor. In
+fact, passion is a sort of moral intoxication.
+
+[Sidenote: Remedy--Solitude and Quiet]
+
+But whether the fits of passion are physical or moral, the immediate
+remedy is the same--his environment must be promptly changed and his
+audience removed. He needs solitude and quiet. This does not mean
+shutting him into a closet, but leaving him alone in a quiet room,
+with plenty of pleasant things about. This gives an opportunity for
+the disturbed organism to right itself, and for the will to recover
+its normal tone. Some occupation should be at hand--blocks or other
+toys, if he is too young to read; a good book or two, such as Miss
+Alcott's "Little Men" and "Little Women," when he is old enough to
+read.
+
+If he is destructive in his passion, he must be put in a room where
+there are very few breakables to tempt him. If he does break anything
+he must be required to help mend it again. To shout a threat to this
+effect through the door when the storm of temper is still on, is only
+to goad him into fresh acts of rebellion. Let him alone while he is in
+this temporarily insane state, and later, when he is sorry and wants
+to be good, help him to repair the mischief he has wrought. It is as
+foolish to argue with or to threaten the child in this state as it
+would be were he a patient in a lunatic asylum.
+
+It is sometimes impossible to get an older child to go into retreat.
+Then, since he cannot be carried, and he is not open to remonstrance
+or commands, go out of the room yourself and leave him alone there. At
+any cost, loneliness and quiet must be brought to bear upon him.
+
+Such outbursts are exceedingly exhausting, using up in a few minutes
+as much energy as would suffice for many days of ordinary activity.
+After the attack the child needs rest, even sleep, and usually seeks
+it himself. The desire should be encouraged.
+
+[Sidenote: Precautions to be Taken]
+
+Every reasonable precaution should be taken against the recurrence of
+the attacks, for every lapse into this excited state makes him more
+certain the next lapse and weakens the nervous control. This does not
+mean that you should give up any necessary or right regulations for
+fear of the child's temper. If the child sees that you do this, he
+will on occasion deliberately work himself up into a passion in order
+to get his own way. But while you do not relax any just regulations,
+you may safely help him to meet them. Give him warning. For instance,
+do not spring any disagreeable commands upon him. Have his duties as
+systematized as possible so that he may know what to expect; and do
+not under any circumstances nag him nor allow other children to tease
+him.
+
+
+
+
+SULLENNESS.
+
+
+This fault likewise often has a physical cause, seated very frequently
+in the liver. See that the child's food is not too heavy. Give him
+much fruit, and insist upon vigorous exercise out of doors. Or he may
+perhaps not have enough childish pleasures. For while most children
+are overstimulated, there still remain some children whose lives are
+unduly colorless and eventless. A sullen child is below the normal
+level of responsiveness. He needs to be roused, wakened, lifted out of
+himself, and made to take an active interest in other persons and in
+the outside world.
+
+[Sidenote: Inheritance and Example]
+
+In many cases sullenness is an inherited disposition intensified by
+example. It is unchildlike and morbid to an unusual degree and very
+difficult to cure. The mother of a sullen child may well look to her
+own conduct and examine with a searching eye the peculiarities of her
+own family and of her husband's. She may then find the cause of the
+evil, and by removing the child from the bad example and seeing to it
+that every day contains a number of childish pleasures, she may win
+him away from a fault that will otherwise cloud his whole life.
+
+
+
+
+LYING
+
+
+All lies are not bad, nor all liars immoral. A young child who cannot
+yet understand the obligations of truthfulness cannot be held morally
+accountable for his departure from truth. Lying is of three kinds.
+
+(1.) _The imaginative lie._ (2.) _The evasive lie._ (3.) _The politic
+lie._
+
+[Sidenote: Imaginative "Lying"]
+
+(1.) It is rather hard to call the imaginative lie a lie at all. It is
+so closely related to the creative instinct which makes the poet
+and novelist and which, common among the peasantry of a nation,
+is responsible for folk-lore and mythology, that it is rather an
+intellectual activity misdirected than a moral obliquity. Very
+imaginative children often do not know the difference between what
+they imagine and what they actually see. Their minds eye sees as
+vividly as their bodily eye; and therefore they even believe their own
+statements. Every attempt at contradiction only brings about a fresh
+assertion of the impossible, which to the child becomes more and more
+certain as he hears himself affirming its existence.
+
+Punishment is of no use at all in the attempt to regulate this
+exuberance. The child's large statements should be smiled at and
+passed over. In the meantime, he should be encouraged in every
+possible way to get a firm, grasp of the actual world about him.
+Manual training, if it can be obtained, is of the greatest advantage,
+and for a very young child, the performance every day of some little
+act, which demands accuracy and close attention, is necessary. For the
+rest, wait; this is one of the faults that disappear with age.
+
+[Sidenote: The Lie of Evasion]
+
+(2.) The lie of evasion is a form of lying which seldom appears when
+the relations between child and parents are absolutely friendly and
+open. However, the child who is very desirous of approval may find
+it difficult to own up to a fault, even when he is certain that the
+consequence of his offense will not be at all terrible. This is the
+more difficult, because the more subtle condition. It is obvious that
+the child who lies merely to avoid punishment can be cured of that
+fault by removing from him the fear of punishment. To this end, he
+should be informed that there will be no punishment whatever for any
+fault that he freely confesses. For the chief object of punishment
+being to make him face his own fault and to see it as something ugly
+and disagreeable, that object is obviously accomplished by a free and
+open confession, and no further punishment is required.
+
+But when the child in spite of such reassurance still continues to
+lie, both because he cannot bear to have you think him capable of
+wrong-doing, and because he is not willing to acknowledge to himself
+that he is capable of wrong-doing, the situation becomes more complex.
+All you can do is to urge upon him the superior beauty of frankness;
+to praise him and love him, especially when he does acknowledge a
+fault, thus leading him to see that the way to win your approval--that
+approval which he desires so intensely--is to face his own
+shortcomings with a steady eye and confess them to you unshrinkingly.
+
+[Sidenote: The Politic Lie]
+
+(3.) The politic lie is of course the worst form of lying, partly
+because it is so unchildlike. This is the kind of fault that will grow
+with age; and grow with such rapidity that the mother must set herself
+against it with all the force at her command. The child who lies
+for policy's sake, in order to achieve some end which is most easily
+achieved by lying, is a child led into wrong-doing by his ardent
+desire to get something or do something. Discover what this something
+is, and help him to get it by more legitimate means. If you point out
+the straight path, and show the goal well in view, at the end of it,
+he may be persuaded not to take the crooked path.
+
+[Sidenote: Inherited Crookedness]
+
+But there are occasionally natures that delight in crookedness and
+that even in early childhood. They would rather go about getting their
+heart's desire in some crooked, intricate, underhanded way than by the
+direct route. Such a fault is almost certain to be an inherited one;
+and here again, a close study of the child's relatives will often help
+the mother to make a good diagnosis, and even suggest to her the line
+of treatment.
+
+[Sidenote: Extreme Cases]
+
+In an extreme case, the family may unite in disbelieving the child who
+lies, not merely disbelieving him, when he is lying, but disbelieving
+him all the time, no matter what he says. He must be made to see, and,
+that without room for any further doubt, that the crooked paths that
+he loves do not lead to the goal his heart desires, but away from it.
+His words, not being true to the facts, have lost their value, and
+no one around him listens to them. He is, as it were, rendered
+speechless, and his favorite means of getting his own way is thus made
+utterly valueless. Such a remedy is in truth a terrible one. While
+it is being administered, the child suffers to the limit of his
+endurance; and it is only justified in an extreme case, and after the
+failure of all gentler means.
+
+
+
+
+JEALOUSY.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Justice and Love]
+
+Too often this deadly evil is encouraged in infancy, instead of being
+promptly uprooted as it ought to be. It is very amusing, if one does
+not consider the consequences, to sec a little child slap and push
+away the father or the older brother, who attempts to kiss the mother;
+but this is another fault that grows with years, and a fault so
+deadly that once firmly rooted it can utterly destroy the beauty
+and happiness of an otherwise lovely nature. The first step toward
+overcoming it must be to make the reign of strict justice in the home
+so obvious as to remove all excuse for the evil. The second step is to
+encourage the child's love for those very persons of whom he is most
+likely to be jealous. If he is jealous of the baby, give him special
+care of the baby. Jealousy indicates a temperament overbalanced
+emotionally; therefore, put your force upon the upbuilding of the
+child's intellect. Give him responsibilities, make him think out
+things for himself. Call upon him to assist in the family conclaves.
+In every way cultivate his power of judgment. The whole object of the
+treatment should be to strengthen his intellect and to accustom his
+emotions to find outlet in wholesome, helpful activity.
+
+One wise mother made it a rule to pet the next to the baby. The
+baby, she said, was bound to be petted a good deal because of its
+helplessness and sweetness, therefore she made a conscious effort to
+pet the next to the youngest, the one who had just been crowded out
+of the warm nest of mother's lap by the advent of the newcomer. Such a
+rule would go far to prevent the beginnings of jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+SELFISHNESS.
+
+
+This is a fault to which strong-willed children are especially liable.
+The first exercise of will-power after it has passed the stage of
+taking possession of the child's own organism usually brings him into
+conflict with those about him. To succeed in getting hold of a thing
+against the wish of someone else, and to hold on to it when someone
+else wants it, is to win a victory. The coveted object becomes dear,
+not so much for its own sake, as because it is a trophy. Such a child
+knows not the joy of sharing; he knows only the joys of wresting
+victory against odds. This is indeed an evil that grows with the
+years. The child who holds onto his apple, his Candy, or toy, fights
+tooth and nail everyone who wants to take it from him, and resists all
+coaxing, is liable to become a hard, sordid, grasping man, who stops
+at no obstacle to accomplish his purpose.
+
+Yet in the beginning, this fault often hides itself and escapes
+attention. The selfish child may be quiet, clean, and under ordinary
+circumstances, obedient. He may not even be quarrelsome; and may
+therefore come under a much less degree of discipline than his
+obstreperous, impulsive, rebellious little brother. Yet, in reality,
+his condition calls for much more careful attention than does the
+condition of the younger brother.
+
+[Sidenote: The Only Child]
+
+However, the child who has no brother at all, either older or younger,
+nor any sister, is almost invited by the fact of his isolation to fall
+into this sin. Only children may be--indeed, often are--precocious,
+bright, capable, and well-mannered, but they are seldom spontaneously
+generous. Their own small selves occupy an undue proportion of the
+family horizon, and therefore of their own.
+
+[Sidenote: Kindergarten a Remedy]
+
+This is where the Kindergarten has its great value. In the true
+Kindergarten the children live under a dispensation of loving justice,
+and selfishness betrays itself instantly there, because it is alien
+to the whole spirit of the place. Showing itself, it is promptly
+condemned, and the child stands convicted by the only tribunal whose
+verdict really moves him--a jury of his peers. Normal children hate
+selfishness and condemn it, and the selfish child himself, following
+the strong, childish impulse of imitation, learns to hate his own
+fault; and so quick is the forgiveness of children that he needs only
+to begin to repent before the circle of his mates receives him again.
+
+This is one reason why the Kindergarten takes children at such an
+early age. Aiming, as it does, to lay the foundations for right
+thinking and feeling, it must begin before wrong foundations are too
+deeply laid. Its gentle, searching methods straighten the strong will
+that is growing crooked, and strengthen the enfeebled one.
+
+[Sidenote: Intimate Association a Help]
+
+But if the selfish child is too old for the Kindergarten, he should
+belong to a club. Consistent selfishness will not long be tolerated
+here. The tacit or outspoken rebuke of his mates has many times the
+force of a domestic rebuke; because thereby he sees himself, at least
+for a time, as his comrades see him, and never thereafter entirely
+loses his suspicion that they may be right. Their individual judgment
+he may defy, but their collective judgment has in it an almost magical
+power, and convinces him in spite of himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Cultivate Affections]
+
+Whatever strong affections the selfish boy shows most be carefully
+cultivated. Love for another is the only sure cure for selfishness. If
+he loves animals, let him have pets, and give into his hands the whole
+responsibility for the care of them. It is better to let the poor
+animals suffer some neglect, than to take away from the boy the
+responsibility for their condition. They serve him only so far as
+he can be induced to serve them. The chief rule for the cure of
+selfishness is, then, to watch every affection, small and large,
+encourage it, give it room to grow, and see to it that the child does
+not merely get delight out of it, but that he works for it, that he
+sacrifices himself for those whom he loves.
+
+
+
+
+LAZINESS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Physical Cause]
+
+This condition is often normal, especially during adolescence. The
+developing boy or girl wants to lop and to lounge, to lie sprawled
+over the floor or the sofa. Quick movement is distasteful to him,
+and often has an undue effect upon the heart's action. He is normally
+dreamy, languid, indifferent, and subject to various moods. These
+things are merely tokens of the tremendous change that is going on
+within his organism, and which heavily drains his vitality. Certain
+duties may, of course, be required of him at this stage, but they
+should be light and steady. He should not be expected to fill
+up chinks and run errands with joyful alacrity. The six- or
+eight-year-old may be called upon for these things, and not he harmed,
+but this is not true of the child between twelve and seventeen. He
+has absorbing business on hand and should not be too often called away
+from it.
+
+[Sidenote: Laziness and Rapid Growth]
+
+Laziness ordinarily accompanies rapid growth of any kind. The
+unusually large child, even if he has not yet reached the period of
+adolescence, is likely to be lazy. His nervous energies are deflected
+to keep up his growth, and his intelligence is often temporarily
+dulled by the rapidity of his increase in size.
+
+[Sidenote: Hurry Not Natural]
+
+Moreover, it is not natural for any child to hurry. Hurry is in itself
+both a result of nervous strain and a cause of it; and grown people
+whose nerves have been permanently wrenched away from normal quietude
+and steadiness, often form a habit of hurry which makes them both
+unfriendly toward children and very bad for children. These young
+creatures ought to go along through their days rather dreamily and
+altogether serenely. Every turn of the screw to tighten their nerves
+makes more certain some form of early nervous breakdown. They ought
+to have work to do, of course,--enough of it to occupy both mind and
+body--but it should be quiet, systematic, regular work, much of it
+performed automatically. Only occasionally should they be required to
+do things with a conscious effort to attain speed.
+
+[Sidenote: Abnormal Laziness]
+
+However, there is a degree of laziness difficult of definition which
+is abnormal; the child fails to perform any work with regularity, and
+falls behind both at school and at home. This may be the result of
+(1) _poor assimilation_, (2) _of anaemia_, or it may be (3) _the first
+symptom of some disease_.
+
+(1.) Poor assimilation may show itself either by (a) thinness and lack
+of appetite; (b) fat and abnormal appetite; (c) retarded growth; or
+(d) irregular and poorly made teeth and weak bones.
+
+[Sidenote: Anaemia]
+
+(2.) Anaemia betrays itself most characteristically by the color of
+the lips and gums. These, instead of being red, are a pale yellowish
+pink, and the whole complexion has a sort of waxy pallor. In extreme
+cases this pallor even becomes greenish. As the disease is accompanied
+with little pain, and few if any marked symptoms, beyond sleepiness
+and weakness, it often exists for some time without being suspected by
+the parents.
+
+(3.) The advent of many other diseases is announced by a languid
+indifference to surroundings, and a slow response to the customary
+stimuli. The child's brain seems clouded, and a light form of
+torpor invades the whole body. The child, who is usually active and
+interested in things about him, but who loses his activity and becomes
+dull and irresponsive, should be carefully watched. It may be that he
+is merely changing his form of growth--_i.e._, is beginning to grow
+tall after completion of his period of laying on flesh, or vice versa.
+Or he may be entering upon the period of adolescence. But if it is
+neither of these things, a physician should be consulted.
+
+[Sidenote: Monotony]
+
+A milder degree of laziness may be induced by a too monotonous round
+of duties. Try changing them. Make them as attractive as possible.
+For, of course, you do not require him to perform these duties for
+your sake, whatever you allow him to suppose about it, but chiefly
+for the sake of their influence on his character. Therefore, if the
+influence of any work is bad, you will change it, although the
+new work may not be nearly so much what you prefer to have him do.
+Whatever the work is, if it is only emptying waste-baskets, don't nag
+him, merely expect him to do it, and expect it steadily.
+
+[Sidenote: Helping]
+
+In their earlier years all children love to help mother. They like any
+piece of real work even better than play. If this love of activity was
+properly encouraged, if the mother permitted the child to help, even
+when he succeeded only in hindering, he might well become one
+those fortunate persons who love to work. This is the real time for
+preventing laziness. But if this early period has been missed, the
+next best thing is to take advantage of every spontaneous interest as
+it arises; to hitch the impulse, as it were, to some task that must
+be steadily performed. For example, if the child wants to play with
+tools, help him to make a small water-wheel, or any other interesting
+contrivance, and keep him at it by various devices until he has
+brought it to a fair degree of completion Your aim is to stretch his
+will each time he attempts to do something a little further than
+it tends to go of itself; to let him work a little past his first
+impulse, so that he may learn by degrees to work when work is needed,
+and not only when he feels like it.
+
+
+
+
+UNTIDINESS
+
+
+[Sidenote: Neatness Not Natural]
+
+Essentially a fault of immaturity as this is, we must beware how we
+measure it by a too severe adult standard. It is not natural for any
+young creature to take an interest in cleanliness. Even the young
+animals are cared for in this respect by their parents; the cow licks
+her calf; the cat, her kittens; and neither calf nor kittens seem to
+take much interest in the process. The conscious love of cleanliness
+and order grows with years, and seems to be largely a matter of
+custom. The child who has always lived in decent surroundings
+by-and-by finds them necessary to his comfort, and is willing to make
+a degree of effort to secure them. On the contrary, the street boy who
+sleeps in his clothes, does not know what it is to desire a well-made
+bed, and an orderly room.
+
+[Sidenote: Remedies]
+
+[Sidenote: Example]
+
+[Sidenote: Habit]
+
+The obvious method of overcoming this difficulty, then, is not to
+chide the child for the fault, but to make him so accustomed to
+pleasant surroundings that he not help but desire them. The whole
+process of making the child love order is slow but sure. It consists
+in (1) _Patient waiting on nature_: first, keep the baby himself sweet
+and clean, washing the young child yourself, two or three times a day,
+and showing your delight in his sweetness; dressing him so simply
+that he keeps in respectable order without the necessity of a painful
+amount of attention. (2) _Example_: He is to be accustomed to orderly
+surroundings, and though you ordinarily require him to put away some
+of his things himself, you do also assist this process by putting away
+a good deal to which you do not call attention. You make your home not
+only orderly but pretty, and yourself, also, that his love for you
+may lead him into a love for daintiness. (3) _Habits_: A few set
+observances may be safely and steadfastly demanded, but these should
+be _very_ few: Such as that he should not come to breakfast without
+brushing his teeth and combing his hair, or sit down to any meal with
+unwashed hands. Make them so few that you can be practically certain
+that they are attended to, for the whole value of the discipline is
+not in the superior condition of his teeth, but in the habit of mind
+that is being formed.
+
+
+
+
+IMPUDENCE.
+
+
+Impudence is largely due to, (1) lack of perception: (2) to bad
+example and to suggestion; and (3) to a double standard of morality.
+
+[Sidenote: Lack of Perception]
+
+(1.) In the first place, too much must not be expected of the young
+savages in the nursery. Remember that the children there are in
+a state very much more nearly resembling that of savage or
+half-civilized nation than resembling your own, and that, therefore,
+while they will undoubtedly take kindly to showy ceremonial, they are
+not ripe yet for most of the delicate observances. At best, you can
+only hope to get the crude material of good manners from them. You can
+hope that they will be in the main kind in intention, and as courteous
+under provocation as is consistent with their stage of development. If
+you secure this, you need not trouble yourself unduly over occasional
+lapses into perfectly innocent and wholesome barbarism.
+
+Good manners are in the main dependent upon quick sympathies, because
+sympathies develop the perceptions. A child is much less likely to
+hurt the feelings or shock the sensibilities of a person whom he loves
+tenderly than of one for whom he cares very little. This is the chief
+reason why all children are much more likely to be offensive in speech
+and action before strangers than when alone in the bosom of their
+families. They are so far from caring what a stranger thinks or
+feels that they cannot even forecast his displeasure, nor imagine
+its reaction upon mother or father. The more, then, that the child's
+sympathies are broadened, the more he is encouraged to take an
+interest in all people, even strangers, the better mannered will he
+become.
+
+[Sidenote: Bad Example]
+
+(2.) Bad example is more common than is usually supposed. Very few
+parents are consistently courteous toward their children. They permit
+themselves a sharp tone of voice, and rough and abrupt habits of
+speech, that would scarcely be tolerated by any adult. Even an
+otherwise gentle and amiable woman is often disagreeable in her
+manner toward her children, commanding them to do things in a way
+well calculated to excite opposition, and rebuking wrong-doing in
+unmeasured terms. She usually reserves her soft and gentle speeches
+for her own friends and for her husband's, yet discourtesy cannot
+begin to harm them as it harms her children.
+
+It is true that the children are often under foot when she is busiest,
+when, indeed, she is so distracted as to not be able to think about
+manners, but if she would acknowledge to herself that she ought to be
+polite, and that when she fails to be, it is because she has yielded
+to temptation; and if, moreover, she would make this acknowledgment
+openly to her children and beg their pardon for her sharp words, as
+she expects them to beg hers, the spirit of courtesy, at any rate,
+would prevail in her house, and would influence her children. Children
+are lovingly ready to forgive an acknowledged fault, but keen-eyed
+beyond belief in detecting a hidden one.
+
+[Sidenote: Double Standard]
+
+(3.) The most fertile cause of impudence is assumption of a double
+standard of morality, one for the child and another for the adult.
+Impudence is, at bottom, the child's perception of this injustice, and
+his rebellion against it. When to this double standard,--a standard
+that measures up gossip, for instance, right for the adult and
+listening to gossip as wrong for the child--when to this is added the
+assumption of infallibility, it is no wonder that the child fairly
+rages.
+
+For, if we come to analyze them, what are the speeches which find so
+objectionable? "Do it yourself, if you are so smart." "Maybe, I am
+rude, but I'm not any ruder than you are." "I think you are just as
+mean as mean can be; I wouldn't be so mean!" Is this last speech any
+worse in reality than "You are a very naughty little girl, and I am
+ashamed of you," and all sorts of other expressions of candid adverse
+opinion? Besides these forms of impudence, there is the peculiarly
+irritating: "Well, you do it yourself; I guess I can if you can."
+
+In all these cases the child is partly it the right. He is stating
+the feet as he sees it, and violently asserting that you are not
+privileged to demand more of him than of yourself. The evil comes in
+through the fact that he is doing it in an ugly spirit. He is not only
+desirous of stating the truth, but of putting you in the wrong and
+himself in the right, and if this hurts you, so much the better. All
+this is because he is angry, and therefor, in impudence, the true evil
+to be overcome is the evil of anger.
+
+[Sidenote: Example]
+
+Show him, then, that you are open to correction. Admit the justice
+of the rebuke as far as you can, and set him an example of careful
+courtesy and forbearance at the very moment when these traits are most
+conspicuously lacking in him. If some special point is involved,
+some question of privilege, quietly, but very firmly, defer the
+consideration of it until he is master of himself and can discuss the
+situation with an open mind and in a courteous manner.
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.
+
+
+In all these examples, which are merely suggestive, it is impossible
+to lay down an absolute moral recipe, because circumstances so truly
+alter cases--in all these no mention is made of corporal punishment.
+This is because corporal punishment is never necessary, never right,
+but is always harmful.
+
+[Sidenote: Moral Confusion]
+
+There are three principal reasons why it should not be resorted to:
+_First_, because it is indiscriminate. To inflict bodily pain as a
+consequence of widely various faults, leads to moral confusion. The
+child who is spanked for lying, spanked for disobedience, and spanked
+again for tearing his clothes, is likely enough to consider these
+three things as much the same, as, at any rate, of equal importance,
+because they all lead to the same result. This is to lay the
+foundation for a permanent moral confusion, and a man who cannot see
+the nature of a wrong deed, and its relative importance, is incapable
+of guiding himself or others. Corporal punishment teaches a child
+nothing of the reason why what he does is wrong. Wrong must seem to
+him to be dependent upon the will of another, and its disagreeable
+consequences to be escapable if only he can evade the will of that
+other.
+
+[Sidenote: Fear versus Love]
+
+_Second_: Corporal punishment is wrong because it inculcates fear of
+pain as the motive for conduct, instead of love of righteousness. It
+tends directly to cultivate cowardice, deceitfulness, and anger--three
+faults worse than almost any fault against which it can be employed.
+True, some persons grow up both gentle and straightforward in spite
+of the fact that they have been whipped in their youth, but it is in
+spite of, and not because of it. In their homes other good qualities
+must have counteracted the pernicious effect of this mistaken
+procedure.
+
+[Sidenote: Sensibilities Blunted]
+
+_Third_: Corporal punishment may, indeed, achieve immediate results
+such as seem at the moment to be eminently desirable. The child, if he
+be young enough, weak enough, and helpless enough, may be made to do
+almost anything by fear of the rod; and some of the things he may thus
+be made to do may be exactly the things that he ought to do; and this
+certainty of result is exactly what prompts many otherwise just and
+thoughtful persons to the use of corporal punishment. But these good
+results are obtained at the expense of the future. The effect of each
+spanking is a little less than the effect of the preceding one. The
+child's sensibilities blunt. As in the case of a man with the drug
+habit, it requires a larger and larger dose to produce the required
+effect. That is, if he is a strong child capable of enduring and
+resisting much. If, on the contrary, he is a weak child, whose slow
+budding will come only timidly into existence, one or two whippings
+followed by threats, may suffice to keep him in a permanently cowed
+condition, incapable of initiative, incapable of spontaneity.
+
+The method of discipline here indicated, while it is more searching
+than any corporal punishment, does not have any of its disadvantages.
+It is more searching, because it never blunts the child's
+sensibilities, but rather tends to refine them, and to make them more
+responsive.
+
+[Sidenote: Educative Discipline]
+
+[Sidenote: Permanent Results]
+
+The child thus trained should become more susceptible, day by day,
+to gentle and elevating influences. This discipline is educative,
+explaining to the child why what he does is wrong, showing him the
+painful effects as inherent in the deed itself. He cannot, therefore,
+conceive of himself as being ever set free from the obligation to do
+right; for that obligation within his experience does not rest upon
+his mother's will or ability to inflict punishment, but upon the very
+nature of the universe of which he is a part. The effects of such
+discipline are therefore permanent. That which happens to the child
+in the nursery, also happens to him in the great world when he reaches
+manhood. His nursery training interprets and orders the world for him.
+He comes, therefore, into the world not desiring to experiment with
+evil, but clear-eyed to detect it, and strong-armed to overcome it.
+
+We are now ready to consider our subject in some of its larger
+aspects.
+
+
+
+
+TEST QUESTIONS
+
+
+The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the
+regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for
+the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to
+emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the
+lesson.
+
+[Illustration: "CARITAS"
+
+From a Painting in the Boston Public Library, by Abbot H. Thayer]
+
+
+
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly
+requested _not_ to answer according to the text-book where opinions
+are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases
+credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your
+name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so
+that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.
+
+
+
+1. How does Fiske account for the prolonged helplessness of the human
+infant? To what practical conclusions does this lead?
+
+2. Name the four essentials for proper bodily growth.
+
+3. How does the child's world differ from that of the adult?
+
+4. In training a child morally, how do you know which faults are the
+most important and should have, therefore, the chief attention?
+
+5. In training the will, what end must be held steadily in view?
+
+6. What are the advantages or disadvantages of a broken will?
+
+7. Is obedience important? Obedience to what? How do you train for
+prompt obedience in emergencies?
+
+8. What is the object of punishment? Does corporal punishment
+accomplish this object?
+
+9. What kind of punishment is most effective?
+
+10. Have any faults a physical origin? If so, name some of them and
+explain.
+
+11. What are the two great teachers according to Tiederman?
+
+12. What can you say of the fault of untidiness?
+
+13. What are the dangers of precocity?
+
+14. What do you consider were the errors your own parents made in
+training their children?
+
+15. Are there any questions which you would like to ask in regard to
+the subjects taken up in this lesson?
+
+
+NOTE.--After completing the test, sign your full name.
+
+
+
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+
+CHARACTER BUILDING
+
+
+[Sidenote: Froebel's Philosophy]
+
+Although we have taken up the question of punishment and the manner
+of dealing with various childish iniquities before the question of
+character-building, it has only been done in order to clear the mind
+of some current misconceptions. In the statements of Froebel's simple
+and positive philosophy of child culture, misconception on the part of
+the reader must be guarded against, and these misconceptions generally
+arise from a feeling that, beautiful as his optimistic philosophy may
+be, there are some children too bad to profit by it--or at least that
+there are occasions when it will not work out in practice. In the
+preceding section we have endeavored to show in detail how this method
+applies to a representative list of faults and shortcomings, and
+having thus, we hope, proved that the method is applicable to a wide
+range of cases--indeed to all possible cases--we will proceed to
+recount the fundamental principles which Froebel, and before him
+Pestalozzi,[A] enunciated; which times who adhere to the new education
+are to-day working out into the detail of school-room practice.
+
+[Sidenote: Object of Moral Training.]
+
+As previously stated, the object of the moral training of the child is
+the inculcation of the love of righteousness. Froebel is not concerned
+with laying down a mass of observances which the child must follow,
+and which the parents must insist upon. He thinks rather that the
+child's nature once turned into the right direction and surrounded
+by right influences will grow straight without constant yankings
+and twistings. The child who loves to do right is safe. He may make
+mistakes as to what the right is, but he will learn by these mistakes,
+and will never go far astray.
+
+[Sidenote: The Reason Why]
+
+However, it is well to save him as far as possible from the pain
+of these mistakes. We need to preserve in him what has already been
+implanted there; the love of understanding the reasons for conduct.
+When the child asks "Why?" therefore, he should seldom be told
+"Because mother says so." This is to deny a rightful activity of
+his young mind; to give him a monotonous and insufficient reason,
+temporary in its nature, instead of a lasting reason which will remain
+with him through life. Dante says all those who have lost what he
+calls "the good of the intellect" are in the Inferno. And when you
+refuse to give your child satisfactory reasons for the conduct you
+require of him, you refuse to cultivate in him that very good of the
+intellect which is necessary for his salvation.
+
+[Sidenote: Advantage of Positive Commands]
+
+As soon, however, as your commands become positive instead of
+negative, the difficulty of meeting the situation begins to disappear.
+It is usually much easier to tell the child why he should do a thing
+than why he should not do its opposite. For example, it is much easier
+to make him see that he ought to be a helpful member of the family
+than to make him understand why he should stop making a loud noise, or
+refrain from waking up the baby. There is something in the child which
+in calm moments recognizes that love demands some sacrifice. To this
+something you must appeal and these calm moments, for the most part,
+you must choose for making the appeal. The effort is to prevent the
+appearance of evil by the active presence of good. The child who is
+busy trying to be good has little time to be naughty.
+
+[Sidenote: Original Goodness]
+
+Froebel's most characteristic utterance is perhaps this: "A
+suppressed or perverted good quality--a good tendency, only repressed,
+misunderstood, or misguided--lies originally at the bottom of
+every shortcoming in man. Hence the only and infallible remedy for
+counteracting any shortcoming and even wickedness is to find the
+originally good source, the originally good side of the human being
+that has been repressed, disturbed, or misled into the shortcoming,
+and then to foster, build up, and properly guide this good side. Thus
+the shortcoming will at last disappear, although it may involve a hard
+struggle against habit, but not against original depravity in man, and
+this is accomplished so much the more rapidly and surely because man
+himself tends to abandon his shortcomings, for man prefers right to
+wrong." The natural deduction from this is that we should say "do"
+rather than "don't"; open up the natural way for rightful activity
+instead of uttering loud warning cries at the entrance to every wrong
+path.
+
+[Sidenote: Kindergarten Methods]
+
+It is for this reason that the kindergarten tries by every means to
+make right doing delightful. This is one of the reasons for its songs,
+dances, plays, its bright colors, birds, and flowers. And in this
+respect it may well be imitated in every home. No one loves that which
+is disagreeable, ugly, and forbidding; yet many little children are
+expected to love right doing which is seldom attractively presented to
+them.
+
+The results of such treatment are apparent in the grown people of
+to-day. Most persons have an underlying conviction that sinners, or
+at any rate unconscientious persons, have a much easier and pleasanter
+time of it than those who try to do right. To the imagination of the
+majority of adults sin is dressed in glittering colors and virtue in
+gray, somber garments. There are few who do not take credit for right
+doing as if they had chosen a hard and disagreeable part instead
+of the more alluring ways of wrong. This is because they have been
+mis-taught in childhood and have come to think of wrongdoing as
+pleasant and virtue as hard, whereas the real truth is exactly the
+opposite. It is wrongdoing that brings unpleasant consequences and
+virtue that brings happiness.
+
+[Sidenote: Right Doing Made Easy]
+
+There are those who object that by the kindergarten method right doing
+is made too easy. The children do not have to put forth enough effort,
+they say; they are not called upon to endure sufficient pain; they do
+not have the discipline which causes them to choose right no matter
+how painful right may be for the moment. Whether this dictum is ever
+true or not, it certainly is not true in early childhood. The love of
+righteousness needs to be firmly rooted in the character before it is
+strained and pulled upon. We do not start seedlings in the rocky soil
+or plant out saplings in time of frost. If tests and trials of virtue
+must come, let them come in later life when the love of virtue is so
+firmly established that it may be trusted to find a way to its own
+satisfaction through whatever difficulties may oppose.
+
+[Sidenote: Neighbors' Opinions]
+
+In the very beginning of any effort to live up to Froebel's
+requirements it is evident that children must not be measured by the
+way they appear to the neighbors. This is to reaffirm the power of
+that rigid tradition which has warped so many young lives. She who
+is trying to fix her child's heart upon true and holy things may well
+disregard her neighbor's comments on the child's manners or clothes
+or even upon momentary ebullitions of temper. She is working below the
+surface of things, is setting eternal forces to work, and she cannot
+afford to interrupt this work for the sake of shining the child up
+with any premature outside polish. If she is to have any peace of mind
+or to allow any to the child, if she is to live in any way a simple
+and serene life, she must establish a few fundamental principles by
+which she judges her child's conduct and regulates her own, and stand
+by these principles through thick and thin.
+
+[Sidenote: The Family Republic]
+
+Perhaps the most fundamental principle is that enunciated by Fichte.
+"Each man," he says, "is a free being in a world of other free
+beings." Therefore his freedom is limited only by the freedom of the
+other free beings. That is, they must "divide the world amongst them."
+Stated in the form of a command he says again, "Restrict your freedom
+through the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in
+contact." This is a rule that even a three-year-old child can be made
+to understand, and it is astonishing with what readiness he will admit
+its justice. He call do anything he wants to, you explain to him,
+except bother other people. And, of course, the corollary follows that
+every one else can do whatever he pleases except to bother the child.
+
+[Sidenote: Rights of Others]
+
+This clear and simple doctrine can be driven home with amazing force,
+if you strictly respect the child's right as you require him to
+respect yours. You should neither allow any encroachments upon your
+own proper privileges, except so far as you explain that this is only
+a loving permission on your part, and not to be assumed as a precedent
+or to be demanded as a right; nor should you yourself encroach upon
+his privileges.
+
+If you do not expect him to interrupt you, you must not interrupt him.
+If you expect him to let you alone when you are busy, you must let
+hint alone when he is busy, that is, when he is hard at work playing.
+If you must call him away from his playing, give him warning, so that
+he may have time to put his small affairs in order before obeying your
+command. The more carefully you do this the more willing will be his
+response on the infrequent occasions when you must demand immediate
+attention. In some such fashion you teach the child to respect the
+rights of others by scrupulously respecting those rights to which he
+is most alive, namely, his own. The next step is to require him with
+you to think out the rights of others, and both of you together should
+shape your conduct so as to leave these rights unfringed.
+
+[Sidenote: The Child's Share in Ruling]
+
+As soon as the young child's will has fully taken possession of his
+own organism he will inevitably try to rule yours. The establishment
+of the law of which I have just spoken will go far toward regulating
+this new-born desire. But still he must be allowed in some degree to
+rule others, because power to rule others is likely to be at some time
+during his life of great importance to him. To thwart him absolutely
+in this respect, never yielding yourself to his imperious demands,
+is alike impossible and undesirable. His will must not be shut up
+to himself and to the things that he can make himself do. In various
+ways, with due consideration for other people's feelings, with
+courtesy, with modesty, he may well be encouraged to do his share of
+ruling. And while, of course, he will not begin his ruling in such
+restrained and thoughtful fashion as is implied by these limitations,
+yet he must be suffered to begin; and the rule for the respect of
+the rights of others should be suffered gradually to work out these
+modifications.
+
+A safe distinction may be made as follows: Permit him, since he is
+so helpless, to rule and persuade others to satisfy his legitimate
+desires, such as the desire for food, sleep, affection, and knowledge;
+but when be demands indulgencies, reserve your own liberty of choice,
+so as to clearly demonstrate to him that you are exercising choice,
+and in doing so, are well within your own rights.
+
+[Sidenote: Low Voice Commands]
+
+There is one simple outward observation which greatly assists us the
+inculcation of these fundamental truths--that is the habit of using
+a low voice in speaking, especially when issuing a command or
+administering a rebuke. A loud, insistent voice practically insures
+rebellion. This is because the low voice means that you have command
+of yourself, the loud voice that you have lost it. The child submits
+to a controlled will, but not to one as uncontrolled as his own. In
+both cases he follows your example. If you are self-controlled, he
+tends to become so; if you are excited and angry, he also becomes so,
+or if he is already so, his excitement and anger increases.
+
+While most mothers rely altogether too much upon speech as a means of
+explaining life to the child, yet it must be admitted that speech has
+a great function to perform in this regard. Nevertheless it is well to
+bear in mind that it is not true that a child will always do what
+you tell him to do, no matter how plain you may tell him, nor how
+perfectly you may explain your reasons.
+
+[Sidenote: Limitations of Words]
+
+In the first place, speech means less to children than to grown
+persons. Each word has a smaller content of experience. They cannot
+get the full force of the most clear and eloquent statement. Therefore
+all speech must be reinforced by example, and by as many forms of
+concrete illustrations as can be commanded. Each necessary truth
+should enter the child's mind by several channels; hearing, eye-sight,
+motor activity should all be called upon. Many truths may be
+dramatized. This, where the mother is clever enough to employ it, is
+the surest method of appeal. But in any case, speech alone must not
+be relied upon, nor the child considered a hopeless case who does not
+respond to it.
+
+Denunciatory speech especially needs wise regulation. As Richter says,
+"What is to be followed as a rule of prudence, yea, of justice, toward
+grown-up people, should be much more observed toward children, namely,
+that one should never judgingly declare, for instance, 'You are a
+liar,' or even, 'You are a bad boy,' instead of saying, 'You have told
+an untruth,' or 'You have done wrong.' For since the power to command
+yourself implies at the same time the power of obeying, man feels a
+minute after his fault as free as Socrates, and the branding mark
+of his _nature_, not his _deed_, must seem to him blameworthy of
+punishment.
+
+"To this must be added that every individual's wrong actions, owing to
+his inalienable sense of a moral aim and hope, seem to him only short,
+usurped interregnums of the devil, or comets in the uniform solar
+system. The child, consequently, under such a moral annihilation,
+feels the wrong-doing of others more than his own; and this all the
+more because, in him, want of reflection and the general warmth of his
+feelings, represent the injustice of others in a more ugly light than
+his own."
+
+[Sidenote: Example versus Precept]
+
+If any one desires to prove the superior force of example over
+precept, let him try teaching a baby to say "Thank you" or "Please,"
+merely by being scrupulously careful to say these things to the baby
+on all fit occasions. No one has taken the statistics of the number
+of times every small child is exhorted to perfect himself in this
+particular observance; but it is safe to say that in the United States
+alone these injunctions are spoken something like a million times
+a day and all quite unnecessarily. The child will say "Please"
+and "Thank you" without being told to do so, if he merely has his
+attention called to the fact that the people around him all use these
+phrases.
+
+[Sidenote: Politeness to Children]
+
+The truth is, too many parents forget to speak these agreeable words
+whenever they ask favors of their own children; so the force of their
+example is marred. What you do to the child himself, remember, always
+outweighs anything you do to others before him. This is the reason why
+it is necessary that you should acknowledge your own shortcomings to
+the child, if you expect him to acknowledge his to you. It is also
+necessary sometimes to point out clearly the kind and considerate
+things that you are in the habit of doing to others, lest the
+untrained mind of the young child may fail to see and so miss the
+force of your example.
+
+But in thus revealing your own good deeds to the child, remember
+the motive, and reveal them only (a) when he cannot perceive them
+of himself, (b) when he needs to perceive them in order that his own
+conduct may be influenced by them, and (c) at the time when he is most
+likely to appreciate them. This latter requirement precludes you from
+announcing your own righteousness when he is naughty, and compels you,
+of course, to go directly against your native impulse, which is to
+mention your deeds of sacrifice and kindness only when you are angry
+and mean to reproach him with them. When you tell him how devoted you
+have been at some moment when you are both thoroughly angry, he is in
+danger of either denying or hating your devotion; but when you refer
+to it tenderly, and, as your heart will then prompt you, modestly, at
+some loving moment, he will give it recognition, and be moved to love
+goodness more devotedly because you embody it.
+
+[Sidenote: Law-Making Habit]
+
+Another important rule is this: Do not make too many rules. Some women
+are like legislatures in perpetual session. The child who is confused
+and tantalized by the constant succession of new laws learns presently
+to disregard them, and to regulate his life according to certain
+deductions of his own--sometimes surprisingly wise and politic
+deductions. The way to re yourself of this law-making habit is to stop
+thinking of every little misdeed as the beginning of a great wrong. It
+is very likely an accident and a combination of circumstances such as
+may not happen again. To treat misdemeanors which are not habitual nor
+characteristic as evanescent is the best way to make them evanescent.
+They should not be allowed to enter too deeply into your consciousness
+or into that of your child.
+
+[Sidenote: Live with Your Children]
+
+In order to be able to discriminate between accidental wrong-doing,
+and that which is the first symptom of wrong-thinking, you must be
+in close touch with your children. This brings us to Froebel's great
+motto, "Come, let us live with our children!" This means that you are
+not merely to talk with your child, to hear from his lips what he is
+doing, but to live so closely with him, that in most cases you know
+what he is doing without any need of his telling you. When, however,
+he does tell you something which happened in the school play-ground
+or otherwise out of the range of your knowledge, be careful not to
+moralize over it. Make yourself as agreeable a secret-keeper as his
+best friend of his own age; let your moralizing be so rare that it is
+effective for that very reason. If the occasion needs moral reflection
+at all--and that seldom happens--the wise way is to lead the child to
+do his own reflecting; to arrive at his own conclusions, and if you
+must lead him, by all means do so as invisibly as possible. For the
+most part it is safe to take the confessions lightly, and well to keep
+your own mind young by looking at things from the boy's point of view.
+
+[Sidenote: The Subject of Sex]
+
+If, however, there is to be perfect confidence between you, the
+one subject which is usually kept out of speech between mothers and
+children must be no forbidden subject between them; you must not
+refuse to answer questions about the mystery of sex. If you are not
+the fit person to teach your child these important facts, who is?
+Certainly not the school-mates and servants from whom he is likely
+to learn them if you refuse to furnish the information. Usually it is
+sufficient simply to answer the child's honest questions honestly; but
+any mother who finds herself unable to cope with this simple matter
+in this simple spirit, will find help in Margaret Morley's "Song
+of Life," in the Wood-Allen Publications, and the books of the Rev.
+Sylvanus Stall.[B]
+
+In respect to these matters more than in respect to others, but also
+in respect to all matters, children often do not know that they are
+doing wrong, even when it it very difficult for parents to believe
+that they do not intend wrong-doing. As we have seen from our analysis
+of truthfulness, the child may very often lie without a qualm of
+conscience, and he may still more readily break the unwritten rules
+of courtesy, asking abrupt and even cruel questions of strangers, and
+haul the family skeleton out of its closet at critical moments. Such
+things cannot be wholly guarded against, even by the exercise of the
+utmost wisdom, but the habit of reasoning things out for himself is
+the greatest help a child can have.
+
+[Sidenote: Righteousness]
+
+The formation of the bent of the child's nature as a whole is a matter
+of unconscious education, but as he grows in the power to reason,
+conscious education must direct his mental activity. It is not enough
+for him, as it is not enough for any grown person, to do the best
+that he knows; he must learn to know the best. The word righteousness
+itself means right-wiseness, i.e., right knowingness.
+
+To quote Froebel again, "In order, therefore, to impart true, genuine
+firmness to the natural will-activity of the boy, all the activities
+of the boy, his entire will should proceed from and have reference
+to the development, cultivation, and representation of the internal.
+Instruction in example and in words, which later on become precept
+and example, furnishes the means for this. Neither example alone, nor
+words will do; not example alone, for it is particular and special,
+and the word is needed to give the particular individual example
+universal applicability; not words alone, for example is needed to
+interpret and explain the word, which is general, spiritual, and of
+many meanings.
+
+"But instruction and example alone and in themselves are not
+sufficient; they must meet a good pure heart and this is the outcome
+of proper educational influences in childhood."
+
+[Sidenote: Moral Precocity]
+
+Lest these directions should seem to demand an almost superhuman
+degree of control and wisdom on the part of the mother, remember that
+moral precocity is as much to be guarded against a mental precocity.
+Remember that you are neither required to be a perfect mother nor
+to rear a perfect child. As Spencer remarks, a perfect child in this
+imperfect world would be sadly out of joint with the times, would
+indeed be a martyr. If your basic principles are right and if your
+child has before him the daily and hourly spectacle of a mother who is
+trying to conform herself to high standards, he will grow as fast as
+it is safe for him to grow. Spencer says: "Our higher moral faculties
+like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively complex. As a
+consequence they are both comparatively late in their evolution, and
+with the one as with the other, a very early activity produced by
+stimulation will be at the expense of the future character. Hence the
+not uncommon fact that those who during childhood were instanced as
+models of juvenile goodness, by and by undergo some disastrous and
+seemingly inexplicable change, and end by being not above but below
+par; while relatively exemplary men are often the issue of a childhood
+not so promising.
+
+"Be content, therefore, with moderate measures and moderate results,
+constantly bearing in mind the fact that the higher morality, like the
+higher intelligence, must be reached by a slow growth; and you will
+then have more patience with those imperfections of nature which your
+child hourly displays. You will be less prone to constant scolding,
+and threatening, and forbidding, by which many parents induce a
+chronic irritation, in a foolish hope that they will thus make their
+children what they should be."
+
+[Sidenote: Rules in Character Building]
+
+In conclusion, the rules that may be safely followed in
+character-building may be summed up thus:
+
+(1) Recognize that the object of your training is to help the child to
+love righteousness. Command little and then use positive commands
+rather than prohibitions. Use "do" rather than "don't."
+
+(2) Make right-doing delightful.
+
+(3) Establish Fichte's doctrine of right, see page 64.
+
+(4) Teach by example rather than precept. Therefore respect the
+child's rights as you wish him to respect yours.
+
+(5) Use a low voice, especially in commanding or rebuking.
+
+(6) In chiding, remember Richter's rule and rebuke the sin and not the
+sinner.
+
+(7) Confess your own misdeeds, by this means and others securing the
+confidence of your children.
+
+Finally, remember that this is an imperfect world, you are an
+imperfect mother, and the best results you can hope for are likely
+to be imperfect. But the results may be so founded upon eternal
+principles as to tend continually to give place to better and better
+results.
+
+
+[Footnote A: Pestalozzi, Educator, Philosopher, and Reformer. Author
+of "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children."]
+
+[Footnote B: "What a Young Girl Ought to Know" and "What a Young Woman
+Ought to Know" by Dr. Mary Wood Allen. "What a Young Boy Ought to
+Know," "What a Young Man Ought to Know," by Rev. Sylvanus Stall.]
+
+
+
+
+PLAY
+
+
+Although Froebel is best known as the educator who first took
+advantage of play as a means of education, he was not, in reality, the
+first to recognize the high value of this spontaneous activity. He was
+indeed the first to put this recognition into practice and to use the
+force generated during play to help the child to a higher state of
+knowledge.
+
+But before him Plato said that the plays of children have the
+mightiest influence on the maintenance or the non-maintenance of laws;
+that during the first three years the child should be made "cheerful"
+and "kind" by having sorrow and fear and pain kept away from him and
+by soothing him with music and rhythmic movements.
+
+[Sidenote: Aristotle]
+
+Aristotle held that children until they were five years old "should be
+taught nothing, not even necessary labor, lest it hinder growth, but
+should be accustomed to use much motion as to avoid a indolent habit
+of body, and this," he added, "can he acquired by various means, among
+others by play, which ought to be neither illiberal, nor laborious, or
+lazy."
+
+[Sidenote: Luther]
+
+Luther rebukes those who despise the plays of children and says
+that Solomon did not prohibit scholars from play at the proper time.
+Fenelon, Locke, Schiller, and Richter all admit the deep significance
+of this universal instinct of youth.
+
+Preyer, speaking not as a philosopher or educator, but as a scientist,
+mentions "the new kinds of pleasurable sensations with some admixture
+of intellectual elements," which are gained when the child
+gradually begins to play. Much that is called play he considers true
+experimenting, especially when the child is seen to be studying the
+changes produced by his own activity, as when he tears paper into
+small bits, shakes a bunch of keys, opens and shuts a box, plays with
+sand, and empties bottles, and throws stones into the water. "The
+zeal with which these seemingly aimless movements are executed is
+remarkable. The sense of gratification must be very great, and is
+principally due to the feeling of his own power, and of being the
+cause of the various changes."
+
+[Sidenote: Educational Value of Play]
+
+All these authorities are quoted here in order to show that the
+practical recognition of play which obtains among the advanced
+educators to-day is not a piece of sentimentalism, as stern critics
+sometimes declare, but the united opinion of some of the wisest minds
+of this and former ages. As Froebel says, "Play and speech constitute
+the element in which the child lives. At this stage (the first three
+years of childhood) he imparts to everything the virtues of sight,
+feeling, and speech. He feels the unity between himself and the whole
+external world." And Froebel conceives it to be of the profoundest
+importance that this sense of unity should not be disturbed. He finds
+that play is the most spiritual activity of man at this age, "and at
+the same time typical of human life as a whole--of the inner, hidden,
+natural life of man and all things; it gives, therefore, joy, freedom,
+contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world: it holds the
+sources of all that is good. The child that plays thoroughly until
+physical fatigue forbids will surely be a thorough, determined man,
+capable of self-sacrifice for the promotion and welfare of himself and
+others."
+
+But all play does not deserve this high praise. It fits only the play
+under right conditions. Fortunately these are such that every mother
+can command them. There are three essentials: (1) Freedom, (2)
+Sympathy, (3) Right materials.
+
+[Sidenote: Freedom]
+
+(1) Freedom is the first essential, and here the child of poverty
+often has the advantage of the child of wealth. There are few things
+in the poverty-stricken home too good for him to play with; in
+its narrow quarters, he becomes, perforce, a part of all domestic
+activity. He learns the uses of household utensils, and his play
+merges by imperceptible degrees into true, healthful work.
+
+In the home of wealth, however, there is no such freedom, no such
+richness of opportunity. The child of wealth has plenty of toys, but
+few real things to play with. He is shut out of the common activity of
+the family, and shut in to the imitation activity of his nursery. He
+never gets his small hands on realities, but in his elegant clothes is
+confined to the narrow conventional round that is falsely supposed to
+be good for him.
+
+Froebel insists upon the importance of the child's dress being
+loose, serviceable, and inconspicuous, so that he may play as much
+as possible without consciousness of the restrictions of dress.
+The playing child should also have, as we have noticed in the first
+section, the freedom of the outside world. This does not mean merely
+that he should go out in his baby-buggy, or take a ride in the park,
+but that he should be able to play out-of-doors, to creep on the
+ground, to be a little open-air savage, and play with nature as he
+finds it.
+
+[Sidenote: Sympathy]
+
+(2) Sympathy is much more likely to rise spontaneously in the mother's
+breast for the child's troubles than for the child's joys. She will
+stop to take him up and pet him when he is hurt, no matter how busy
+she is, but she too often considers it waste of time to enter into his
+plays with him; yet he needs sympathy in joy as much as in sorrow. Her
+presence, her interest in what he is doing, doubles his delight in it
+and doubles its value to him. Moreover, it offers her opportunity for
+that touch and direction now and then, which may transform a rambling
+play, without much sequence or meaning, into a consciously useful
+performance, a dramatization, perhaps, of some of the child's
+observations, or an investigation into the nature of things.
+
+(3) Right Material. Even given freedom and sympathy, the child needs
+something more in order to play well: he needs the right materials.
+The best materials are those that are common to him and to the rest of
+the world, far better than expensive toys that mark him apart from
+the world of less fortunate children. Such toys are not in any way
+desirable, and they may even be harmful. What he needs are various
+simple arrangements of the four elements--earth, air, fire and water.
+
+[Sidenote: Mud-pies]
+
+(1) _Earth_. The child has a noted affinity for it, and he is
+specially happy when he has plenty of it on hands, face, and clothes.
+The love of mud-pies is universal; children of all nationalities and
+of all degrees of civilization delight in it. No activity could be
+more wholesome.
+
+[Sidenote: Sand]
+
+Next to mud comes sand. It is cleaner in appearance and can be brought
+into the house. A tray of moistened sand, set upon a low table, should
+be in every nursery, and the sand pile in every yard.
+
+[Sidenote: Clay]
+
+Clay is more difficult to manage indoors, because it gets dry and
+sifts all about the house, but if a corner of the cellar, where there
+is a good light, can be given up for a strong table and a jar of clay
+mixed with some water, it will be found a great resource for rainy
+days. If modeling aprons of strong material, buttoned with one button
+at the neck, be hung near the jar of clay, the children may work in
+this material without spoiling their clothes. Clay-modeling is an
+excellent form of manual training, developing without forcing
+the delicate muscles of the fingers and wrists, and giving wide
+opportunity for the exercise of the imagination.
+
+[Sidenote: Digging]
+
+Earth may be played with in still another way. Children should dig in
+it; for all pass through the digging stage and this should be given
+free swing. It develops their muscles and keeps them busy at helpful
+and constructive work. They may dig a well, make a cave, or a pond, or
+burrow underground and make tunnels like a mole. Give them spades
+and a piece of ground they can do with as they like, dress them in
+overalls, and it will be long before you are asked to think of another
+amusement for them.
+
+[Illustration: Pattern of a modelling apron]
+
+[Sidenote: Gardens]
+
+In still another way the earth may be utilized, for children may
+make gardens of it. Indeed, there are those who say that no child's
+education is complete until he has had a garden of his own and grown
+in it all sorts of seeds from pansies to potatoes. But a garden is
+too much for a young child to care for all alone. He needs the help,
+advice, and companionship of some older person. You must be careful,
+however, to give help only when it is really desired; and careful also
+not to let him feel that the garden is a task to which he is driven
+daily, but a joy that draws him.
+
+[Sidenote: Kites Windmills Soap-bubbles]
+
+(2) _The Air_. The next important plaything is the air. The kite and
+the balloon are only two instruments to help the child play with it.
+Little windmills made of colored paper and stuck by means of a pin
+at the end of a whittled stick, make satisfactory toys. One of their
+great advantages is that even a very young child can make them for
+himself. Blowing soap-bubbles is another means of playing with air.
+By giving the children woolen mittens the bubbles may be caught and
+tossed about as well as blown.
+
+(3) _Water_. Perhaps the very first thing he learns to play with is
+water. Almost before he knows the use of his hands and legs he plays
+with water in his bath, and sucks his sponge with joy, thus feeling
+the water with his chief organs of touch, his mouth and tongue. A few
+months later he will be glad to pour water out of a tin cup. Even
+when he is two or three years old, be may be amused by the hour,
+by dressing him in a woolen gown, with his sleeves rolled high, and
+setting him down before a big bowl or his own bath-tub half full of
+warm water. To this may be added a sponge, a tin cup, a few bits of
+wood, and some paper. They should not be given all at once, but one at
+a time, the child allowed to exhaust the possibilities of each before
+another is added. Still later he may be given the bits of soap left
+after a cake of soap is used up. Give him also a few empty bottles or
+bowls and let him put them away with a solid mass of soap-suds in them
+and see what will happen. When he is older--past the period of putting
+everything in his mouth--he may be given a few bits of bright ribbons,
+petals of artificial flowers, or any bright colored bits of cloth
+which can color the water.
+
+Children love to sprinkle the grass with the hose or to water the
+flowers with the sprinkling can. They enjoy also the metal fishes,
+ducks, and boats which may be drawn about in the water by means of a
+magnet. Presently they reach the stage when they must have toy-boats,
+and next they long to go into real boats and go rowing and sailing.
+They want to fish, wade, swim, and skate.
+
+[Sidenote: Dangerous Pastimes]
+
+Some of those pastimes are dangerous, but they are sure to be indulged
+in at some time or other, with or without permission. There never grew
+a child to sturdy manhood who was successfully kept away from water.
+The wise mother, then, will not forbid this play, but will do her
+best to regulate it, to make it safe. She will think out plans for
+permitting children to go swimming in a safe place with some older
+person. She will let them go wading, and at holiday time will take
+them boat-riding. If she permits as much activity in these respects
+as possible, her refusal when it does come will be respected; and
+the child will not, unless perhaps in the first bitterness of
+disappointment, think her unfriendly and fussy. Above all, he is not
+likely to try to deceive her, to run off and take a swim on the sly,
+and thus fall into true danger.
+
+[Sidenote: Precaution with Fire]
+
+(4) _Fire_ is another inevitable plaything. Miss Shinn reports that
+the first act of her little niece that showed the dawn of voluntary
+control of the muscles was the clinging of her eyes to the flame of
+a candle, at the end of the second week. The sense of light and
+the pleasure derived from it is of the chief incentives to a baby's
+intellectual development. But since fire is dangerous the child must
+be taught this fact as quickly and painlessly as possible. He will
+probably have to be burned once before he really understands it,
+but by watching you can make this pain very small and slight,
+barely sufficient to give the child a wholesome fear of playing with
+unguarded fire. For instance, show that the lamp globe is hot. It is
+not hot enough to injure him, but quite hot enough to be unpleasant to
+his sensitive nerves. Put your own hand on the lamp and draw it away
+with a sharp cry, saying warningly, "Hot, hot!" Do not put his hand
+on the lamp, but let him put it there himself and then be very
+sympathetic over the result. Usually one such lesson is sufficient.
+Only do not permit yourself to call everything hot which you do not
+want him to touch. He will soon discover that you are untruthful and
+will never again trust you so fully.
+
+[Sidenote: Bonfires]
+
+Under _proper regulations_, however, fire may be played with safely.
+Bonfires with some older person in attendance are safe enough and
+prevent unlawful bonfires in dangerous places. The rule should be that
+none of the children may play with fire except with permission; and
+then that permission should be granted as often as possible that the
+children may be encouraged to ask for it. A stick smouldering at one
+end and waved about in circles and ellipses is not dangerous when
+elders are by, but it is dangerous if played with on the sly. Playing
+with fire on the sly is the most dangerous thing a child can do, and
+the only way to prevent it is to permit him to play with fire in
+the open. A beautiful game can be made from number of Christmas tree
+candles of various colors and a bowl of water. The candles are lighted
+and the wax dropped into the water, making little colored circles
+which float about. These can be linked together such a fashion as to
+form patterns which may be lifted out on sheets of paper.
+
+[Sidenote: Magic Lantern]
+
+The magic lantern is an innocent and comparatively cheap means of
+playing with light. If it is well taken care of and fresh slides
+added from time to time it can be made a source of pleasure for years.
+Jack-o'-lanterns are great fun, and when pumpkins are not available,
+oranges may be used instead.
+
+[Sidenote: Rhythmic Movements]
+
+Besides these elemental playthings the child gets much valuable
+pleasure out of the rhythmic use of his own muscles. All such plays
+Plato thought should be regulated by music, and with this Froebel
+agreed, but in the Household this is often impossible. The children
+must indulge in many movements when there is no one about who
+has leisure to make music for them. Still, when they come to the
+quarrelsome age, a few minutes' rhythmic play to the sound of music
+will be found to harmonize the whole group wonderfully. For this
+purpose the ordinary hippity-hop, fast or slow according to the music,
+is sufficient. It is as if the regulation of the body to the laws
+of harmony reacted upon minds and nerves. Such an exercise is
+particularly valuable just before bed-time. The children go to sleep
+then with their minds under the influence of harmony and wake in the
+morning inclined to be peaceful and happy.
+
+[Sidenote: Songs]
+
+A book of Kindergarten songs, such as Mrs. Gaynor's "Songs of the
+Child World" and Eleanor Smith's "Songs for the Children," ought to be
+in every household, and the mother ought to familiarize herself with a
+dozen or so of these perfectly simple melodies. Of course the children
+must learn them with her. When once this has been done she has a
+valuable means of amusing them and bringing them within her control at
+any time. She may hum one of the songs or play it. The children must
+guess what it is and then act out their guess in pantomime, so that
+she can see what they mean. Perhaps it is a windmill song; their
+arms fly around and around in time to the music, now fast, now slow.
+Perhaps it is a Spring song; the children are birds building their
+nests. Other songs turn them into shoemakers, galloping horses, or
+soldiers.
+
+[Sidenote: Dramatic Plays]
+
+Dramatic plays, whether simple, like this, or elaborate, are,
+as Goethe shows in _Wilhelm Meister_, of the greatest possible
+educational advantage. In them the child expresses his ideas of the
+world about him and becomes master of his own ideas. He acts out
+whatever he has heard or seen. He acts out also whatever he is
+puzzling about, and by making the terms of his problem clear to his
+consciousness usually solves it.
+
+[Sidenote: Dancing]
+
+As for dancing, Richter exclaims: "I know not whether I should most
+deprecate children's balls or most praise children's dances. For the
+harmony connected with it (dancing) imparts to the affections and the
+mind that material order which reveals the highest, and regulates the
+beat of the pulse, the step, and even the thought. Music is the meter
+of this poetic movement, and is an invisible dance, as dancing is a
+silent music. Finally, this also ranks among the advantages of his
+eye and heel pleasure; that children with children, by no harder canon
+than the musical, light as sound, may be joined in a rosebud feast
+without thorns or strife." The dances may be of the simplest kind,
+such as "Ring Around a Rosy," "Here We Go, To and Fro," "Old Dan
+Tucker" and the "Virginia Reel." The old-fashioned singing plays, such
+as "London Bridge," "Where Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow," and
+"Pop Goes the Weasel" have their place and value. Several collections
+of them have been made and published, but usually quite enough
+material may be found for these plays in the memories of the people of
+any neighborhood.
+
+[Sidenote: Toys]
+
+All these plays, it will be noticed, call for very simple and
+inexpensive apparatus, in most cases for no apparatus at all.
+Nevertheless there is a place for toys. All children ought to have
+a few, both because of the innocent pleasure they afford and because
+they need to have certain possessions which are inalienably their own.
+A simple and inexpensive list of suitable toys adapted to various ages
+is given at the end of this section. Most of them are exactly the toys
+that parents usually buy. But it will be noticed that none of them are
+very elaborate or expensive, and that the patrol wagon is not among
+them. This is because the patrol wagon directly leads to plays that
+are not only uneducational but positively harmful in their tendencies.
+The children of a whole neighborhood were once led into the habit of
+committing various imitation crimes for the sake of being arrested
+and carried off in miniature patrol wagon. It any such expensive and
+elaborate toys are bought, it may well be the plain express wagon or
+the hook and ladder and fire engine. The first of these leads to plays
+of industry, the second to those of heroism.
+
+  LIST OF TOYS SUITABLE FOR VARIOUS AGES.
+
+  Ball, rubber ring, soft animals and rag dolls ......... Before 1 year
+  Blocks and Bells ............................................. 1 year
+  Small chair and table ....................................1 1/2 years
+  Noah's Ark .................................................. 2 years
+  Picture books ............................................... 2 years
+  Materials and instruments .............................. 2 to 3 years
+  Carts, stick-horses, and reins ..................... 2 1/2 to 3 years
+  Boats, ships, engines, tin or wooden animals, dolls,
+  dishes, broom, spade, sand-pile, bucket, etc ................ 3 years
+  Hoop, games and story books ................................. 5 years
+
+
+
+
+OCCUPATIONS
+
+
+[Sidenote: Home Kindergarten]
+
+There are a number of books designed to teach mothers how to carry the
+Kindergarten occupations over into the home; but while such books may
+be helpful in a few cases, in most cases better occupations present
+themselves in the course of the day's work. The Kindergarten
+occupations themselves follow increasingly the order of domestic
+routine. For example, many children in the Kindergarten make mittens
+out of eiderdown flannel in the Fall, when their own mothers are
+knitting their mittens, and make little hoods either for themselves
+or for their dolls. At other periods they put up little glasses of
+preserves or jelly, and study the industry of the bees and the way
+they put up their tiny jars of jelly. Their attention is called also
+to the preparations that the squirrels and other animals make for
+winter, and to that of the trees and flowers. In other words, the
+occupations in the Kindergarten are designed to bring the children
+into conscious sympathy with the life of nature and of the home.
+
+[Sidenote: Kindergarten Methods]
+
+That mother who keeps this purpose in mind and applies it to the
+occupations that come up naturally in the course of a day's work,
+will thereby bring the Kindergarten spirit into her own home much more
+truly than if she invests in a number of perforated sewing cards and
+colored strips of paper for weaving. Not that there is any harm in
+these bits of apparatus, provided that the sewing cards are large and
+so perforated as not to task the eyes and young fingers of the sewer.
+But unless for some special purpose, such as the making of a Christmas
+or birthday gift, these devices are unnecessary and better left to the
+school, which has less richness of material at hand than has the home.
+
+[Sidenote: Helping Mother]
+
+In allowing the children to enter a workers into the full life of the
+home several good things are accomplished. (1) The eager interest of
+the developing mind is utilized to brighten those duties which are
+likely to remain permanent duties. Not does this observation apply
+only to girls. Domestic obligations are supposed to rest chiefly upon
+them, but the truth is that boys need to feel these obligations as
+keenly as the girls, if they are to grow into considerate and helpful
+husbands and fathers. The usual division of labor into forms falsely
+called masculine and feminine is, therefore, much to be deplored.
+Moreover, at an early age children are seldom sex-conscious, and any
+precocity in this direction is especially evil in its results; yet
+many mothers from the beginning make such a division between what
+they require of their boys and of their girls as to force this
+consciousness upon them. All kinds of work, then, should be allowed in
+the beginning, however it may differentiate later on, and little
+boys as well as little girls should be taught to take an interest in
+sewing, dish-washing, sweeping, dusting, and cooking--in all the forms
+of domestic activity.
+
+This is so far recognized among educators that the most progressive
+primary schools now teach cooking to mixed classes of boys and
+girls, and also sewing. These activities are recognized as highly
+educational, being, as they are, interwoven with the history of the
+race and with its daily needs. When they are studied in their full sum
+of relationship, they increase the child's knowledge of both the past
+and the living world.
+
+[Sidenote: Teaching Mother]
+
+(2) Besides the deepening of the child's interest in that work which
+in some form or other he will have with him always, is the quickening
+of the mother's own interest in what may have come to seem to her
+mere daily drudgery. Any woman who undertakes to perform so simple
+an operation as dish-washing with the help of a bright happy child,
+asking sixteen questions to the minute, will find that common-place
+operation full of possibilities; and if she will answer all the
+questions she will probably find her knowledge strained to the
+breaking point, and will discover there is more to be known about
+dish-washing than she ever dreamed of before; while in cooking, if
+she will make an effort to look up the science, history, and ethics
+involved in the cooking and serving of a very simple meal, she will
+not be likely to regard the task as one beneath her, but rather as
+one beyond her. No one can so lead her away from false conventions and
+narrow prejudices as a little child whom she permits to help her and
+teach her.
+
+[Sidenote: The Love of Work]
+
+(3) The child's spontaneous joy in being active and in doing any
+service is being utilized, as it should be, in the performance of his
+daily duties. We have already referred to the fact that all children
+in the beginning love to work, and that there must be something the
+matter with our education since this love is so early lost and so
+seldom reacquired. If when young children wish to help mother they
+are almost invariably permitted to do so, and their efforts greeted
+lovingly, this delight in helpfulness will remain a blessing to them
+throughout life.
+
+[Sidenote: To Make "Helping" of Benefit]
+
+But in order to get these benefits from the domestic activities two or
+three simple rules must be observed. (1) Do not go silently about your
+work, expecting your child to be interested and to understand without
+being talked to. Play with him while you work with him, and see the
+realization of youthfulness that comes to yourself while you do it.
+Many tasks fit for childish hands are in their nature too monotonous
+for childish minds. Here your imagination must come into play to rouse
+and excite his activity. For instance, you are both shelling peas.
+When he begins to be tired you suggest to him, "Here is a cage full of
+birds, let us open the door for them;" or you may tell a story while
+you work, but it should be a story about that very activity, or the
+child will form the habit of dreaming and dawdling over his work. Such
+stories may be perfectly simple and even rather pointless and yet
+do good work; the whole object is to keep the child's fly-away
+imagination turned upon the work at hand, thus lending wings to his
+thought, and lightness to his fingers. Moreover, the mother who talks
+with her child while working is training in him the habit of
+bright unconscious conversation, thus giving him a most useful
+accomplishment. Making a game or a play out of the work is, of course,
+conducive to the same good results. When the story or the talk drags,
+the game with its greater dramatic power may be substituted.
+
+[Sidenote: Fatigue]
+
+(2) Children should neither be allowed to work to the point of fatigue
+nor to stop when they please. Fatigue, as our latest investigators in
+physiological psychology have conclusively proved, is productive of an
+actual poison in the blood and as such is peculiarly harmful to young
+children. But while work--or for that matter play either--must never
+be pushed past the point of healthful fatigue, it may well be pushed
+past the point of spontaneous interest and desire: the child may be
+happily persuaded by various hidden means to do a little more than he
+is quite ready to do. By this device, which is one of the recognized
+devices of the Kindergarten, mothers increase by imperceptible degrees
+that power of attention which makes will power.
+
+[Sidenote: Willing Industry]
+
+(3) Set the example of willing industry. Neither let the child
+conceive of you as an impersonal necessary part of the household
+machinery, nor as an unwilling martyr to household necessities. Most
+mothers err in one or the other of these two directions, and many of
+them err in both: they either, (a) perform the innumerable services of
+the household so quietly and steadily that the child does not perceive
+the effort that the performance costs and, therefore, as far as his
+consciousness is concerned, is deprived of the force of his mother's
+example, or (b) they groan aloud over their burdens and make their
+daily martyrdom vocal. Either way is wrong, for it is a mistake not to
+let a child see that your steady performance of tasks, which cannot be
+always delightful, is a result of self-discipline; and it is equally a
+mistake to let him think that this discipline is one against which
+you rebel. For in reality you are so far from being unwilling to bind
+yourself in his service that if he needed it you would promptly double
+and quadruple your exertions. It is exactly what you do when he is
+sick or in danger; and if he dies the sorest ache of your heart is the
+ache of the love that can no longer be of service to the beloved.
+
+[Sidenote: Monotony]
+
+(4) Remember that monotony is the curse of labor for both child and
+adult, but that _monotony cannot exist where new intellectual insights
+are constantly being given_. Therefore, while the daily round of
+labor, shaped by the daily recurring demands for food, warmth,
+cleanliness, and sleep, goes on without much change, seize every
+opportunity to deepen the child's perception of the relation of this
+routine to the order of the larger world. For instance, if a new house
+is being built near by, visit it with the children, comparing it with
+your own house, figure out whether it is going to be easier to keep
+clean and to warm than your house is and why. If you need to call in
+the carpenter, the plumber, the paper-hanger, or the stoveman, try
+to have him come when the children are at home, and let them satisfy
+their intense curiosity as to his work. This knowledge will sooner or
+later be of practical value, and it is immediately of spiritual value.
+
+[Sidenote: Beautiful Work]
+
+(5) Beautify the work as much as possible by letting the artistic
+sense have full play. This rule is so important that the attempt to
+establish it in the larger world outside of the home has given rise to
+the movement known as the arts and crafts movement, which has its rise
+in the perception that no great art can come into existence among us
+until the common things of daily living--the furniture, the books, the
+carpets, the chinaware--are made to express that creative joy in the
+maker which distinguishes an artistic product from an inartistic one.
+This creative joy, in howsoever small degree, may be present in most
+of the things that the child does. If he sets the table, he may set it
+beautifully, taking real pleasure in the coloring of the china and the
+shine of the silver and glass. He ought not to be permitted to set it
+untidily upon a soiled tablecloth.
+
+[Sidenote: The Right Spirit]
+
+(6) This is a negative rule, but perhaps the most important of all: DO
+NOT NAG. The child who is driven to his work and kept at it by means
+of a constant pressure of a stronger will upon his own, is deriving
+little, if any, benefit from it; and as you are not teaching him to
+work for the sake of his present usefulness, which is small at
+the best, but for the sake of his future development, you are more
+desirous that he should perform a single task in a day in the right
+spirit, than that he should run a dozen errands in the wrong spirit.
+
+(7) Besides a regular time each day for the performance of his set
+share in the household work, give him warning before the arrival of
+that hour. Children have very incomplete notions of time; they become
+much absorbed in their own play; and therefore no child under nine
+or ten years of age should be expected to do a given thing at a given
+time without warning that the time is at hand.
+
+[Sidenote: "Busy Work"]
+
+Besides these occupations which are truly part of the business of life
+come any number of other occupations--a sort of a cross between real
+play and steady work, what teachers call "busy work"--and here the
+suggestions of the Kindergarten may be of practical value to the
+mother. For instance, weaving, already referred to, may keep an active
+child interested and quiet for considerable periods of time. Besides
+the regular weaving mats of paper, to be had from any Kindergarten
+supply store, wide grasses and rushes may be braided into mats, raffia
+and rattan may be woven into baskets, and strips of cloth woven into
+iron-holders. A visit to any neighboring Kindergarten will acquaint
+the mother with a number of useful, simple objects that can be woven
+by a child. Whatever he weaves or whatever he makes should be applied
+to some useful purpose, not merely thrown away; and while it is true
+that a conscientious desire to live up to this rule often results in
+a considerable clutter of flimsy and rather undesirable objects about
+the house, still, ways may be devised for slowly retiring the oldest
+of them from view, and disposing of others among patient relatives.
+
+[Sidenote: Sewing]
+
+Sewing is another occupation ranch used in the Kindergarten as well as
+in the home. Beginning with the simple stringing of large wooden beads
+upon shoe-strings, it passes on to sewing on buttons, and sewing doll
+clothes to the making of real clothing. This last in its simplest form
+can be begun sooner than most parents suppose, especially if the child
+is taught the use of the sewing machine. There is really no reason why
+a child, say six years old, should not learn to sew upon the machine.
+His interest in machinery is keen at this period, and two or three
+lessons are usually sufficient to teach him enough about the mechanism
+to keep him from injuring it. Once he has learned to sew upon the
+machine, he may be given sheets and towels to hem, and even sew up
+the seams of larger and more complex articles. He will soon be able
+to make aprons for himself and his sisters and mother. Toy sewing
+machines are now sold which are really useful playthings, and on which
+the child can manufacture a number of small articles. Those run by
+a treadle are preferable to those run by a hand crank, because they
+leave the child's hands free to guide the work.
+
+[Sidenote: Drawing Cutting Pasting]
+
+Drawing, painting, cutting and pasting are excellent occupations for
+children. A large black-board is a useful addition to the nursery
+furnishings, but the children should be required to wash it off with a
+damp cloth, instead of using the eraser furnished for the purpose,
+as the chalk dust gets into the room and fills the children's lungs.
+Plenty of soft pencils and crayons, also large sheets of inexpensive
+drawing paper, should be at hand upon a low table so that they can
+draw the large free outlines which best develop their skill, whenever
+the impulse moves them. If they have also blunt scissors for cutting
+all sorts of colored papers and a bottle of innocuous library paste,
+they will be able to amuse themselves at almost any time.
+
+[Sidenote: Painting]
+
+Some water colors are now made which are harmless for children so
+young that they are likely to put the paints in their mouths. Paints
+are on the whole less objectionable than colored chalks, because
+the crayons drop upon the floor and get trodden into the carpet. If
+children are properly clothed as they should be in simple washable
+garments, there is practically no difficulty connected with the free
+use of paints, and their educational value is, of course, very high.
+
+
+
+
+TEST QUESTIONS
+
+
+The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the
+regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for
+the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to
+emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the
+lesson.
+
+
+
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE PART II
+
+
+
+Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly
+requested _not_ to answer according to the text-book where opinions
+are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases
+credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your
+name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so
+that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.
+
+
+
+1. State Fichte's doctrine of rights and show how it applies to child
+training. If possible, give an example from your own experience.
+
+2. What is the aim of moral training?
+
+3. What two sayings of Froebel most characteristically sum up his
+philosophy?
+
+4. What is the value of play in education?
+
+5. What are the natural playthings? Tell what, in your childhood, you
+got out of these things, or if you were kept away from them, what the
+prohibition meant to you.
+
+6. What do you think about children's dancing? And acting?
+
+7. Do you agree with those who think that the Kindergarten makes right
+doing too easy? State the reasons for your opinion.
+
+8. What can you say of commands, reproofs, and rules?
+
+9. Should you let the children help you about the house, even when
+they are so little as to be troublesome? Why? If they are unwilling to
+help, how do you induce them to help?
+
+10. What would you suggest as regular duties for children of 4 to 5
+years? Of 7 to 8 years?
+
+11. Which do you consider the more important, the housework or the
+child?
+
+12. Wherein may the mother learn from the child?
+
+13. What is the difference between amusing children and playing with
+them? What is the proper method?
+
+14. Mention some good rules in character building.
+
+15. From your own experience as a child what can you say of teaching
+the mysteries of sex?
+
+16. Are there any questions you would like to ask, or subjects which
+you wish to discuss in connection with this lesson?
+
+
+Note.--After completing the test sign your full name.
+
+[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD
+
+By Murillo, Spanish painter of the seventeenth century]
+
+
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+ART AND LITERATURE IN CHILD LIFE
+
+
+The influence of art upon the life of a young child is difficult of
+measurement. It may freely be said, however, that there is little or
+no danger in exaggerating its influence, and considerable danger in
+underrating it. It is difficult of measurement because the influence
+is largely an unconscious one. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
+that form of art which gives him the most conscious and outspoken
+pleasure is the form that in reality is the most beneficial; for,
+unquestionably, he will get great satisfaction from circus posters,
+and the poorly printed, abominably illustrated cheap picture-books
+afford him undeniable joy. He is far less likely to be expressive of
+his pleasure in a sun-shiny nursery, whose walls, rugs, white beds,
+and sun-shiny windows are all well designed and well adapted to his
+needs. Nevertheless, in the end the influence of this room is likely
+to be the greater influence and to permanently shape his ideas of
+the beautiful; while he is entirely certain, if allowed to develop
+artistically at all, to grow past the circus poster period.
+
+This fact--the fact that the highest influence of art is a secret
+influence, exercised not only by those decorations and pictures which
+flaunt themselves for the purpose, but also by those quiet, necessary,
+every-day things, which nevertheless may most truly express the art
+spirit--this fact makes it difficult to tell what art and what kind of
+art is really influencing the child, and whether it is influencing him
+in the right directions.
+
+[Sidenote: Color]
+
+Until he is three years old, for example, and often until he is past
+that age, he is unable to distinguish clearly between green, gray and
+blue; and hence these cool colors in the decorations around him, or in
+his pictures, have practically no meaning for him. He has a right,
+one might suppose, to the gratification of his love for clear reds and
+yellows, for the sharp, well-defined lines and flat surfaces,
+whose meaning is plain to his groping little mind. Some of the best
+illustrators of children's books have seemed to recognize this. For
+example, Boutet de Monvil in his admirable illustrations of Joan of
+Arc meets these requirements perfectly, and yet in a manner which must
+satisfy any adult lover of good art. The Caldecott picture books, and
+Walter Crane's are also good in this respect, and the Perkins pictures
+issued by the Prang Educational Co. have gained a just recognition
+as excellent pictures for hanging on the nursery wall. Many of the
+illustrations in color in the standard magazines are well worth
+cutting out, mounting and framing. This is especially true of Howard
+Pyle's work and that of Elizabeth Shippen Green.
+
+[Sidenote: Classic Art]
+
+Since photogravures and photographs of the masterpieces can be had
+in this country very inexpensively, there is no reason why children
+should not be made acquainted at an early age with the art classics,
+but there is danger in giving too much space to black and white,
+especially in the nursery where the children live. Their natural love
+of color should be appealed to do deepen their interest in really good
+pictures.
+
+[Illustration: "My Mary"]
+
+[Illustration: "Blow, Wind Blow"
+
+PERKINS' PICTURES]
+
+Nevertheless, it is a matter of considerable difficulty still to
+find colored pictures which are inexpensive and yet really good. The
+Detaille prints, while not yet cheap, are not expensive either, and
+are excellent for this purpose; but the insipid little pictures of
+fairies, flowers, and birds may be really harmful, as helping to form
+in the young child's mind too low an ideal of beauty--of cultivating
+in him what someone has called "the lust of the eye."
+
+[Sidenote: Plastic Art]
+
+What holds true of the pictorial art holds equally true of the plastic
+art. As Prof. Veblin of the University of Chicago has scathingly
+declared, our ideals of the beautiful are so mingled with worship of
+expense that few of us can see the genuine beauty in any object apart
+from its expensiveness. For this reason as well as, perhaps, because
+of a remnant of barbarism in us, we love gold and glitter, and a great
+deal of elaboration in our vases, and are far from being over-critical
+of any piece of statuary which costs a respectable sum.
+
+[Illustration: RELIEF MEDALLION
+
+By Andrea della Robbia, in Foundling Hospital, Florence.]
+
+A certain appreciation, however, of the real value of a good
+plaster-cast has been gaining among us of late years, and many public
+schools, especially in the large cities, have been establishing
+standards of good taste in this respect. Good casts and bas-relief,
+decorate their halls and class-rooms. There are few homes that cannot
+afford to follow their example. But in buying these things be not
+misled by sales and advertised bargains. It is more than seldom that
+the placques, casts, and vases thus obtained are such as could have
+any valuable influence whatever upon the young lives with which they
+are brought in contact. Meretricious and showy ornaments, designed to
+look as if they cost more than they really do, have no business in the
+sincere home where the children are being sincerely educated.
+
+[Sidenote: Music]
+
+The same general laws apply to music. No art has a greater and more
+insinuating influence. The very songs with which the mother sings the
+baby to sleep have an occult influence which is later revealed and
+made plain. Such songs, then, should be simple. They may be nothing
+but improvisations, the mother's mind and heart making music, but
+they should not be melodramatic songs of the music-hall order. No such
+mawkish sentimentalism as that shown in "The Gypsy's Warning," for
+example, or other songs which belong to the cheap theater should have
+a place in the holy of holies--that inmost self of the child--which
+responds to music.
+
+The simple folk-songs of all nations, Eleanor Smith's and most of
+Mrs. Gaynor's songs, already mentioned, and the songs collected by
+Reinecke, called "Fifty Children's Songs," are excellent for this
+purpose. The old-fashioned nonsense songs, such as "Billy Boy," "Mary
+had a Little Lamb" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,"
+may also have a pleasant and harmless place of their own.
+
+Instrumental music should be on the same general order, not loud and
+showy, but clear, simple, sweet, and free from startling effects.
+Dashing pieces, rag-time pieces, marches, two-steps, and familiar
+tunes with variations, instead of bringing about a spirit of
+gentleness and harmony, actually tend to produce self-assertiveness
+and quarrelsomeness. Let any mother who does not believe this try the
+effort of an hour of the one kind of music on one evening, and an
+hour of the other kind on another evening. The difference will be
+immediately apparent.
+
+[Sidenote: The Drama]
+
+The influence of the drama must not be forgotten. This form of art,
+fallen so low among us since the time of the Puritans that it can
+scarcely be called an art at all, is, nevertheless, the art which
+perhaps above all others has an immediate and yet lasting influence.
+Children are themselves instinctively dramatic. They like to compose
+and act out all sorts of dramas of their own, from playing house
+(which is nothing but a drama prolonged from day to day), to such
+dramatic games as Statue-posing and Dumb Crambo. All children like to
+dress up, to wear masks, and to imitate the peculiarities of persons
+about them; to try on, as it were, the world as they see it, and
+discover thereby how the actors in it feel. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister
+has already been referred to. In this--his great book on education--he
+practically bases all education upon the drama, and even throws the
+treatise itself into dramatic form.
+
+This does not mean, however, that all children should be permitted
+to go to the theater as freely as they like. No; the plays which they
+compose and act for themselves have a far higher value educationally
+than most of the spectacular presentations of the old fairy tales
+with which they are usually regaled, and certainly more than the
+sensational melodramas which give them false ideas of art and
+morality. They should go sometimes to the theater to see really good
+and simple plays, but they should be oftener encouraged to get up for
+themselves plays at home. If, as they grow older, they are helped to
+think out their costumes with something of historical accuracy, to
+be true to the spirit and scenery of the times in which the
+representations are laid, the activity can be made to increase in
+value to them as the years go by. There is no other art, perhaps,
+by which the child so intimately links the world spirit with his own
+spirit. It is for this reason that the School of Education in the
+University of Chicago is equipped with small theaters in which the
+children act.
+
+[Sidenote: Literature]
+
+As for the art of literature, not all children love reading, perhaps,
+but certainly all children love to hear stories told, and the skilful
+mother will direct this spontaneous affection into a love for
+reading. No other single love, except perhaps the love of nature,
+so emancipates the child from the thrall of circumstances. If he can
+escape from the small ills of life into fairy-land merely by opening
+the covers of a book, be sure that these ills will not have power to
+crush him, unless they be very great ills indeed.
+
+[Sidenote: Fairy Tales]
+
+There are those who still believe that fairy-tales and fiction of all
+sorts are nothing but lies. Poor souls, with their faces against the
+stone wall of hard facts, they can never look up into the sky and see
+the winged and beautiful thoughts freely disporting there. They make
+no distinction between truth and fact, yet truth is of the spirit and
+fact of the flesh; and truth, because it is of the spirit, may appear
+under many forms, even under the form of play. All rightly told and
+rightly conceived fairy-tales are true just as a good picture is true.
+The painter uses oil, turpentine, and pigment to represent the wool
+of a sheep, the water of a pond, the green spears of grass. Some
+literal-minded person might say that he was lying because he pretented
+that his little square of canvas truthfully represented grazing sheep
+at the brook-side, but most of us recognize that he is really telling
+the truth only in another than an every day form. In the same way
+the writer of fairy-tales tells the truth, using the pigments of the
+imagination.
+
+If children ask whether a given story is true or not, answer without
+hesitation, "yes." It is true, but it is a fairy kind of truth; it
+is inside truth. There is magic in it and a mystery. The child who is
+never allowed to read fairy tales, the man or the woman who prefers
+the newspaper to a good book of fiction, misses much in life. It is
+not only that the imagination--the divinest quality of man, because
+the quality that makes man in his degree a creator--does not receive
+culture, and that he misses the indescribable intellectual ecstasy
+that comes only with the setting free of the wings of the mind, but
+that also he is inevitably shorn of his sympathy and shut up to a
+narrow circle of interests.
+
+[Sidenote: Imagination and Sympathy]
+
+For sympathy, above all moral qualities, is dependent upon
+imagination. If you cannot imagine how you would feel under your
+neighbor's conditions, you cannot deeply sympathize with him. The
+person of unimaginative mind sympathizes only with those whose
+experience and habits are similar to his own. He never escapes
+from the narrow circle of his own personality. But the man whose
+imagination has been kept flexible and ready from earliest childhood
+has within him the power of sympathizing with whatever is human--yes!
+even with creatures and things below the human level. Without
+imagination, therefore, it is not possible for a man to be a great
+scientist, for science demands sympathy with processes and objects
+which are not yet human. It is not possible, obviously, for him to be
+a great artist of any kind, for all art is interpretation of the world
+by means of the imagination. It is not possible for him, even, to be
+a good man in any broad sense, for the man whose sympathies are narrow
+is often found to be guilty of injustice toward those who lie outside
+the pale of those sympathies.
+
+By all means, then, encourage the love of reading in your children,
+and get them the best of story-books to read, and subscribe to the
+best magazines. Read with them. Let some reading enter into every
+day's life; talk over what has been read at the dinner-table, and so
+avoid harmful personalities and disagreeable criticisms.
+
+[Sidenote: Books]
+
+As to the books to choose, choose the best. Generally speaking, the
+best are those that have some dignity of age upon them. As in music
+you chose the folksongs, so in children's literature also choose the
+old fashioned fairy stories, such as those collected by the Brothers
+Grimm and by Andrew Lang. Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Stories
+of course are classics. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales give excellent
+suggestions as to the right use to be made of the old mythologies.
+Many of the supplementary readers now being so widely used in the
+public schools are good, simple versions of these old stories which
+helped to make the world what it should be. For the rest there are
+two standard children's magazines which help to form a good taste in
+literature and which are continually suggestive of the right sort of
+reading material. These are The Youth's Companion and St. Nicholas.
+
+[Sidenote: Nature Study]
+
+Finally, all appreciation of literature and art depends upon a love of
+and some knowledge of nature. Fairy stories and mythology especially
+are so dependent upon nature for their inner meaning and significance
+as scarcely to be intelligible without some knowledge of natural
+processes and laws. Of course, it is true that art in its turn
+idealizes nature and fills her beautiful form with a beautiful soul;
+so that the child who is being developed on all sides needs to take
+his books and his pictures out of doors in order to get the full good
+of them.
+
+[Sidenote: Art and Nature]
+
+No amount of music, art, and literature can make up for the free life
+in the fields and under the sky which all these arts describe and
+interpret. If he should be so unhappy as to have to choose between
+nature and art, it would be better for him to choose nature, because
+then, perhaps, art might be born in his own soul. But there is happily
+no need for such a painful choice. He can sing his little song out of
+doors with the birds and notice how they join in the chorus. He can
+paint evening sunsets with the pine-trees against it far better out of
+doors than indoors with copy perched before him. He can look down the
+aisles of the real woods to watch for the enchanted princess, or for
+the chivalrous knight whose story he is reading. Art and nature belong
+together in the unified soul of the child. Well for him and for the
+world in which he lives if they are never divorced, but he goes on to
+the end loving them both and seeing them both as one.
+
+
+
+
+CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATES
+
+
+If the child was intended to grow into a man of family, merely, family
+training might be sufficient for him, but since he must grow into a
+member of society, social training is as necessary for him as family
+training. Failure to recognize this truth is at the bottom of the
+current misconceptions of the Kindergarten. There are still thousands
+of persons who suppose it is only a superior sort of day-nursery where
+children may be safely kept and innocently employed while the mother
+gets the housework done.
+
+[Sidenote: The Kindergarten]
+
+While this might be a laudable enough function to perform, it is by
+no means the function of the Kindergarten. This method of instruction
+aims at much more. It aims to lay foundations for a complete later
+education, and especially to make firm in the child those virtues and
+aptitudes which, when they are held by the majority of men, constitute
+the safety and welfare of society. For this reason no home, however
+well ordered, can supply to the child what the Kindergarten supplies.
+For the home is necessarily limited to the members of one family,
+while the Kindergarten, on the contrary, makes plain to the child the
+claims upon him of society not made up of his kinsfolk. It is the wide
+world in miniature, and if it is a properly organized Kindergarten,
+it will contain within itself a wide variety of children--children of
+wealth and of poverty, of ignorance and of gentle breeding--and will
+bring them all under one just rule. For only by this commingling of
+many characters upon a common level and under the strict reign of
+justice can the child be fitted practically, and by means of a series
+of progressive experiments, for citizenship in a genuine democracy.
+
+[Sidenote: Exclusive Associates]
+
+Parents sometimes so far miss the aim of the Kindergarten as to desire
+that instead of such a commingling there shall be a narrow limit set;
+that in the Kindergarten shall be only such children as the child is
+accustomed to associate with. But if the Kindergarten acceded to this
+demand, as it seldom does, it would lose much of its usefulness, for
+every one knows that children cannot be permanently sheltered from
+contact with the outside world, nor can they be always reared in an
+atmosphere of exclusiveness. A wisdom greater than the mother's has
+ordered that no child shall be so narrowly nourished. If he has any
+freedom whatever, any naturalness of life, he must and will enlarge
+his circle of acquaintances beyond the limit of his mother's calling
+list.
+
+Indeed, even those Kindergartens which are professedly exclusive, and
+which confine their ministrations to the children of one particular
+neighborhood, are obliged by the nature of things to contain nascent
+individualities of almost every type. For no neighborhood, however
+equal in wealth and fashion, ever produced children of an unvarying
+quality. In any circle, no matter how exclusive, there are mischievous
+children, children who use bad language, children who have sly, mean
+tricks, children who do not speak the truth, and who are in other ways
+quite as undesirable as the children of the poor and ignorant. It is
+often asserted, indeed, that the children of exclusive neighborhoods
+very often show more varieties of badness than the children of the
+open street. The records of the private Kindergarten as compared with
+the public Kindergarten amply prove this statement.
+
+[Sidenote: Evil Example]
+
+Since, then, whether you confine your child to the limits of your
+own circle or not, you cannot successfully keep him from playing with
+children who are more or less objectionable, what are you going to do
+to keep him from the harm of such association? You have to make him
+strong enough to withstand temptation and resist the force of evil
+example. Of course, he must have as little of the wrong example,
+especially in his younger and tenderer years, as can be managed
+without too greatly checking his activity and curtailing his freedom.
+Yet after all he is to be taught a positive and not a negative
+righteousness, and if his home training is not sufficient to enable
+him to stand against a certain downward pull from the outside, there
+is something the matter with it.
+
+While he must not be strained too hard, nor too constantly associate
+with children whose manners put his manners to the test, still he
+ought by degrees, almost imperceptibly, to be accustomed to holding
+to the truth, to that which is found good, no matter whether his
+associates find it desirable or not.
+
+[Sidenote: Social Training]
+
+A good Kindergarten is a mother's best help in this endeavor, for
+there her child meets with all sorts of other children. The very
+influence of the place, and the ever-ready help of the teacher are on
+his side. Every effort he makes to do right is met and welcomed. In
+every stand that he takes against temptation, he is unobtrusively
+reinforced. Moreover, the wrong-doing of his comrades is never allowed
+to retain the attractive glitter that it sometimes acquires on the
+play-ground. It is promptly held up to general obloquy, and the good
+child finds to his surprise that he is not the only one who thinks
+that teasing, for example, is mean and selfish and that a violent
+temper is ugly.
+
+[Sidenote: Responsibility to Society]
+
+Moreover, in the Kindergarten the sense of social responsibility is
+borne in upon him. Perhaps it comes to him first when he is chosen
+to lead the march and finds that he must be careful not to squeeze
+through too narrow places, lest someone get into trouble. In dealing
+out pencils, worsted, and other materials he must be careful to
+show strict impartiality, and give no preference to his own personal
+friends. In a hundred small ways he is helped to regulate his own
+conduct, so that it may conduce to the welfare of the whole school.
+
+Where there are no Kindergartens, the task becomes a more difficult
+one for the mother, for it becomes necessary, then, that she herself
+should undertake the social training of her child, and this means that
+she must know his playmates, not only through his report of them,
+but through her own observation of them, and that they must be
+sufficiently at home with her to betray their true characters in her
+presence. And this means, of course, that she must become her child's
+playmate. There are few women who think that they have time for this,
+but there are also few who would not be benefited by it. If anywhere
+there is a fountain of youth, it gushes up invisibly wherever playing
+children are, and she who plays with them gets sprinkled by it.
+
+[Sidenote: Sharing the Child's Play]
+
+If there be no time during the busy day when she can justly enter into
+the children's free play, at least there is a little while in the late
+afternoon or in the early evening when she can do so, if she will. An
+hour or two a week spent in active association with children at their
+games will make her intimately acquainted with all their playmates,
+and, moreover, constitute her a power of first magnitude among them.
+Her motherhood thus extends itself, and she blesses not only her own
+children, but all those who come near her children. In this respect no
+Kindergarten can take the place of the mother's own companionship with
+the child in his social life.
+
+[Sidenote: The Children's Hour]
+
+In an ideal condition the child has his Kindergarten in the morning;
+his quiet hours, one of them entirely solitary, in the afternoon; his
+social time, when he, his brothers and sisters and mother, are joined
+with the other children and mothers in the neighborhood, in the late
+afternoon, and his family time, with both father and mother, in the
+evening before going to bed.
+
+In thus sharing her child's social life the mother admits the claim
+upon her of social responsibility; she sees that her duty is not
+to her own home alone, but to the other homes with which hers is
+linked--not to her own child alone, but to all children whose lives
+touch her child's life. Her own nature widens with the perception,
+and she enhances her direct teaching with the force of a beautiful
+example.
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
+
+
+[Sidenote: Abstract Studies]
+
+There may easily be too many studies and too many accomplishments
+in the life of any child. As our schools are constituted there are
+certainly too many studies of the wrong kind being carried on every
+day. But there are also too few studies of the right kind. In one of
+our large cities a test was once made as to how much the children
+who left school at the fifth grade, as 70 per cent of them do, had
+actually learned in a way that would be of practical value to them,
+and the results were most discouraging. These city children who could
+recite their tables of measurements with glibness, and who performed
+with a fair degree of success several hundred examples dealing with
+units of measure, could not tell whether their school-room floor
+contained one acre or two hundred and forty! None of them suspected
+that it contained less than an acre. Although they could bound the
+States of the Union, and give the principal exports and imports, they
+knew next to nothing of their own city and of its actual relation
+to the countries which they studied in their geography lessons. The
+teachers, in explanation, laid much of the blame for this state of
+affairs upon the parents, saying that they took but little interest
+in their children's studies, and never attempted to link them to the
+things of every-day life. But while this claim might be justified to
+some extent, it was by no means sufficient to cover the facts of the
+case. The truth is, it was quite as much the teachers' duty to link
+these abstract studies with concrete facts, as it was the parents'.
+
+[Sidenote: Dead Knowledge]
+
+Such an experience, however, suggests the manner in which parents can
+best help on the work of children in school. So long as these studies
+are still taught in the dead, monotonous way common to text-books,
+children will be racked nervously, and not benefited mentally in the
+effort to master them. Fathers and mothers who by the exercise of some
+ingenuity manage to show the child that his arithmetical knowledge is
+of actual help in solving the questions of every-day life; that his
+history has bearings upon the progress of events around him, and that
+his geography relates to actual places which, perhaps, father and
+mother may have seen, or which their books tell about--such fathers
+and mothers will make their children's school work easier, at the same
+time that they increase the sum of their children's knowledge. It is
+dead knowledge only--knowledge wrenched from its living content--that
+is difficult of digestion.
+
+[Sidenote: The New Education]
+
+It is natural for a young mind to like to learn, as it is for a
+healthy stomach to be supplied with food; but knowledge, like the
+food, must be fit for the use that is to be made of it and for the
+organ that is to receive it; and the brain, like the stomach, has a
+signal which it flies to show whether the food is what it wants or
+not. The brain exhibits interest exactly as the stomach exhibits
+appetite. The object of scientific education is to discover what the
+spontaneous, universal interest of children of certain ages is, and
+to meet that interest with the fullest possible supply of knowledge in
+every conceivable form.
+
+Scientific education does not depend upon text-books or upon merely
+verbal explanations, but gets the idea home to the child by the means
+of a varied appeal to all the senses and sensibilities. For this
+reason the most advanced schools have many more studies and what are
+commonly called accomplishments than the public or parochial
+schools. That is, they add to the three r's--reading, 'riting and
+'rithmetic--drawing, modeling, painting, manual training, physical
+culture, dramatic representation, music, field trips, and laboratory
+work.
+
+[Sidenote: Correlation of Studies]
+
+Yet this apparently great increase of subjects in the number of
+studies actually lessens the amount of work required of the child,
+because all these different activities, by means of what is called
+correlation, are brought to bear upon the same subject. For example,
+the class which goes out for a field trip to visit a near-by brook
+sees the water actually at work, cutting its way to the river, and
+thence to the sea. They measure its force and note its effects; they
+make a water-color sketch of some curve of it; they notice what birds
+and insects are about; what flowers grow there; what indications there
+may be of burrowing animals. When they get back to school they model,
+perhaps, some bird that they have noticed; or in the geographical
+laboratory, with streams of water try to reproduce in miniature the
+action of the brook upon the soil through which it flows.
+
+For their arithmetic lesson they estimate the number of years the
+brook must have been flowing to have cut its valley to its present
+depth. They make a full report and description of their day's work
+for their reading and writing lesson. They have thus gained an immense
+amount of information, and have done a great deal of hard work; but
+instead of being nervously exhausted, they are bright and exhilarated.
+Such fatigue as they know is wholesome and fits them for a sound
+night's sleep.
+
+[Sidenote: Home Expedients]
+
+When it is impossible to send the child to such a school as this,
+something may be done by supplementing the ordinary school by some
+of these procedures. The clay jar, the crayons, and the paints have
+already been suggested, and with the parents' interest in the child's
+studies, helping him to model and paint things which he studies at
+school, he will instantly show the good effect of the home training
+and encouragement. As for field trips, the regular Sunday walk, or
+evening stroll, may be made to take its place. If you think that you
+do not know enough to teach your child on these walks, give him then
+the privilege of teaching you. He will work the harder in order to
+rise to the occasion.
+
+[Sidenote: Physical Culture]
+
+As for physical culture, if your school is without it, your barn, your
+parlor, and your lawn may supply it in some sort. In the barn may be a
+trapeze; there is already the ladder and the hay-loft; on the lawn may
+be a swing, trees to climb, and the tennis court. In your parlor may
+be a little home dancing school, where for a half an hour or so, the
+children march, skip, or two-step to music of your making. In the wood
+shed may be a carpenter's bench with real tools, where he may work and
+get some of the good of manual training.
+
+[Sidenote: Showy Accomplishments]
+
+Accomplishments, meaning thereby showy things that children do for
+the edification of guests, are of doubtful value. It is pleasant, of
+course, to have your little girl play a piece or two on the piano to
+entertain your visitors, but it is not nearly so important as health
+and strength, and a cheerful temper. Sometimes all three of these are
+sacrificed to the two or three hours' practice a day. Often, too, this
+extra work after school hours--work full as monotonous and nervous
+and uninteresting as the school work itself--is just what is needed
+to transform a healthy young girl into a nervous invalid. This is
+especially true, if she undertakes, as she usually does, to study
+music when she is about thirteen years old--the very time when, if
+wise physicians could regulate affairs to their liking, she would be
+taken out of school altogether and required to do nothing more than a
+little light housework every day.
+
+[Sidenote: Natural Talent]
+
+Of course, if she is naturally musical some kind of help and sympathy
+must be given her in her attempt to master the piano or violin or to
+manage her own voice. But while she should be allowed to learn as
+much as her unurged energies permit her to learn, she should not be
+required to practice more than a very small amount, say half an hour
+a day. The bulk of her musical education should be acquired in
+the vacation time, when she can give two hours a day without
+overstraining.
+
+The same general rules hold good of dancing, painting, the
+acquirements of foreign languages, a special course of reading, or
+any other work undertaken in addition to the regular school work. This
+latter, as it is now constituted, is quite as severe a nervous and
+intellectual strain as most young people can undergo with safety.
+
+[Sidenote: "Enthusiasms"]
+
+There is one characteristic in young people which needs to be noted in
+this connection:--the desire to take up some form of work, to strive
+with it furiously for a brief while, to drop it unfinished; take up
+another with equal eagerness, drop that in turn and go on to a third.
+This performance is peculiarly irritating to all systematic and
+ambitious parents. Sometimes they rigidly insist that each task shall
+be finished before a new one is assumed. But in reality, is this
+necessary? It seems to be as natural for a young mind to set eagerly
+to work for a short time at each new bit of knowledge, as it is for a
+nursing child to require refreshments every two or three hours. It is
+an adult trait to stick to a task, even though a very long one, until
+it is accomplished. The youthful trait is to take kindly to a clutter
+of unfinished tasks.
+
+The youthful consciousness is of a world full of jostling interests.
+Why not let the children alone, and allow them to spring lightly from
+one enthusiasm to another? Of course you will help them to finish,
+either at the first sitting or at the second or at the third, the task
+that was undertaken when that particular enthusiasm was at its height.
+The drawing which has remained on the easel during the foot-ball
+season may be suggestively brought to notice again in the quiet times
+between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The boat begun last summer may
+well be finished in the days of the succeeding Spring when all the
+earth is full of the sound of running water. Thus each task, though
+not completed at once, gets done in the end; and the youthful capacity
+for many sympathies and many desires has not been narrowed.
+
+[Sidenote: Parental Vanity]
+
+Such a line of conduct presupposes, of course, that the parent
+considers only the child's best welfare, and not his own parental
+vanity. He is not desirous that his son shall do anything so well
+as to attract the attention and admiration of the neighbors. He is
+desirous merely that the boy shall grow up wholesomely and happily,
+showing such superiority as there may be in him when the fitting time
+and opportunity present themselves. He will not attempt to make a
+musician of an unmusical child, nor a mechanic of an artistic child.
+He will not object to the brilliant and impractical dreams of the
+young inventor, but will help to make them practicable; and though he
+may squirm at some of the investigations of the budding scientist, he
+will not forbid them.
+
+[Sidenote: Development of Intellect]
+
+For such a parent recognizes that the important thing, educationally,
+is to secure the reaction of expression upon thought and feeling.
+That is, he is not trying to secure at this time--at any time during
+youth--perfect expression of any thought or feeling, but only to
+deepen feeling and clarify thought by encouraging all attempts at
+expression. He does not wish his child to make a finished picture or
+a perfect statue, but to acquire a greater sensitiveness to color and
+form by each attempt to express that color and form which he already
+knows. Thus whatever studies and accomplishments his child may be in
+the act of acquiring are seen to be nothing as acquisitions, but the
+child himself is seen to be growing stage by stage within the clumsy
+scaffolding.
+
+
+
+
+FINANCIAL TRAINING
+
+
+The financial training of children ought really to be considered under
+the head of moral training, but in some respects it can come equally
+well under the head of intellectual training; for to spend money well
+requires both self-control and intelligence. Some persons seem to
+think that all that a child can be taught in this regard is to save
+money, and they meet the situation by purchasing various shapes and
+styles of savings banks. But it is entirely possible to teach the
+child too thoroughly in this respect and to make him so fond of his
+jingling pennies safe within a yellow crockery pig or iron cupolaed
+mansion that be will not spend them for any object, however laudable.
+Others evade the issue as long as possible by giving the child no
+money at all; while most of us pursue an uncertain and wabbly course,
+sometimes giving money, sometimes withholding it, sometimes exhorting
+the child to spend, and sometimes to save.
+
+[Sidenote: Regular Allowance]
+
+In truth spending wisely is a difficult problem. As a rule the child
+may safely be induced to lay by for a season and then encouraged to
+spend for some generous purpose. Christmas and other festivals offer
+excellent opportunities for proper disbursement of the hoarded funds.
+These may be supposed to have accumulated from irregular gifts; but
+as the child grows older he should come into receipt of a regular
+definite allowance, perhaps conditioned upon his performance of some
+stated duty. A certain part of his allowance he may he permitted to
+spend upon such frivolities as are naturally dear to his young heart;
+another part of it he should be encouraged--not commanded--to put
+aside for larger purposes.
+
+The giving of this allowance must not be confused with the pernicious
+habit of bribing the child to the performance of those little daily
+courtesies and duties which he ought to be willing to perform out of
+love and a sense of right. A certain part of his daily work, such as
+seeing that the match-boxes all over the house are filled, or some
+similar share of the general labor of the household, may be regarded
+as that for which he is paid wages; and any extra task which does not
+justly belong to him, he may sometimes be paid for performing; but not
+always. For instance, he ought to be willing to run to the grocery
+for mother without demanding that he be paid a penny for the job; yet
+sometimes the penny may be forthcoming. The point is that he should be
+ready to work, even to work hard, without pay, and yet that he should
+never feel that his mother withholds pay from him when she can give it
+and he receive it without injury.
+
+[Sidenote: Spending Foolishly]
+
+When the money is once his, he should be allowed to feel the full
+happiness and responsibility of possession, and if he insists upon
+spending it foolishly, should be allowed to do it and to suffer to the
+full the uncomfortable consequences. If, on the contrary, he will
+not spend it at all, his mother must use every means in her power to
+lessen the desire for ownership and to increase his love for others
+and his eagerness to please them.
+
+As judgment develops the allowance may well be increased to provide
+for necessities in the way of incidentals and clothing until at the
+"age of discretion" he is in full charge of the funds for his personal
+expenses. He should be encouraged to apply his knowledge of commercial
+arithmetic in the keeping of personal accounts.
+
+Experience in spending a fixed amount of money is especially needful
+for the daughters. Most young men have the value of money and
+financial responsibility forced upon them in the natural course
+of events, but too often the young wife has not had the training
+qualifying her for the equal financial partnership which should exist
+in the ideal marriage.
+
+[Illustration: THE INFANT GALAHAD--FIRST SIGHT OF THE GRAIL
+
+From the mural paintings by Edwin A. Abbey in the Boston Public
+Library]
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIOUS TRAINING
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sunday School Teachers]
+
+If the common school is not sufficient for the secular education
+of the child, certainly the Sunday School is not sufficient for his
+religious education. In the common schools the teachers are more or
+less trained for their work. It is a life occupation with them; by
+means of it they earn their living, and their daily success with their
+pupils marks their rate of progress toward higher fields of endeavor.
+Nothing of this sort is true in the Sunday School. While occasionally
+it happens that a day school teacher becomes a Sunday School teacher,
+this is seldom true, for most teachers who teach during the week
+feel that they need the Sunday for rest; and while some Sunday School
+teachers betray a commendable earnestness and zeal for their work, and
+associations and conventions have latterly added somewhat to the
+joint effort to better the conditions, still it remains true that the
+teaching in the Sunday Schools is far below the pedagogic level of
+the common schools. Yet the subject which is dealt with in the Sunday
+Schools, instead of being of less importance than that dealt with in
+the common schools, is of pre-eminently greater importance. Because
+of its subtlety, its intimacy with the hidden springs of conduct, it
+calls for the exercise of the very highest teaching skill.
+
+Some sort of recognition of these two facts--that Sunday School
+teachers are in most cases very inadequately trained for their work,
+and that the work itself is of great importance, and of equally great
+difficulty--has led to the issuing of many quarterlies, International
+Lesson Leaflets, and other Sunday School aids. Necessary as such help
+may be under present conditions, they cannot possibly meet the many
+difficulties of the case. If the central committees, who issue these
+leaflets, were composed wholly of the wisest men and women on earth,
+it would still be impossible for them to give lessons to the millions
+of children in their various denominations which should meet the
+personal needs, and daily interests of these young people.
+
+[Sidenote: Sunday School Training]
+
+As a consequence, Sunday School teaching is and must be largely
+theoretical and still more largely exegetical, and with neither theory
+nor exegesis is the young mind of the developing child very much
+concerned. What he needs is not the historical side of religion or of
+that great body of religious literature which we call the Bible, but
+a living faith which links all that was taught by the prophets and
+apostles, centuries ago, with what is happening in the child's own
+town and family at that very moment. It is a wide gap to bridge, and
+it cannot be bridged by a semi-historical review backed by picture
+cards, golden texts, and stars for good behavior. These things are
+merely the marks of an endeavor to fitly accomplish a great task,
+an endeavor almost absurdly out of proportion to this aim, rendered
+significant, however, because it is the earnest of a great faith and a
+great hope.
+
+So far as Sunday Schools help children, it is because of this spirit
+of faithfulness, and not because of the form which it has assumed.
+
+In choosing, then, whether you shall send your child to a Sunday
+School, choose by the presence or absence of this spirit. If you know
+the teachers of the Sunday School to be earnest, loving, and devoted,
+you may with safety assume that their personal influence will make up
+for what is archaic in their method of teaching. Where the spirit is
+present only in a few, or where it manifests itself only occasionally,
+as at seasons of revival, you may well hesitate to let your child
+attend. A great improvement would come about if parents would show
+a greater interest and encourage proper teachers to take charge of
+classes. It is a thankless task at present.
+
+[Sidenote: Theory Not Practice]
+
+There is one great danger in the teaching of any Sunday School--one
+which the best of them cannot wholly escape--and that is, that, in the
+very nature of things, they teach theory and not practice. Harmful as
+this may be, indeed as it surely is in adult life, it does not begin
+to be so harmful as it does in youth, for the young child, as we have
+seen, is and should remain a unit in consciousness. His life, his
+intellect, and his will are one--an undivided trinity. The divorce of
+these three is at any time a regrettable occurrence; the divorce of
+them in early life is an almost irreparable disaster.
+
+[Sidenote: Useless Truths]
+
+The current theory is that children will learn many truths in the
+Sunday School which they will not put into practice then, perhaps, but
+which they will find useful in later life. This fallacy underlies, of
+course, almost all conventional education and has only been overthrown
+by the dictum of modern psychology, that there is but small storage
+accommodation in the brain for facts which have no immediate relation
+to life. What may be termed the saturating power of the brain is
+limited, and after it has soaked up a rather small number of truths,
+it can contain no more until it has in some way disposed of those that
+it still has--either by making them part of its own living structure,
+which is done only by making immediate application of them; or by
+dropping them below the threshold of consciousness, that is, in common
+language, forgetting them. Moreover, the brain may form the habit of
+easily dropping all that relates to a given subject into the limbo
+where unused things lie disregarded, and when this becomes the
+habitual method of disposing of religious instruction, the results are
+particularly deplorable.
+
+[Sidenote: The Mother as Teacher]
+
+Feeble as her own knowledge may be, a mother has certain advantages as
+a teacher of her children over any but the exceptional Sunday school
+teacher. For, first, she knows the children, and, knowing them, knows
+their needs. Secondly, she knows their daily lives and continually
+during the week can point out wherein they fail to live up to
+their Sunday's lesson. And again and most important, she loves them
+tenderly, and from love flows wisdom. Usually the mother gives her own
+children a love far beyond that given by anyone else, and this deeper
+love sharpens her intellectual faculties and makes her both a keen
+observer and a good tactician. Giving her children some simple lesson
+on Sunday afternoon, she finds a hundred opportunities to make the
+lesson living and vital to them during the succeeding week.
+
+[Sidenote: Religious Enthusiasm]
+
+In the early years of the child's life, the mother is usually the
+one to decide whether he shall attend Sunday School or not, but as
+he approaches adolescence he is likely to take the matter in his
+own hands, and if it happens that some revivalist or a new stirring
+preacher comes in contact with his life at this time, he is very
+likely to be swept off his feet with a sudden zeal of religious
+enthusiasm, which his mother fears to check. The reports of
+memberships, baptisms, etc., show that a large number become converted
+and join the church during adolescence. While this does not in the
+least argue that the conclusions that they reach at that time are
+therefore unsound--for adolescence is not a disease, nor a form of
+insanity, but a normal, if excitable, condition--still it does prove,
+when coupled with the further fact that in adult life these young
+converts often relapse into their previous condition, that a more
+lasting basis for religion must be found than the emotional intensity
+of this period of life. A religion to be lasting must be coldly
+reaffirmed by the intellect: the dictum of the heart alone is not
+sufficient. Religious enthusiasm, like all other forms of enthusiasm,
+tends of itself to bring about the opposite condition, and to be
+succeeded by fits of despondency and bitterness as intense and severe
+as the enthusiasm itself was brilliant and ecstatic. The history of
+all great religious leaders amply proves this. They had their bitter
+hours of wrestling with the powers of darkness, hours which almost
+counter-balanced the hours of uplift. Only clearly thought-out
+intellectual convictions reinforced by the habit of daily righteous
+living can secure the soul against such emotional aberrations.
+
+[Sidenote: Danger of Reaction]
+
+Therefore, although the religious excitability of adolescence must
+not be thwarted lest it be turned into less helpful channels, and lest
+religion lose all the beauty and compelling power lent to it by the
+glow of youthful feelings, yet it must be so balanced and ordered by
+a clear reason, and especially by the habit of putting each enthusiasm
+to the test of conduct, that the young mind may remain true to its law
+of growth, developing harmoniously on all three sides at once.
+
+The danger of permitting a young boy or girl while under the influence
+of this emotional instability to enter into any special form of
+religious service is the danger of reaction. He will discover that
+all is not as his early vision led him to suppose--because that
+early vision was of things too high and holy for any earthly
+realization--and he may turn against what seems to him to be hypocrisy
+and pretense with a bitterness proportioned to his former love. Many
+honest, faithful men and women remain in this state of reaction for
+the rest of their lives.
+
+[Sidenote: A Difficult Period]
+
+Nevertheless, it will not do to thwart these young beginnings. They
+must neither be nipped in the bud nor forced to a premature ripening.
+Above all they must not be suffered to endure the killing frost of
+ridicule. The period is a difficult one, but, as Dr. Stanley Hall
+points out, it is supremely the mother's opportunity. If she can hold
+her boy's or her girl's confidence now, can ease their eager young
+hearts with an intelligent sympathy, she can probably keep them from
+any public commitment. Perhaps they may desire to confide in the
+minister; if so, let the mother confide in him first. Perhaps they
+have bosom friends, passing through the same stirring experience; then
+let the mother win over these friends.
+
+Her object should be to shelter this beautiful sentiment; to keep it
+safe from exposure; above all, to utilize it as a motive-power--as
+an incentive to noble action. The Kindergarten rule is a good one: as
+quick as a love springs in a child's breast, give it something to do.
+When the love of God awakes there, give it much to do. Usually, the
+only way open is to join the church, to make a public profession. The
+wise mother will see to it that there are other ways, urging the young
+knight to serve his King by going forth into the world immediately
+about him and fighting against all forms of evil, giving him a
+practical, definite quest. The result of such restriction of
+public speech, and stimulation of private deed, will be a sincere,
+lowly-minded religion, so inwoven with the truest activities as to be
+inseparable from them. Such a religion knows no reaction.
+
+[Sidenote: Bible Study]
+
+Now is supremely the time for a study of the Bible. Interesting as a
+Divine Story Book to the young children, it becomes the Book of Life
+to these older ones. In teaching it at home, a few simple rules need
+to be borne in mind. The first is that the Bible must be thought of
+not as a series of disconnected texts and thoughts, but as a connected
+whole. The division of King James' Bible into verses and chapters is
+but poorly adapted to this purpose. The illogical, strange character
+of the paragraphing, as measured by the standards of modern English,
+is apparent at a glance, for often a verse will end in the middle of
+a sentence, and the sentence be concluded in the next verse. The
+chapters in the same way often fail to finish the subject with which
+they deal, and sometimes include several subjects. Therefore, the
+mother who undertakes to read the Bible to her children needs first
+to go through the lesson herself, and to decide what subject, not what
+chapter, she will take up that day. There is a reader's edition of
+the Bible, and one called the "Children's Bible," both of which aim
+to leave out all repetition and references and to arrange the Bible
+narrative in a simple, consecutive order, nevertheless employing the
+beautiful Bible language. These editions might prove of considerable
+help to mothers who feel unequal to doing the work by themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: Children's Bible]
+
+Second, comparable to this in importance is the reading of the Bible
+and talking about it in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice; for what
+you want is to make the Bible teachings live in to-day. You must not,
+therefore, suggest by your tone or manner that they belong to another
+day, and that they are, in some sense, to be shut out from common life
+and speech. This does not mean such common use of Biblical phrases
+in every day conversation as to cause it to grow into that form or
+irreverence known as cant, but it does mean simple usage of Bible
+thought, and the effort to fit it to the conditions of daily life.
+Such a habit in itself will force any family to discriminate as to
+what things in the Bible are living and eternal, and what things
+belong rightly to that far away time and place of which the Bible
+narrative treats, thus practicing both teacher and pupils--that is,
+both parents and children--in the art of finding the universal spirit
+of truth under all temporal disguises. Without this art the Bible is a
+closed book, even to the closest student.
+
+[Sidenote: Making Lessons Real]
+
+Again, every effort should be made to help the home Bible class to
+understand the period studied in that week's lesson, and to this end
+secular literature and art should be freely called upon, not only such
+stories, for example, as "Ben Hur," but other stories not necessarily
+religious, which deal with the same time and place; they are of great
+help in putting vividly before the children and parents the temporal
+setting of the eternal stories. Cannon Farrar's "Life of Christ" is a
+very great help to the realization of the New Testament scenes, as is
+also Tissot's "Pictorial Life of Christ." In short every art should be
+made to deepen and clarify the conceptions roused by the study of the
+Bible.
+
+
+
+[Sidenote: In Conclusion]
+
+The mother who undertakes the tremendous task of rightly training her
+children, will need to exercise herself daily in all the Christian
+virtues--and if there are any Pagan ones not included under faith,
+hope, charity, patience, and humility, to exercise those also.
+With these virtues to support her, she will be able to use whatever
+knowledge she may acquire. Without them she can do nothing.
+
+
+
+
+TEST QUESTIONS
+
+The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the
+regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for
+the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to
+emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the
+lesson.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly
+requested _not_ to answer according to the text-book where opinions
+are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases
+credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your
+name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so
+that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.
+
+1. How can you bring the influence of art to bear upon your child?
+
+2. What is the influence of music? How can you employ it?
+
+3. Do you believe in fairy tales for children? State your reasons.
+
+4. How would you encourage the love of nature in your child?
+
+5. What is it that the Kindergarten can do better than the home?
+
+6. Suppose that your child had some undesirable acquaintances, how
+would you meet the situation?
+
+7. What can you say of accomplishments for children?
+
+8. If manual training, physical culture, domestic science, etc., are
+not taught in your schools and you wish your children to get some of
+the advantages of these studies, how will you set about it?
+
+9. What do you understand to be the correlation of studies?
+
+10. Should parents become acquainted with the teachers of their
+children and their methods? Why?
+
+11. How may children be taught the use of money?
+
+12. State the advantages and disadvantages of Sunday schools. What
+have they meant in _your own_ experience?
+
+13. How will you train your child religiously? Can anyone take this
+task from you?
+
+14. What rules must be borne in mind in teaching the Bible at home?
+
+15. Give some experience of your own (or of a friend) in the training
+of a child wherein a success has been achieved.
+
+16. Are there any questions you would like to ask or subjects which
+you wish to discuss in connection with the lessons on the Study of
+Child Life?
+
+
+Note.--After completing the test sign it with your full name.
+
+
+
+
+Supplementary Notes
+
+on
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
+
+BY MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
+
+
+
+APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES.
+
+
+In this "Study of Child Life" we have considered some of the
+fundamental principles of education. When we think of the complex
+inheritance of the American people it is, perhaps, no wonder that many
+families contain individuals varying so widely from each other as to
+seem to require each a complete system of education all to himself.
+We are a people born late in the history of the race, and our blood
+is mingled of the Norseman's, the Celt's, and the Latin's. Advancing
+civilization alone would tend to make us more complex, our problems
+more subtle; but in addition to this we are mixed of all races, and
+born in times so strenuous that, sooner or later, every fibre of our
+weaving is strained and brought into prominence.
+
+In the letters from my students this fact, with which I was already
+familiar in a general sort of way, has been brought more particularly
+to my attention. In all cases, the situation has been responsible for
+much confusion and difficulty. In a good many, it has led to
+family tragedies, varying in magnitude from the unhappiness of the
+misunderstood child to that of the lonely woman, suffering in adult
+life from the faults of her upbringing, and the failure of the family
+ties whose need she felt the more as the duties of motherhood pressed
+upon her. If it were possible for me to violate the confidence of my
+pupils I could prove very conclusively that the old-fashioned system
+of bringing up children on the three R's and a spanking did not work
+so well as some persons seem to think. I could prove that the problem
+has grown past the point where instinct and tradition may be held
+as sufficient to solve it. Everyone, seeing these letters, would be
+obliged to confess, "Yes, indeed, here is plain need of training for
+parents." Yet, at the same time, these same persons would be tempted
+to inquire, "But can any training meet such a difficult situation?"
+
+Here is despair; and some cause for it. When one's own mother has not
+understood one; when one has lived lonely in the midst of brothers and
+sisters who are more strange than strangers; when one's childhood is
+full of the memory of obscure but intense sufferings, one flies for
+relief, perhaps, to any one who offers it hopefully enough; but
+one does not really expect to get it. _Can_ training, especially by
+correspondence, meet the need?
+
+Not wholly, of course, let us be frank to admit. No amount of theory,
+however excellent, can take the place of the drill given only in the
+hard school of experience. But when the theory is not merely theory,
+but sound principle, based on scientific observation, confirmed by the
+wide experience of many persons, it is as valuable in practical life
+as any rule of mathematics to the practical engineer. We all know that
+the technical correspondence schools really do fit young mechanics
+to move on and up in the trade. By correspondence he is given what
+Froebel calls the interpreting word. The experience in application the
+student has to supply himself.
+
+So in the matter of education. There are genuine principles which
+underlie the development of every child that lives--even the
+feeble-minded, deaf, and blind. Read Helen Keller's wonderful life,
+if you want to see the proof of it. Just as surely as a child has
+two legs and has to learn to walk on them by a series of prolonged
+experiments, just so surely he has (a) a sense of justice, (b) an
+instinct for freedom, (c) a love of play. Every kind of child has all
+these instincts, as much as he has love for food and drink; and to
+educate him consists in developing these instincts into (a) the habit
+of dealing justly by others, (b) the right use of freedom, (c) love
+of work. The particular methods may differ. The principles _do not and
+CANNOT DIFFER_.
+
+She who would succeed in child training must hold to these truths with
+all her might and main--making them, in fact, her religion, for they
+are the doctrines of the Christian religion as applied to motherhood.
+To hold them lightly, or even experimentally, will not do. One most
+walk in faith. And that the faith may not be blind, but may be based
+on experience and understanding, let me suggest this means of proof:
+Instead of asking yourself how the laws laid down in these little
+books would fit this or that particular child, your own or another's,
+ask how they would have fitted you, if they had been applied to you
+by your own mother. Take the chapter on faults, pick out the one which
+was yours, in childhood--oh, of course, you've got over it now!--think
+of some bitter trouble into which that fault hurried you, and conceive
+that, instead of the punishment you did receive, you had been treated
+as the lesson suggests--what, do you think, would have been the
+result? And so with the other chapters--even with that much-mooted
+question of companionship. Test the truth of them all by their
+imaginary application to the child you know best. When you can, find
+the principles that your own mother did employ in your education,
+and examine the result of what she did. Some of the principles will
+suddenly become luminous to you, I am sure; and some things that
+happened in the past receive an explanation.
+
+Such a self-examination, to be of any value, must be rigidly honest.
+There is too much at stake here for you to permit any remnants of
+bitter feeling to influence your judgment--and you will surely be
+surprised to find how many bitter resentments will show that they
+yet have life. The past is dead, as far as your power to change it is
+concerned; but it lives, as a thing that you can use. Here is your own
+child, to be helped or hindered by what you may have endured. It will
+all have been worth while, if by means of it you can save him from
+some bruises and falls. Every bitterness will be sweetened if you
+can look through it and find the truth which shall serve this dearer
+little self who looks to you for guidance.
+
+Then, when you have found the principles true--and not one minute
+before!--put them rigidly into practice. I say, not one minute before
+you are convinced, because it is better to hold the truth lightly in
+the memory as a mere interesting theory you have never had time to
+test, than to swallow it, half assimilated. Truth is a real and living
+power, once it is applied to life; and to half-use it in doubt, and
+fear, is to invite indigestion and consequent disgust. Take of these
+teachings that which you are sure is sound and right, and use it
+faithfully, and unremittingly. Be careful that no plea of expediency,
+no hurry of the moment, makes you false. If you are thus faithful
+in small things, one after the other, in a series fitted to your own
+peculiar constitution, the others will prove themselves to you; for
+they are coherent truths, and not one lives to itself alone, but joins
+hands with all the rest. Being truths, they fit all human minds--yours
+and mine, and those of our children, no matter how diverse we may be.
+
+
+
+
+OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN
+
+
+Isn't it ridiculously true that, as soon as we get enlightened
+ourselves, we burn to enlighten the rest of the world? We do not seem
+to remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the
+contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our power of
+comprehension. It is really comforting to my own sense of impatience
+and balked zeal to find how many of my pupils are dreadfully concerned
+about other people's children. This one's heart burns over the little
+boy next door who is shamefully mismanaged and who already begins to
+show the ill effects of his treatment. That one has a sister-in-law
+who refuses to listen to a word spoken in season.
+
+Between my smiles--those comfortable smiles with which we recognize
+our own shortcomings--I, too, am really concerned about the
+sister-in-law's children. It is true that their mother ought to be
+taught better, and that, if she isn't, those innocent lambs are going
+to suffer for it. Off at this distance, without the ties of kindred to
+draw me too close for clear judgment, I see, though, that we have
+to walk very cautiously here, for fear of doing more harm than good.
+Better that those benighted women never heard the name of child-study,
+than to hear it only to greet it with rebellion and hatred. Yet
+to force any of our principles upon her attention when she is in a
+hostile mood--or to _force_ them, indeed, in any mood--is to invite
+just this attitude.
+
+Most of us, by the time that we are sufficiently grown up to undertake
+the study of child life, have outgrown the habit of plainly telling
+our friends to their faces just what we think of their faults; yet
+this is a safe and pleasant pastime beside that other of trying
+to tell them how to bring up their children. You stand it from me,
+because you have invited it, and perhaps still more because you never
+see me, and the personal element enters only slightly and pleasantly
+into our relationship. I sometimes think that students pour out their
+hearts to me, much as we used to talk to our girl friends in the dark.
+I'm very sure I should never dare to say to their faces what I write
+so freely on the backs of their papers!
+
+You see, the adult, too, has his love of freedom; and while he can
+stand an indirect, impersonal preachment, which he may reject if he
+likes without apology, he will not stand the insistence of a personal
+appeal. I've let "Little Women" shame me into better conduct, when I
+was a girl, at times when no direct speech from a living soul would
+have brought me to anything but defiance--haven't you? We have to
+apply our principles to the adult world about us, well as to the
+child-world, and teach, when we permit ourselves to teach at all,
+chiefly by example, by cheerful confession of fallibility, by
+open-mindedness. Above all things, we have to respect the freedom of
+these others, about whom we are so inconveniently anxious.
+
+It is fair, though, that the spoken word should interpret what we do.
+It is fair enough to tell your sister-in-law what you think and ask
+her judgment upon it, if you can trust yourself not to rub your own
+judgment in too hard. If you are unmarried, and a teacher, you will
+have to concede to her preposterous marital conceit a humble and
+inquiring attitude, and console your flustered soul by setting it
+to the ingenious task of teaching by means of a graduated series of
+artful inquiries. Don't, oh don't! seek for an outspoken victory.
+Be content if some day you hear her proclaim your truth as her own
+discovery. It never was yours, anyway, any more than it is hers or
+than it is mine. Be glad that, while she claims it, she at least holds
+it close.
+
+If you are a mother, you are in an easier case. You can do to your own
+children just what she ought to do to hers, and tell about it softly,
+as if sure of her sympathy. If you are very sincere in your desire for
+the welfare of her child, you may even ask her advice about yours, and
+so gain the right to offer a little in exchange--say one-tenth of what
+she gives.
+
+All these warnings apply to unsought advice--a dangerous thing to
+offer under any circumstances. Except there is a real emergency, you
+had better avoid it. If your nephew or little neighbor is winning
+along through his troubles fairly well, best keep hands off. But if
+you absolutely _must_ interfere, guard yourself as I suggest, and
+remember that, even then, you will assuredly get burned, if you play
+long with that dangerous fire of maternal pride!
+
+When your advice is sought, you are in a different position. Then you
+have a right to speak out, though if you are wise and loving you will
+temper that right with charity. No one can be too gentle in dealing
+with a soul that honestly asks for help; but one can easily be too
+timid. Think, under these circumstances, of yourself not at all;
+but put yourself as much as possible in her place; be led by her
+questions; and answer fearlessly from the depths of the best truth you
+hold. Then leave it. You can do no more. What becomes of that truth,
+once you have lovingly spoken it, is no more of your concern.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEX QUESTION
+
+
+Always convinced of the importance of this subject, convictions have
+deepened to the point of dismay since learning, through this school,
+of the many women who have suffered and who continue to suffer, both
+mentally and physically, because, in early girlhood, they were not
+taught those finer physiological facts upon which the very life of the
+race depends. Yet, strangely enough, these very victims find it almost
+impossible to give their children the knowledge necessary to save
+them from a similar fate. It is as if the lack of early training in
+themselves leaves them helpless before a situation from which they
+suffer but which they have never mastered.
+
+Of course such feelings, in themselves morbid, are not to be trusted.
+Faced with a task like this we have only to ask ourselves not "Is it
+hard?" but "Is it in truth my task?" If it is, we may be sure that we
+shall be given strength to do it, provided only that we are sincere in
+our willingness to do it and do not count our feelings at all.
+
+It is preposterous to have such feelings, in the first place. They
+are wholly the product of false teaching. For we have no right--as we
+recognize when we stop to think about it in calmness of spirit, and
+apart from our special difficult--to sit in scornful judgment upon
+any of the laws of nature. When we find ourselves in rebellion against
+them, what we have to do is to change the state of our minds, for
+change the laws we cannot. If we women could inaugurate a gigantic
+strike against the present method of bearing children--and I imagine
+that millions would join such a strike if it held out any promise of
+success!--we still could accomplish nothing. To fret ourselves into a
+frazzle over it, is to accomplish less than nothing;--it is to enter
+upon the pathway to destruction.
+
+In teaching our children, then, we have first to conquer
+ourselves--that painful, reiterated, primal necessity, which must
+underlie all teaching. Having done so, we shall find our task easier
+than we supposed. The children's own questions will lead us; and if we
+simply make it a rule never to answer a question falsely no matter how
+far it may probe, we shall find ourselves not only enlightening
+but receiving enlightenment. For nothing is so sure an antidote to
+morbidness as the unspoiled mind of a child. He looks at the facts
+with such a calm, level gaze that proportions are restored to us as we
+follow his look.
+
+Many of my letters show that adult women, wives and mothers, still
+grope for the truth that lies plain to the eyes of any simple
+child--the truth that there is no such thing as clean and unclean,
+only use and misuse. Others, through love, and the splendid
+revelations that it makes, have risen so far above their former
+misconceptions that they fear to tell a child the facts before he has
+experienced the love. I can imagine that in an ideal world some such
+reticence might be good and right--but this is far from an ideal
+world. We have to train our children relatively, not absolutely, in
+the knowledge that we do not control all their environment. I think
+the solution of the difficulty is to teach the facts of sex in a
+perfectly calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, just as one
+teaches the laws of digestion. When knowledge of evil is thrust upon
+our child let us be sorry with him that those other children have
+never been taught, and that they are doing their bodies such sad
+mischief. But don't exaggerate it; don't be too shocked; don't condemn
+the poor little sinners, who are also victims, too severely. Charity
+toward wrong-doing is the best prophylactic against imitation. We
+never feel the lure of a sin which grieves us in another; but often
+the call of a sin which we too strongly condemn. Because the very
+strength of the condemnation rouses our imaginations, is in itself an
+emotion, and, since it is certainly not a loving one, must necessarily
+be linked with all other unloving and therefore evil emotions. As far
+as possible, let us keep feeling out of this subject, until such time
+as the true and beautiful feeling of love between husband and wife
+arises and uplifts it.
+
+
+
+
+FATHERS
+
+
+And now comes the editor of these lessons and accuses me of neglecting
+the fathers! Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts.
+Not only do I agree with him that "all ordinary children have fathers,
+and it might be well to put in a paragraph;" but I am cheerfully
+willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere
+modicum of readers can be assured me. I fairly ache to talk to
+fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of
+them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad
+to conduct it.
+
+Joking aside, however, I truly feel that the saddest lack many of our
+children have to suffer is the lack of fathers; and the saddest lack
+our men have to suffer is the lack of children. So little are most men
+awake to this subject that I am perfectly convinced that much of the
+prevalent "race suicide" is due to their objections to a large family,
+rather than to their wives'. Upon them comes the burden of support.
+They get few of the joys which belong to children, and nearly all of
+the woes. Seldom do they share the games of their offspring, or their
+happy times; and almost always the worst difficulties are thrust upon
+them for solution. Not that they often solve them! How can we expect
+it?
+
+There is Edgar growing very untruthful and defiant. We have concealed
+all the first stages of the disease for fear of bothering poor tired
+papa. At last it reaches such a height that we can conceal it no
+longer. We fling the desperate boy at the very head of the bewildered
+father, and then have turns of bitter disappointment because the
+remedies that are applied may be so much cruder, even, than our own.
+Here is a boy who gets close to his father only to find the proximity
+very uncomfortable; and a father who becomes acquainted with his son
+only through the ugly revelations of his worst faults.
+
+Not but that the fathers are somewhat to blame, too. Without urging by
+us, they ought, of course to take a spontaneous interest in the lives
+for which they are responsible. They ought to, and they often do; but
+the interest is sometimes ill-advised, and consequently unwelcome.
+There are fathers whose interest is a most inconvenient thing. When
+they are at home, they run everything, growl at everything, upset, as
+like as not, all that the mother has been trying to do during the day.
+I know wives who are distinctly glad to encourage their husbands in
+the habit of lunching down-town, so that they can have a little room
+for their own peculiar form of activity. And maybe we all have times
+of sympathizing with the woman in this familiar story: There was a man
+once who never left the house without a list of directions to his wife
+as to how she should manage things during his absence.
+
+"Better have the children carry umbrellas this morning; it's going to
+rain," said he, as he went out of the door. "Be sure to put on their
+rubbers. And since the baby is so croupy I'd get out his winter
+flannels, if I were you."
+
+"Yes, dear," said the patient wife. "Make your mind easy. I'll take
+just as good care of them as if they were my own children." Of course
+this is an extreme case.
+
+There are other fathers whose whole idea of the parental relation
+seems to be indulgence. No system of discipline, however mild, can be
+carried out when such a man wins the children's hearts and ruins their
+dispositions. It is he, isn't it? (I don't quite recollect the tale)
+who was sent, after death, to the warm regions, there to expiate his
+many sins of omission. And his adoring children, who had been hauled
+to heaven by the main strength, let us say, of their mother, found
+that the only thing they could do for him was to call out celestial
+hose company number one and ask them to play awhile upon the
+overheated apartments of poor tired papa.
+
+The truth is--sit close and let no man hear what we say!--that these
+fathers are much what we, the mothers, make them. If, under the
+mistaken idea of saving father from all the worries of the children,
+we hurry the youngsters off to bed before he comes home in
+the evening, conceal our heart-burnings over them, do our
+correspondence-school work in secret and solitude, meditate in the
+same fashion over plans for their upbringing, talk to our neighbors
+but never to him about the daily troubles, how can we expect any man
+on earth, no matter how susceptible of later angelic growth, to become
+a wise and devoted father? Tired or not, he is a father, not a mere
+bread-winner. Whether he likes it at the moment or not, it is for
+his soul's health for him to enter into the full life of his family,
+including those problems which are at the very heart of it, after his
+day of grinding, and very likely unloving, work at the office. Here
+love enters to interpret, to soften, to make all principles live. Here
+alone he can give himself to those gentler forms of judgment which
+are necessary as much to the completion of his own character as to the
+happiness and welfare of his wife and children. Someone has said that
+we wrong our friends when we ask nothing of them; and certainly it is
+true that we wrong our husbands when we do not demand big and splendid
+things of them.
+
+That word demand troubles me a little. So many women demand--and
+demand terribly! But what they demand is indulgence, sympathy,
+interest--I think sometimes that they crave a man's utter absorption
+in themselves much as a man craves strong drink. It is their form of
+intoxication. Such demanding is not, of course, what I mean. Demand
+nothing for yourself, beyond simple justice. Not love, for that flies
+at the very sound of demand, and dies before nagging. But demand for
+the man himself, call upon his nobler qualities, and don't let him
+palm off on you his second-best. Many a man is loved and honored by
+his business associates whose wife and children never catch a glimpse
+of the finer side of him. Demand the exercise of these fine traits in
+the home. Demand that he be a fine man in the eyes of his children as
+in the eyes of his friends. Be sure that he will rise to the occasion
+with a splendid sense of having, now, a home that is a home, of having
+a wife who is wived to the man he likes best to be.
+
+This bids fair to be--as I knew it would, if once I permitted myself
+to write at all on the subject--not a paragraph, but a whole essay--or
+perhaps, if I did not check myself, a whole volume! But after all,
+what I want to say is merely that as no child can be born without
+a father, so he cannot be properly trained without a father's daily
+assistance. And that, since most fathers come to the task even more
+untrained than the mothers, some training must be undertaken. By whom?
+By the mother. It is, I solemnly believe, your duty to go ahead a
+little on this part of the journey, find out what ought to be done,
+and teach, coax, induce your husband to co-operate with you in these
+things. No one knows better than you do that he is only a boy at heart
+after all--perhaps the very dearest boy of them all. This boy you have
+to help while yet the other children are little--but be sure that, as
+you teach him, so, all the time, will he teach you. Every principle
+laid down in this book, above all others the principle of _freedom_,
+will apply to him. He will take the lessons a trifle more reluctantly
+but more lastingly than the younger boys; and in a little while you
+will be envied of all your women friends because of the competency,
+the reliability, the contentment of your children's father.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE
+
+
+When all is said and done, it remains true that the finest, the
+most subtle and penetrating influence in education is precisely
+that education for which no rules can be laid down. It is the silent
+influence of the motives which impel the persons who constantly
+surround us. If we examine for a little our own childhood we see at
+once that this is so. What are those canons of conduct by which we
+judge others and even occasionally ourselves? Whence came that list
+of _impossible_ things, those things that are so closed to us that we
+cannot, even under great stress, of temptation, conceive ourselves as
+yielding to them?
+
+There is an enlightening story of a young man, born and bred a
+gentleman, who, by the way of fast living falls upon poverty. In the
+hard pressure of his financial affairs he is about to commit suicide,
+when suddenly he finds, in an empty cab, a roll of bills amounting to
+some thousands of dollars. The circumstances are such that he knows
+that he can, if he will, discover the owner; or, he can, without
+fear of detection, keep the money himself. He makes up his mind,
+deliberately, to keep it, and then, almost against his will,
+subconsciously as it were, walks to the office of the man who lost the
+money and restores it to him.
+
+Now, doubtless, in his downward career he had done many things which
+judged by any absolute standard of morality were quite as wrong as the
+keeping of that money would have been, but the fact remained that he
+could not do that deed. Others, yes, but not that. He was a gentleman,
+and gentlemen do not steal private property, whatever they may do
+about public property. Yet probably, in all his life he had not once
+been told not to steal--not one word had he been taught, openly,
+on the subject. No one whom he knew stole. He was never expected
+to steal. Stealing was a sin beyond the pale. So strong was this
+unconscious, _but unvarying_ influence, that by it he was saved, in
+the hour of extreme need, from even feeling the force of a temptation
+that to a boy born and reared, say, in the slums, would have been
+overwhelming.
+
+Now, considering such things, I take it that it behooves us, as
+parents, to look closely at the sort of persons that we are, clear
+inside of us. To examine, as if with the clear eyes of our own
+children, waiting to be clouded by our sophistries, the motives from
+which we habitually act in the small affairs of everyday life. Are
+we influenced by fear of what the neighbors will say? Have we one
+standard of courtesy for company times, and another for private
+moments? If so, why? Are we self-indulgent about trifles? Are we
+truthful in spirit as well as in letter? Do we permit ourselves to
+cheat the street-car and the railroad company, teaching the child at
+our side to sit low that he may ride for half-fare? Do we seek
+justice in our bargaining, or are we sharp and self-considerate? Do we
+practice democracy, or only talk it and wave the flag at it?
+
+And so on with a hundred other questions as to those small repeated
+acts, which, springing from base motives, may put our unconscious
+influence with our children in the already over-weighted down-side of
+the scale; or met bravely and nobly, at some expense of convenience,
+may help to enlighten the weight of inherited evil. Sometimes I wonder
+how much of what we call inherited evil is the result not of heredity
+at all, but of this sort of unconscious education.
+
+
+
+
+ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
+
+
+
+
+THE SELF-DISTRUSTFUL CHILD.
+
+
+"Your question is an excellent one. The answer to it is really
+contained in your answer to the question about obedience. If a child
+obey _laws_ not persons, and is steadily shown the reasonableness of
+what is required of him, he comes to trust those laws and to trust
+himself when he is conscious of obeying. But in addition to this
+general training, it might be well to give a self-distrustful child
+easy work to do--work well within his ability--then to praise him for
+performing it; give him something a little harder, but still within
+his reach, and so on, steadily calling on him for greater and greater
+effort, but seeing to it that the effort is not too great and that it
+bears visible fruit. He should never be allowed to be discouraged; and
+when he droops over his work, some strong, friendly help may well he
+given him. Sensitive, conscientious children, such as I imagine
+you were, are sometimes overwhelmed in this way by parents, quite
+unconscious of the pain they are giving by assigning tasks that are
+beyond the strength and courage of the young toilers.
+
+"At the same time, much might be done by training the child's
+attention from _product_ to _process_. You know the St. Louis Fair
+does not aim to show what has been done, but _how_ things are done.
+So a child--so you--can find happiness and intellectual uplift in
+studying the laws at work under the simplest employment instead of
+counting the number of things _finished_."
+
+
+
+
+COMPANY WAYS
+
+
+"A boy who is visiting us is so beset with rules and 'nagged' even
+by glances and nudges, that I wonder that he is not bewildered and
+rebellious. He seems good and pleasant and obedient (12 years old),
+but I keep wondering why?"
+
+"Perhaps these were company ways inspired by an over-anxiety on his
+mother's part that he should appear well. Oh, I have been so tempted
+in this direction!--for of course people look at my children to see if
+they prove the truth of my teachings, and as they are vigorous, free
+and active youngsters, with decided characteristics they often do the
+most unexpected and uncomfortable things! There must be good points
+both in the boy himself--the boy you mention--and in his training
+which offset the bad effects of the 'nagging' you notice--and possibly
+the nagging itself may not be customary when he is at home. And
+perhaps the mother knows that you are a close observer of children."
+
+
+
+
+THEORY BEFORE PRACTICE
+
+
+"There is only one danger in learning about the training of children
+in advance of their advent, and that is the danger of being too sure
+of ourselves--too systematic. The best training is that which is most
+invisible--which leaves the child most in freedom. Almost the whole
+duty of mothers is to provide the right environment and then just
+love and enjoy the child as he moves and grows in it. But to do this
+apparently easy thing requires so much simplicity and directness of
+vision and most of us are so complex and confused that considerable
+training and considerable effort are required to put us into the right
+attitude.
+
+"For myself, soon after I took my kindergarten training, which I did
+with three babies creeping and playing about the schoolroom, I read
+George Meredith's 'Ordeal of Richard Feveril' (referred to on p. 33,
+Part I) and felt that that book was an excellent counter-balance,
+saving me, in the nick of time, from imposing any system, however
+perfect, upon my children. Perhaps you will enjoy reading it, too."
+
+
+
+
+THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL
+
+
+"Doing right from love of parent may easily become too strong a factor
+and too much reliance may be placed upon it. There are few dangers in
+child training more real than the danger of over working the emotional
+appeal. You do not wish your child to form the habit of working for
+approval, do you?"
+
+
+
+
+THE FOOD QUESTION
+
+
+"The food question can be met in less direct ways with your young
+baby. No food but that which is good for him need be seen. It is
+seldom good to have so young a child come to the family table. It
+is better he would have his own meals, so that he is satisfied with
+proper foods before the other appears. Or, if he must eat when you do,
+let him have a little low table to himself, spread with his own pretty
+little dishes and his own chair, with perhaps a doll for companion or
+playmate. From this level he cannot see or be tempted by the viands on
+the large table; yet, if his table is near your chair you can easily
+reach and serve him. It is a real torment to a young child to see
+things he must not touch or eat, and it is a perfectly unnecessary
+source of trouble.
+
+"My four children ate at such a low table till the oldest was eight
+years old, when he was promoted to our table, and the others followed
+in due order."
+
+
+
+
+AIR CASTLES
+
+
+"What a wonderful reader you were as a child! and certainly the books
+you mention were far beyond you. Yet I can not quite agree that the
+habit of air-castle building is pernicious. Indeed I believe in it.
+It needs only to be balanced by practical effort, directed towards
+furnishing an earthly foundation for the castle. Build, then, as high
+and splendid as you like, and love them so hard that you are moved
+to lay a few stones on the solid earth as a beginning of a more
+substantial structure; and some day you may wake to find some of your
+castles coming true. Those practical foundation stones underlying a
+tremendous tower of idealism have a genuine magic power. Build all you
+like about your baby, for instance. Think what things Mary pondered in
+her heart.
+
+"No, I'm never worried about idealism except when it is contented with
+itself and makes but little effort at outward realization. But the
+fact that you are taking this course proves that you will work to
+realize your ideals.
+
+"I don't think it very bad either to read to 'kill time.' Though if
+you go on having a family, you won't have any time to kill in a very
+little while. But do read on when you can, otherwise you may be shut
+in, first you know, to too small a world, and a mother needs to draw
+her own nourishment from _all_ the world, past and present."
+
+
+
+
+DUTY TO ONESELF
+
+
+"Yes, I should say you were distinctly precocious, and that you are
+almost certainly suffering from the effects of that early brilliancy.
+But the degree was not so great as to permanently injure you,
+especially if you see what is the matter, and guard against repeating
+the mistakes of your parents. I mean that you can now treat your own
+body and mind and nerves as you wish they had treated them. Pretend
+that you are your own little child, and deal with yourself tenderly
+and gently, making allowances for the early strain to which you were
+subjected. So few of us American women, with our alert minds, and our
+Puritanic consciences, have the good sense and self-control to refrain
+from driving ourselves; and if, as often happens, we have formed
+the bad habit early in life, reform is truly difficult, but not
+impossible. We can get the good of our disability by conscientiously
+driving home the principle that in order to 'love others as ourselves'
+we must learn to _love ourselves as we love others_. We have literally
+no right to be unreasonably exacting toward ourselves,--but perhaps I
+am taking too much upon myself by preaching outside the realm of child
+study."
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER AND THE TEACHER
+
+
+"Your paper has been intensely interesting to me. I have always held
+that a true teacher was really a mother, though of a very large flock,
+just as a true mother is really a teacher, though of a very small
+school. The two points of view complete each other and I doubt if
+either mother or teacher can see truly without the other. They tell
+us, you know, that our two eyes, with their slight divergence of
+position, are necessary to make us, see things as having more than one
+side; and the mother and the teacher, one seeing the individual child,
+the other the child as the member of the race, need each other to see
+the child as the complex, many-sided individual he really is.
+
+"In your school, do you manage to get the mothers to co-operate? Here,
+I am trying to get near my children's teachers. They try, too; but
+it is not altogether easy for any of us. We need some common meeting
+ground--some neutral activity which we could share. If you have any
+suggestions, I shall be glad to have them. Of course, I visit school
+and the teachers visit me, and we are friendly in an arm's length
+sort of fashion. That is largely because they believe in corporal
+punishment and practice it freely and it is hard for us to look
+straight at each other over this disagreement."
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.
+
+
+To the Matron of a Girls' Orphan Asylum
+
+"Now to the specific questions you ask. My answers must, of course, be
+based upon general principles--the special application, often so
+very difficult a matter, must be left to you. To begin with corporal
+punishment. You say you are 'personally opposed, but that your early
+training and the literal interpretation of Solomon's rod keep you
+undecided.' Surely your own comment later shows that part, at least,
+of the influence of your early training was _against_ corporal
+punishment, because you saw and felt its evils in yourself. Such
+early training may have made you unapt in thinking of other means
+of discipline; but it can hardly have made you think of corporal
+punishment as _right_.
+
+"And how can anyone take Solomon's rod any more literally than she
+does the Savior's cross? We are bid, on a higher authority than
+Solomon's proverbs, to take up our cross and follow Him. This we all
+interpret figuratively. Would you dream, for instance, of binding
+heavy crosses of wood upon the backs of your children because you felt
+yourselves so enjoined in the literal sense of the Scriptures? Why,
+then, take the rod literally? It is as clearly used to designate any
+form of orderly discipline as the cross is used to designate endurance
+of necessary sorrows. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh
+alive.'
+
+"As to your next question about quick results, I must recognize that
+you are in a most difficult position. For not the best conceivable
+intentions, nor the highest wisdom, can make the unnatural conditions
+you have to meet, as good as natural ones. In any asylum many purely
+artificial requirements must be made to meet the artificial situation.
+Time and space, those temporal appearances, grow to be menacing
+monsters, take to themselves the chief realities. Nevertheless,
+_so far as you are able_, you surely want to do the natural, right,
+unforced thing. And with each successful effort will come fresh wisdom
+and fresh strength for the next.
+
+"Let me suggest, in the case you mention, of insolence, that three
+practical courses are open to you: one to send or lead the child
+quietly from the room, with the least aggressiveness possible, so as
+not further to excite her opposition, and to keep her apart from the
+rest until she is sufficiently anxious for society to be willing to
+make an effort to deserve it; or two, to do nothing, permitting a
+large and eloquent silence to accentuate the rebellious words; or
+three, to call for the condemnation of the child's mates. Speaking to
+one or two whose response you are sure of first, ask each one present
+for a expression of opinion. This is so severe a punishment that it
+ought not often to be invoked; but it is deadly sure."
+
+
+
+
+STEALING
+
+
+"The question of honesty is, indeed, most difficult. I do not think it
+would lower the standard of morality to _assume_ honesty, as the thing
+you expected to find, to accept almost any other explanation, to agree
+with the whole body of children that dishonesty was so much the fault
+of dreadfully poor people who had nothing unless they stole it, that
+it could not be their fault, who had so much--couldn't be the fault of
+anyone who was well brought up as they were. Emphasize, in story and
+side allusion, at all sorts of odd moments when no concrete desire
+called away the children's minds, the fact that honesty is to be
+expected everywhere, except among terribly unfortunate people--of
+course assuming that they with their good shelter and good schooling
+are among the fortunate ones. Then you will give each child not only
+plenty of everything, but things individualized, easily distinguished,
+and a place to put them in. I've often thought that the habit of
+buying things wholesale--so many dolls, all exactly alike, so many
+yards of calico for dresses, all exactly alike, leads, in institutions
+like yours, to a vague conception of private property, and even
+of individuality itself. If some room could be allowed for free
+choice--the children be allowed to buy their own calicoes, within a
+given price, or to choose the trimmings or style, etc. I feel sure the
+result would be a sturdier self-respect and a greater sense of that
+difference between individuals which needs emphasizing just as much as
+does the solidarity of individuals."
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR MOTHERS
+
+
+Fundamental Books (Philosophy of Education--Pedagogy)
+
+
+    The Science of Rights ($5.00, postage 30c), J.G. Fichte.
+
+    Education of Man ($1.50, postage 12c), Friedrich Froebel.
+
+    Mottoes and Commentaries of Froebel's Mother Play ($1.50,
+    postage 14c), translated by Susan E. Blow.
+
+    The Part Played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man ($2.00,
+    postage 15c), from "A Century of Science," article by John
+    Fiske.
+
+    How Gertrude Teaches Her Children ($1.50, postage 14c),
+    Pestalozzi.
+
+    Levana, Bohn Library ($1.00, postage 12c), Jean Paul Richter.
+
+    Education ($1.25, postage 12c), Herbert Spencer.
+
+
+
+
+General Books on Education
+
+
+    Household Education ($1.25, postage 10c), Harriet Martineau.
+
+    Bits of Talk About Home Matters ($1.25, Postage 10c), H.H.
+    Jackson.
+
+    Biography of a Baby ($1.50, postage 12c), Millicent Shinn.
+
+    Study of Child Nature ($1.00, postage 10c), Elizabeth
+    Harrison.
+
+    Two Children of the Foot Hills ($1.25, postage 10c), Elizabeth
+    Harrison.
+
+    The Moral Instruction of Children ($1.50, postage 14c), Felix
+    Adler.
+
+    The Children of the Future ($1.00, postage 10c), Nora A.
+    Smith.
+
+    Children's Rights ($1.00, postage 10c), Kate Douglas Wiggin
+    and Nora A. Smith.
+
+    Republic of Childhood (3 vols., each $1.00; postage 10c), Kate
+    Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith.
+
+    Educational Reformers ($1.50, postage 14c), Quick.
+
+    Lectures to Kindergartners ($1.00, postage 10c), Elizabeth
+    Peabody.
+
+    The Place of the Story in Early Education ($0.50, postage 6c),
+    Sara E. Wiltse.
+
+    Children's Ways ($1.25, postage 10c), Sully.
+
+    Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers ($3.50, postage 20c),
+    Barnard.
+
+    Adolescence (2 vols., $7.50; postage 56c), G. Stanley Hall.
+
+
+
+
+Psychology and Advanced
+
+
+    The Mind of the Child (2 vols., each $1.50, postage 10c), W.
+    Preyer.
+
+    The Intellectual and Moral Development of the Child ($1.50,
+    postage 12c), G. Compayre.
+
+    Child Study ($1.25, postage 14c), Amy Tanner.
+
+    The Story of the Mind ($0.35, postage 6c), J. Mark Baldwin.
+
+    Psychology (Briefer Course, $1.60; postage 16c. Advanced
+    Course, 2 vols., $4.80; postage 44c), James.
+
+    School and Society ($1.00, postage 10c), John Dewey.
+
+    Emile ($0.90, postage 8c), Rousseau.
+
+    Pedagogics of the Kindergarten ($1.50, postage 12c), Froebel.
+
+    Education by Development ($1.50, postage 12c), Froebel.
+
+    Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers, Henry Barnard.
+
+    Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel ($1.50,
+    postage 12c), Blow.
+
+    Studies of Childhood ($2.50, postage 20c), Sully.
+
+    Mental Development ($1.75, postage 16c), Baldwin.
+
+    Education of Central Nervous System ($1.00, postage 16c),
+    Halleck.
+
+    Child Observations, Imitative Symbolic Education ($1.50,
+    postage 12c), Blow.
+
+    Interest as Related to Will ($0.25, postage 6c), Dewey.
+
+
+
+
+Religious Training
+
+
+    Christian Nurture ($1.25, postage 12c), Horace Bushnell.
+
+    On Holy Ground ($3.00, Postage 30c), W.L. Worcester.
+
+    The Psychology of Religion ($1.50, postage 14c), E.D.
+    Starbuck.
+
+
+
+
+The Sex Question
+
+
+    The Song of Life ($1.25, postage 12c), Margaret Morley.
+
+    What a Young Boy Ought to Know ($1.00, postage 10c), Rev.
+    Sylvanus Stall.
+
+    What a Young Girl Ought to Know ($1.00, postage 10c), Rev.
+    Sylvanus Stall.
+
+    Duties of Parents to Children in Regard to Sex ($0.40, postage
+    4c), Rev. Wm. L. Worcester.
+
+    How to Tell the Story of Reproduction to Children, Pamphlet
+    5c; order from Mothers' Union, 3408 Harrison Street, Kansas
+    city, Mo.
+
+
+
+
+Of General Interest to Mothers
+
+
+    Wilhelm Meister ($1.00, postage 14c), Goethe.
+
+    Story of My Life ($1.50, postage 14c), Helen Keller.
+
+    The Ordeal of Richard Feveril ($1.50, postage 14c), George
+    Meredith.
+
+    Up from Slavery ($1.50, postage 14c), Booker T. Washington.
+
+    Emmy Lou ($1.50, Postage 14c), Mrs. George Madden Marten.
+
+    The Golden Age ($1.00, postage 10c), Kenneth Grahame.
+
+    Dream Days ($1.00, postage 10c), Kenneth Grahame.
+
+    In the Morning Glow ($1.25, Postage 12c), Roy Rolf Gilson.
+
+    Man and His Handiwork, Wood.
+
+    Primitive Industry ($5.00, postage 40c), Abbott.
+
+    Every Day Essays ($1.25, postage 10c), Marion Foster
+    Washburne.
+
+    Family Secrets ($1.25, postage 10c), Marion Foster Washburne.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+Fairy Tales
+
+
+    Grimm's Fairy Tales ($0.50, postage 14c).
+
+    Andrew Lang's Green, Yellow, Blue and Red Fairy Books (each
+    $0.50, postage 14c).
+
+    Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales ($0.50, portage 14c).
+
+    Tanglewood Tales ($0.75, postage 14c), Hawthorne.
+
+    The Wonder Book ($0.75, postage 12c), Hawthorne.
+
+    Old Fashioned Fairy Tales by Tom Hood, retold by Marion Foster
+    Washburne. (In press.)
+
+    Adventures of a Brownie, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. Edited
+    by Marion Foster Washburne. (In press.)
+
+
+
+
+A Few Books for Various Ages
+
+
+    Water Babies ($0.75, postage 12c), Charles Kingsley.
+
+    At the Back of the North Wind ($0.75, postage 12c), George
+    McDonald.
+
+    Little Lame Price ($0.50, postage 8c), Dinah Maria Mulock
+    Craik.
+
+    In the Child World ($2.00, postage 16c), Emilie Poulson.
+
+    Nature Myths ($0.35, postage 6c), Flora J. Cooke.
+
+    Sharp Eyes ($2.50, postage 18c), Gibson.
+
+    Stories Mother Nature Told ($0.50, postage 6c), Jane Andrew.
+
+    Jungle Books (2 vols, each $1.50; postage 16c), Kipling.
+
+    Just-So Stories ($1.20, postage 12c), Kipling.
+
+
+
+
+Music for Children
+
+
+    Finger Plays ($1.25, postage 12c), Emilie Poulson.
+
+    Fifty Children's Songs, Reinecke.
+
+    Songs of the Child World (2 vols., each $1.00; postage 12c),
+    Gaynor.
+
+    Songs for the Children (2 vols., each $1.25; postage 14c),
+    Eleanor Smith.
+
+    30 Selected Studies (Instrumental), ($1.50, postage 14c),
+    Heller.
+
+
+
+
+Pictures for Children
+
+
+    Detaille Prints, Boutet de Monvil, Joan of Arc.
+
+    Caldecott: Picture Books (4 vols., each $1.25; postage 12c).
+
+    Walter Crane: Picture Books ($1.25, postage 10c).
+
+    Colored illustrations cut from magazines, notably those drawn
+    by Howard Pyle, Elizabeth Shippen Greene, and Jessie Wilcox
+    Smith.
+
+    See articles in "Craftsman" for December, 1904, February and
+    April, 1905, "Decorations for School Room and Nursery."
+
+    _Note_.--Books in the above list may be purchased through the
+    American School of Home Economics at the prices given. Members
+    of the School will receive students' discount.
+
+
+
+
+Program for Supplemental Work
+
+on the
+
+STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
+
+By Marion Foster Washburne.
+
+
+
+
+MEETING I
+
+Infancy. (Study pages 3-25)
+
+
+(a) Its Meaning. See Fiske on "The Part Played by Infancy in the
+Evolution of Man" in "A Century of Science" (16c).
+
+(b) General Laws of Progression. See Millicent Shinn's "Biography of
+a Baby" (12c), and W. Preyer's "The Mind of the Child" (20c). Give
+resumes of these two books.
+
+(c) Practical Conclusions. Hold Experience Meeting to conclude
+afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+MEETING II
+
+Faults and Their Remedies. (Study pages 26-57)
+
+
+(a) General Principles of Moral Training. Read Herbert Spencer on
+"Education" (12c), chapter on "Punishment"; also call for quotations
+from H.H. Jackson's "Bits of Talk About Home Matters" (10c).
+
+(b) Corporal Punishment. Why It Is Wrong.
+
+(c) Positive Versus Negative Moral Training. Read extracts from
+Froebel's "Education of Man" (12c), and Richter's "Levana" (12c), Kate
+Douglas Wiggin's "Children's Rights" (10c), and Elizabeth Harrison's
+"Study of Child Nature" (10c), are easier and pleasanter reading,
+sound, but less fundamental. Choice may be made between these two sets
+of books, according to conditions.
+
+(Select answer to test questions on Part I and send them to the
+School.)
+
+
+
+
+MEETING III
+
+Character Building. (Study pages 59-75)
+
+
+Read extracts from Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Harriet Martineau.
+
+(a) From Froebel to show general principles (12c).
+
+(b) From Pestalozzi (14c) or if that is not available, from "Mottoes
+and Commentaries on Froebel's Mother-Play" (14c), to show ideal
+application of these general principles.
+
+(c) From Harriet Martineau's "Household Education" (10c), "Children's
+Rights" (10c), to show actual application of these general principles.
+Experience meeting.
+
+
+
+
+MEETING IV
+
+Educational Value of Play and Occupations. (Study pages 78-99)
+
+
+(a) General Principles--Quote authorities from past to present. Read
+from "Education of Man" (12c) and "Mother Play" (14c).
+
+(b) Representative and Symbolic Plays. See "Education of Man" (12c)
+and "Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel" (12c). Dancing
+and Drama from Richter's "Levana" (12c).
+
+(c) Nature's Playthings (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water). Ask members
+of class to describe plays of their own childhood and tell what they
+meant to them.
+
+(Select answer to test questions on Part II.)
+
+
+
+
+MEETING V
+
+Art and Literature in Child Life. (Study pages 100-112)
+
+
+Ask members to bring good pictures and story-books, thus making
+exhibit.
+
+(a) Place of Pictures in Children's Lives. Of Color. Of Modeling.
+Influence of artistic surroundings. If anyone knows of a model nursery
+or schoolroom, let her describe it. Are drawing and modeling at school
+"fads" or living bases for educational processes? See Dewey on "The
+School and Society" (10c).
+
+(b) Place of fiction in education. See "The Place of the Story in
+Early Education" (6c).
+
+(c) Accomplishments. Practical discussion of the advantages and
+disadvantages of music lessons, the languages, and other work out of
+school. See "Adolescence," by G. Stanley Hall.
+
+
+
+
+MEETING VI
+
+Social and Religious Training. (Study pages 114-140 and Supplement)
+
+
+(a) The Question of Associations. See Dewey's "The School and Society"
+(10c), "The Republic of Childhood" (30c). Quote "Up from Slavery"
+(14c) and "Story of My Life" (14c), to show that the humblest
+companions may sometimes be the most desirable.
+
+(b) The New Education. See catalogues of the Francis W. Parker School,
+Chicago, Ill., (4c); The Elementary School, University of Chicago,
+(6c); State Normal School, Hyannis, Mass., (4c); "School Gardens,"
+Bulletin No. 160, Office of Experiment Stations, Department of
+Agriculture, Washington, D.C., (2c).
+
+(c) The Sex Question. Where are the foundations of morality
+laid--church, school, home, or street? Read entire, "Duties of Parents
+to Children in Regard to Sex" (pamphlet, 5c).
+
+(d) Religious Training. Read from "Christian Nurture" (12c) and
+"Psychology of Religion" (14c). (Select answer to test questions on
+Part III.)
+
+
+
+For more extended program, book lists for mothers, children's book
+list, loan papers, send to the National Congress of Mothers, Mrs. E.C.
+Grice, Corresponding Secretary, 3308 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Price, 10 cents each. See also "The Child in Home, School, and State,"
+with address by President Roosevelt.--Report of the N.C.M. for 1905.
+Price, 50c.
+
+NOTE.--When reference books mentioned in the foregoing program are not
+available from public libraries, they may be borrowed of the A.S.H.E.
+for the cost of postage indicated in parentheses. Three books may be
+borrowed at one time by a class, one by an individual. For class work,
+a book may be kept for two weeks, or longer, if there is no other call
+for it. Send stamps with requests, which should be made several weeks
+in advance to avoid disappointment.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Abnormal laziness, 47
+  Abstract studies, 119
+  Accomplishments and studies, 119
+    showy, 123
+  Accounts, personal, 129
+  Adolescence, religious excitability, 136
+  Adult's world, 24
+  Advantage of positive commands, 61
+  Affections, cultivation of, 45
+  Aims of kindergarten, 45
+  Air as a plaything, 82
+    castles, 163
+  Allowance, regular, 127
+  Alternate growth of children, 14
+  Anaemia, 47
+  Answer honest questions, 71
+  Answers to questions, 160
+  Application of principles, 141
+  Aristotle's teachings, 76
+  Art and literature in child life, 101
+    and nature, 112
+    classic, 102
+    influence of, 101
+    plastic, 104
+  Associates, children's, 113
+    exclusive, 114
+
+  Baby-jumpers, 14
+  Bandaging the abdomen, 21
+  Beginnings of will, 7
+  Bible, children's, 139
+  Bible lessons made real, 139
+    study, 138
+  Bonfires, 85
+  Books for children, 111, 170
+  Bottle-fed babies, 25
+  Breaking the will, 29
+  Busy work, 97
+
+  Care of pets, 45
+  Cause of impudence, 51
+    of irritability and nervousness, 35
+    of rupture, 21
+    of temper, 35
+  Character building, rules in, 74
+  Children, other people's, 145
+  Children's associates, 113
+    Bible, 139
+    clubs, value of, 45
+    hour, the, 118
+  Child's share in family republic, 65
+    world, 24
+  Classic art, 102
+  Clay modeling, 80
+  Climbing, 13
+  Clothing, proper, 20
+  Color, 102
+  Colored pictures, 104
+  Commands, disagreeable, 37
+    positive, 35
+    useless, 11
+  Company ways, 161
+  Conclusion, 140
+  Condition at birth, 3
+  Consciousness of self, 6
+  Corporal punishment, 54, 166
+  Correlation of studies, 121
+  Correspondence training, 142
+  Costume model, 21
+  Creeping, 12
+  Cultivate affections, 45
+  Cutting and pasting, 99
+
+  Daily outing, 18
+  Dancing for children, 87
+  Danger of forcing, 12
+  Dangerous pastimes, 83
+  Darwin's observations, 9
+  Depravity, original, 61
+  Development of intellect, 126
+    premature, 3
+  Diagram of Gertrude suit, 23
+  Diet, simple, 25
+  Disadvantages of Sunday Schools, 134
+  Disagreeable commands, 37
+  Discipline, educative, 57
+  Disobedience, 30
+    real, 33
+  Double standard of morality, 53
+  Double standards, 158
+  Drama, 107
+  Dramatic games, 107
+    plays, 87
+  Drawing and painting, 99
+  Dress for play, 79
+  Dress, proper, 20
+  Duties, systematized, 37
+  Duty to one's self, 164
+
+  Education, the new, 120
+    scientific, 121
+  Educational beginnings, 5
+    exercises, 5
+    value of play, 77
+  Educative discipline, 57
+  Effect of Sunday school teaching, 132
+  Emergencies, 30
+  Enthusiasm, religious, 135
+  "Enthusiasms", 124
+  Essentials of play, 78
+  Evasive lying, 39
+  Evils, permanent, 28
+    resulting from corporal punishment, 55
+  Example, bad, 52
+    courteous, 54
+    evil, 115
+    versus precept, 34, 68
+  Exclusive associates, 114
+
+  Fairy tales, 109
+  Family republic, 64
+  Fathers, 152
+    responsibilities of, 154
+  Fatigue harmful to children, 94
+  Faults and their remedies, 26
+    real, 28
+    temporary, 24
+  Fear versus love, 55
+  Feeding, indiscriminate, 25
+  Financial training, 126
+  Fire as a plaything, 84
+  First grasping, 8
+  Fiske's doctrine of right, 64
+    teachings, 15
+  Food, natural, 24
+    question, 162
+    undesired, 11
+  Forcing, danger of, 12
+  Fresh air, 18
+  Froebel's great motto, 70
+    philosophy, 59
+  Fundamental principles of the new education, 59
+
+  Games, dramatic, 107
+  Gardens for children, 81
+  Gertrude suit, 21
+  Goodness, original, 61
+  Goodness, negative, 32
+  Grasping, 9, 11
+  Growth of children, 14
+    of will, 8
+
+  Helping, 93
+    mother, 91
+  Home kindergarten, 90
+  How the child develops, 3
+
+  Imagination and sympathy, 110
+  Imitativeness, instinct of, 32
+  Imaginative lying, 39
+  Immature judgment, 30
+  Impudence, cause of, 51
+  Incomplete development at birth, 4
+  Indiscriminate feeding, 25
+    punishment, 55
+  Industry, willing, 94
+  Influence of art, 101
+  Inherited crookedness, 41
+    disposition, 38
+  Instinct, 9
+    of imitativeness, 32
+  Instrumental music, 107
+  Intellect, development of, 126
+  Irritability, cause of, 35
+
+  Jealousy, 42
+  Justice and love in the family, 42
+
+  Kindergarten, aims of, 45
+    as a remedy for selfishness, 44
+    methods, 62
+    methods in the home, 90
+    social advantages of, 113
+  Knit garments, 22
+
+  Law-making habit, 70
+  Laziness, 46
+  Liberty, 33, 64
+  Limitations of words, 67
+  Literature, 108
+    and art, 101
+  Looking, 9
+  Love of work, 93
+    versus fear, 55
+  Low voice commands, 66
+  Lungs, weak, 21
+  Luther's teachings, 76
+  Lying, evasive, 39
+    imaginative, 39
+    kinds of, 38
+    politic, 40
+
+  Magazines for children, 111
+  Magic lantern, 85
+  Massage, 5
+  Meaning of righteousness, 72
+  Model costume, 21
+  Modeling apron, 81
+    clay, 80
+  Monotony undesirable, 95
+  Moral precocity, 73
+    training, object of, 60
+  Mother and teacher, 165
+  Mother, teaching, 92
+  Mothers as teachers, 134
+  Mud pies, 80
+  Muscular development, 5
+  Music for children, 106
+    instrumental, 107
+    study of, 124
+  Mystery of sex, 72
+
+  Nagging, 96
+  Naps, 20
+  Natural food, 24
+    punishment, 29
+    talent, 124
+  Nature study, 112
+  Negative goodness, 32
+  Neighbors' opinions, 63
+  Nervousness, cause of, 35
+  New education, the, 120
+    principles of, 59
+  Normal child, 12
+  Nursery requisites, 16
+
+  Object of moral training, 60
+    of punishment, 40
+  Objection to pinning blanket, 21
+  Obligation of truthfulness, 38
+  Occupations, 90
+  Only child, the, 44
+  Opportunity for growth, 16
+  Order of development, 9
+  Other people's children, 145
+  Outing, daily, 18
+
+  Painting and drawing, 99
+  Parental indulgence, 154
+    vanity, 125
+  Pasting and cutting, 99
+  Permanent evils, 28
+  Personal accounts, 129
+  Pets, care of, 45
+  Physical cause of laziness, 46
+    culture, 123
+    culture records, 25
+  Philosophy, Froebel's, 59
+  Pictures, colored, 104
+  Pinning blanket, objection to, 21
+  Plastic art, 104
+  Play, 76
+    educational value of, 77
+    essentials of, 78
+    with the limbs, 5
+  Politeness to children, 69
+  Politic lie, the, 40
+  Positive commands, 35, 61
+  Precautions to prevent attacks of temper, 37
+    with fire, 84
+  Precocity, 15
+    moral, 73
+  Premature development, 3
+  Preyer's record, 11, 19
+  Principles, application of, 141
+  Prohibitions, useless, 34
+  Punishment, corporal, 54
+    indiscriminate, 55
+    natural, 29
+    object of, 40
+    self, 34
+
+  Questions, answers to, 160
+  Quick temper, 35
+
+  Real disobedience, 33
+    faults, 28
+  Reflex grasping, 7
+  Regular allowance, 127
+  Religious enthusiasm, 135
+    excitability of adolescence, 136
+    training, 131
+  Remedy for fits of temper, 36
+  Responsibilities of fathers, 154
+  Restrictions of dress, 79
+  Rhythmic movements, 86
+  Richter's views, 28, 87
+  Right doing, 28
+    made easy, 63
+  Righteousness, meaning of, 72
+  Right material for play, 79
+  Rights of others, 64
+  Rules in character building, 74
+  Rupture, cause of, 21
+
+  Sand piles, 80
+  Scientific education, 121
+  Self-distrustful child, 160
+  Selfishness, 43
+  Self-mastery, 29
+    punishment, 34
+  Sewing, 98
+  Sex, 71
+    mystery of, 72
+    question, the, 149
+  Showy accomplishments, 123
+  Simple diet, 25
+  Sleep, sufficient, 19
+  Social advantages of kindergarten, 113
+  Soft spot in head, 4
+  Solitude remedy for temper, 36
+  Songs for children, 86
+  Spencer's view, 29
+  Spending foolishly, 128
+    wisely, 127
+  Standard of morality, double, 53
+  Standing, 14
+  Stanley Hall's views, 137
+  Stealing, 168
+  Stockinet for undergarments, 22
+  Story telling, 93
+  Studies, abstract, 119
+    and accomplishments,119
+    correlation of, 121
+  Success in child training, 143
+  Sullenness, 38
+  Sunday school, disadvantage of, 134
+    effect of, 132
+    teachers, 131
+  Sunlight necessary for growth, 16
+  Sympathy and imagination, 110
+    in play, 79
+  Symptoms of anaemia, 47
+  Systematized duties, 37
+
+  Talent, natural, 124
+  Teaching mother, 92
+  Telling stories, 93
+  Temperament, emotional, 42
+  Temperature of nursery, 18
+  Temper, cause of, 35
+    precautions to prevent attacks of, 37
+  Temporary faults, 24
+  Theater, 108
+  Theory before practice, 161
+  Thermometer in nursery, 18
+  Throwing, 10
+  Tiedemann's teachings, 35
+  Touching forbidden things, 11
+  Toys, 83, 88, 89
+  Training, financial, 126
+    for parents, 142
+    religious, 131
+  Truthfulness, obligations of, 38
+
+  Unconscious influence, 157
+  Underclothing, 22
+  Undesired food, 11
+  Undisciplined will, 30
+  Unresponsiveness, 38
+  Unsought advice, 148
+  Untidiness, its remedy, 49
+  Useless commands, 11
+    prohibitions, 34
+
+  Value of children's clubs, 45
+  Vanity, parental, 125
+  Variable periods of growth, 15
+  Ventilation, means of, 18
+
+  Walking, 14
+  Water as a plaything, 82
+    colors, 99
+  Weak lungs, 21
+  Weight at birth, 4
+  Wholesome surroundings, 16
+  Will, beginnings of, 7
+    breaking, the, 29
+    growth of, 8
+  Willful child, 34
+  Willing industry, 94
+  Will, undisciplined, 30
+  Work, beautiful, 96
+    love of, 93
+  Wrappings, extra, 21
+
+
+
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