The Young Mother - William A. Alcott
But all these evils, as has already been said, may be prevented, if the
hand is placed so as to support the head and shoulders. Let not the
mother, however, who reads this work, trust the matter wholly to a
nurse; she must see to it herself; else she incurs a most fearful
responsibility. The suggestions I have made are the more important in
the case of children either very fleshy or very feeble, and of those
disposed to rickets or scrofula; but they are important to all.
I have said that the motion of the child, on the arm, should be gentle.
Many are in the habit of tossing infants about. There can be no
objection to a slight and slow movement up and down, for a minute or so
at a time; indeed, it is rather to be recommended, as likely to give
strength and vigor no less than pleasure to the child. But when such
movements are carried to excess, so as to frighten the child, they are
highly reprehensible. The shock thus produced to the nervous system has
sometimes been so great as to produce sudden death. Nor is it safe to
run, jump, or descend stairs hastily or violently, with a child in our
arms; and for similar reasons.
Infants should not be carried always on the same arm, for there is
danger of contracting a habit of leaning to one side, and thus of
becoming crooked. On this account, the arm on which they rest should be
often changed. Nor should they be grasped too firmly. A skilful mother
will hold a child quite loosely, with the most perfect safety; while an
inexperienced one will grasp him so hard as to expose the soft bones to
be bent out of their place, and yet be quite as liable to let him fall
as she who handles him with more ease and freedom.
SEC. 3. _Creeping._
"Mankind must creep before they can walk," is an old adage often used to
remind us of that patient application which is so indispensable to
secure any highly important or valuable end. But it is as true
literally, as it is figuratively. The act of creeping exercises in a
remarkable degree nearly all the muscles of the body; and this, too,
without much fatigue.
Some mothers there indeed are, who think it a happy circumstance if a
child can be taught to walk without this intermediate step. But such
mothers must have strange ideas of the animal economy. They must never
have thought of the pleasure which creeping affords the mind, or of the
vigor it imparts to the body.
Children are wonderfully pleased with their own voluntary efforts. What
they can do themselves, yields them ten-fold greater pleasure than if
done by the mother or the nurse. Yet the latter are exceedingly prone to
forget or overlook all this--and to say, at least practically, that the
only proper efforts are those to which themselves give direction.
They are moreover exceedingly fond of display. Some mothers seem to
act--in all they do with and for children--as if all the latter were
good for, was display and amusement. They feed them, indeed, and strive
to prolong their existence; but it appears to be for similar reasons to
those which would lead them to take kind care of a pet lamb.
It is on this account that they dress them out in the manner they do,
strive to make them sit up straight, and prohibit their creeping. It is
on this account too, as much perhaps as any other, that go-carts and
leading strings are put in such early requisition. The contrary would be
far the safer extreme; and the parent who keeps his child scrambling
about upon the back as long as possible, and when he cannot prevent
longer an inversion of this position, retains him at creeping as long
as is in his power, is as much wiser, in comparison with him who urges
him forward to make a prodigy of him, as he is who, instead of making
his child a prodigy in mind or morals at premature age, holds him back,
and endeavors to have his mental and moral nature developed no faster
than his physical frame.
I wish young mothers would settle it in their minds at once, that the
longer their children creep the better. They need have no fears that the
force of habit will retain them on their knees after nature has given
them strength to rise and walk; for their incessant activity and
incontrollable restlessness will be sure to rouse them as early as it
ought. Least of all ought the difficulty of keeping them clean, to move
them from the path of duty.
Children who are allowed to crawl, will soon be anxious to do more. We
shall presently see them taking hold of a chair or a table, and
endeavoring to raise themselves up by it. If they fail in a dozen
attempts, they do not give up the point; but persevere till their
efforts are crowned with success.
Having succeeded in raising themselves from the floor, they soon learn
to stand, by holding to the object by which they have raised themselves.
Soon, they acquire the art of standing without holding; [Footnote: The
art of standing, which consists in balancing one's self, by means of the
muscles of the body and lower limb--simple as it may seem to those who
have never reflected on the subject--is really an important acquisition
for a child of twelve or fifteen months. No wonder they feel a conscious
pride, when they find themselves able to stand erect, like the world
around them.] ere long they venture to put forward one foot--they then
repeat the effort and walk a little, holding at the same time by a
chair; and lastly they acquire, with joy to them inexpressible and to us
inconceivable, the art of "trudging" alone.
When children learn to walk in nature's own way, it is seldom indeed
that we find them with curved legs, or crooked or clubbed feet. These
deformities are almost universally owing either to the mother or the
nurse.
Let me be distinctly understood as utterly opposed, not only to
go-carts, leading strings, and every other _mechanical_ contrivance, to
induce children to walk before their legs are fit for it, but to efforts
of every kind, whose main object is the same. Teaching them to walk by
taking hold of one of their hands, is in some respects quite as bad as
any other mode; for if the child should fall while we have hold of his
hand, there is some danger of dislocating or otherwise injuring the
limb.
Falls we must expect; but if a child is left to his own voluntary
efforts as much as possible, these falls will be fewer, and probably
less serious, than under any other circumstances.
SEC. 4. _Walking._
"The way to learn how to write without ruled lines, is _to rule_," was
the frequent saying of an old schoolmaster whom I once knew; and I may
say with as much confidence and with more truth, that "the way for a
child to learn to walk alone, is to hold by things."
I have anticipated, in previous pages, much of what might have otherwise
been contained in this section. A few additional remarks are all that
will be necessary.
At first, the nursery will be quite large enough for our young
pedestrian. Much time should elapse before he is permitted to go abroad,
upon the green grass;--not lest the air should reach him, or the sun
shine upon his face and hands, but because the surface of the ground is
so much less firm and regular than the floor, that he ought to be quite
familiar with walking on the latter, in the first place.
But when he can walk well in the play ground, garden, fields, and
roads, it is highly desirable that he should go out more or less every
day, when the weather will possibly admit; nor would I be so fearful as
many are of a drop of rain or dew, or a breath of wind. For say what
they will in favor of riding, sailing, and other modes of exercise,
there is none equal to walking, as soon as a child is able;--none so
natural--none, in ordinary cases, so salutary. I know it is unpopular,
and therefore our young master or young miss must be hoisted into a
carriage, or upon the back of a horse, to the manifest danger of health
or limbs, or both.
Who of us ever knew a herdsman or a shepherd who found it for the health
and well-being of the young calf or lamb to hoist it into a carriage,
and carry it through the streets, instead of suffering it to walk? Such
a thing would excite astonishment; and the man who should do it would be
deemed insane. The health and growth of our young domestic animals is
best promoted by suffering them to walk, run, and skip in their own way.
They ask no artificial legs, or horses, or carriages. But would it not
be difficult to find arguments in favor of carrying children about, when
they are able to walk, which would not be equally strong in favor of
carrying about lambs and calves and pigs.
This is the more remarkable from the consideration, elsewhere urged,
that in general we take more rational pains about the physical
well-being of domestic animals, than of children. However, it will be
seen, on a little reflection, that the number of those who carry
children about, is, after all, very inconsiderable. The greater portion
of the community regard it as too troublesome or costly; and if poverty
brought with it no other evils than a permit to children to walk on the
legs which the Creator gave them, it could hardly be deemed a
misfortune.
It is scarcely necessary to add that there will be nothing gained to the
young--or to persons of any age--from walks which are very long and
fatiguing. Walking should refresh and invigorate: when it is carried
beyond this, especially with the young child, we have passed the line of
safety.
SEC. 5. _Riding in Carriages._
It will be seen by the foregoing section, that I am not very friendly to
the use of carriages for the young, after they can walk. Before this
period, however, I think they may be often serviceable; and there are
occasional instances which may render them useful afterward. On this
account, I have thought it might be well to give the following general
directions.
Carriages for children should be so constructed as not to be liable to
overset. To this end, the wheels must be low, and the axle unusually
extended. The body should be long enough to allow the child to lie down
when necessary; and so deep that he may not be likely to fall out.
Everything should be made secure and firm, to avoid, if possible, the
danger of accidents.
The carriage should be drawn steadily and slowly; not violently, or with
a jerking motion. Such a place should be selected as will secure the
child--if necessary--from the full blaze of a hot sun. This point might
indeed be secured by having the carriage covered; but I am opposed to
covered carriages, for children or adults, unless we are compelled to
ride in the rain.
While the child is unable to sit up without injury, and even for some
months afterwards, he ought by all means to lie down in a carriage,
because it requires more strength to sit in a seat which is moving, than
in a place where he is stationary. In assuming the horizontal position,
in a carriage, a pillow is needed, and such other arrangements as will
prevent too much rolling.
After the child's strength will fairly permit, he may sit up in the
carriage, but he ought still to be secured against too much motion. As
his strength increases, however, the latter direction will be less and
less necessary. I need not repeat in this place, (had I not witnessed so
many accidents from neglect,) the caution recently given, that great
care should be taken to prevent the child from falling out of the
carriage.
While children are riding abroad in cold weather, much pains should be
taken to see that they are suitably clothed. It is well to keep them in
motion, while they are in the carriage, and especially to guard against
their falling asleep in the open air, until they have become very much
accustomed to being out in it.
It has been said by some writers, that a ride ought never to exceed the
length of half an hour; but no positive rule can be given, except to
avoid over-fatigue.
SEC. 6. _Riding on Horseback._
While children are very young, I think it both improper and unsafe to
take them abroad on horseback; I mean so long as they are in health. In
case of disease, this mode of exercise is sometimes one of the most
salutary in the world. But after boys are six or seven years old, and
girls ten, if they are ever to practise horsemanship, it is time for
them to begin; both because they are less apt to be unreasonably timid
at this age, and because they learn much more rapidly.
So few parents are good horsemen, that if there is a riding school at
hand, I should prefer placing a child in it at once. But I wish to be
distinctly understood, that I do not consider it a matter of importance,
especially to females, that they should ever learn to ride at all.
Some of the principal objections to riding on horseback, by boys, as an
ordinary exercise, are the following:
1. Walking, as I have already intimated, is one of the most HEALTHY
modes of exercise in the world. It is nature's exercise; and was
unquestionably in exclusive use long before universal dominion was given
to man, if not for many centuries afterward; and I believe it would be
very difficult to prove that it interfered at all with human longevity;
for the first of our race lived almost a thousand years.
2. Young children, in riding on horseback, are rather apt to acquire,
rapidly, the habit of domineering over animals. It seems almost needless
to say how easy the transition is, in such cases, should opportunity
offer, from tyranny over the brute slave, to tyranny over the human
being. There are slave-holders in the family and in the school, as well
as elsewhere. It is the SPIRIT of a person which makes him either a
tyrant or slave-holder. And let us beware how we foster this spirit in
the children whom God has given us.
CHAPTER XI.
AMUSEMENTS.
Universal need of amusements. Why so necessary. Error of schools. Error
of families. Infant schools, as often conducted, particularly injurious.
Lessons, or tasks, should be short. Mistakes of some manual labor
schools. Of particular amusements in the nursery. With small wooden
cubes--pictures--shuttlecock--the rocking horse--tops and
marbles--backgammon--checkers--morrice--dice--nine-pins--skipping the
rope--trundling the hoop--playing at ball--kites--skating and
swimming--dissected maps--black boards--elements of letters--dissected
pictures.
However heterodox the concession may be, I am one of those who believe
amusements of some sort or other to be universally necessary. Indeed I
cannot possibly conceive of an individual in health, whatever may be the
age, sex, condition, or employment, who does not need them, in a greater
or less degree.
Now if by the term amusement, I merely meant employment, nobody would
probably differ from me--at least in theory. Every one is ready to admit
the importance of being constantly employed. A mind unemployed is a
VACANT mind. And a vacant or idle mind is "the devil's work-shop;" so
says the proverb.
By amusement, however, I mean something more than mere employment; for
the more constantly an adult individual is employed, the greater,
generally, is his demand for amusement. Indolent persons have less need
of being amused than others; but perhaps there are few if any persons to
be found, who are so indolent as not to think continually, on one
subject or another. And it is this constant thinking, more than anything
else, that creates the necessity of which I am speaking. The mere
drudge, whether biped or quadruped--he, I mean, whose thinking powers
are scarcely alive--has little need of the relief which is afforded by
amusement.
The young of all animals--man among the rest--appear to have such an
instinctive fondness for amusement, that so long as they are
unrestrained, they seldom need any urging on this point. In regard to
_quality_, the case is somewhat different. In this respect, most
children require attention and restraint; and some of them a great deal
of it.
But what is the nature of the amusement which adults--nay, mankind
generally--require? I answer, it is relief from the employment of
thinking. For it is not that mankind do not really think at all, that
moralists complain so loudly. When they tell us that men will not
think, they mean that they will not think as rational beings. They
think, indeed; and so do the ox, and the horse, and the dog, and the
elephant--but not as rational men ought to do; and this it is that
constitutes the burden of complaint. But you will probably find few
persons belonging to the human species who do not think constantly, at
least while awake; and whose mental powers do not become fatigued, and
demand relief in amusement.
Children's minds are so soon wearied by a continuous train of thinking,
even on topics which are pleasing to them, that they can seldom he
brought to give their attention to a single subject long at once. They
require almost incessant change; both for the sake of relief, and to
amuse for the _sake_ of amusement. And it is, to my own mind, one of
the most striking proofs of Infinite Wisdom in the creation of the human
mind, that it has, during infancy, such an irresistible tendency to
amusement.
How greatly do they err, who grudge children, especially very young
children, the time which, in obedience to the dictates of their nature,
they are so fond of spending in sports and gambols! How much more
rational would it be to encourage and direct them in their amusements!
And how exceedingly unwise is the practice, whenever and wherever it
exists, of confining them to school rooms and benches, not only for
hours, but for whole half days at once.
If individuals and circumstances were everywhere combined, with the
special purpose to oppose the intentions of nature respecting the human
being, at every step of his progress from the cradle to maturity, and
from maturity to the grave, I hardly know how they could contrive to
accomplish such a purpose more effectually than it is at present
accomplished. But it is proper that I should here explain a little.
All our family arrangements tend to repress amusement. Everything is
contrived to facilitate business--especially the business or employments
of adults. The child is hardly regarded as a human being,--certainly not
as a _perfect_ being. He is considered as a mere fragment; or to change
the figure, as a plant too young to be of any real service to mankind,
because too young to bear any of its appropriate fruits. Whereas, in my
opinion, both infancy and childhood, at every stage, should bring forth
their appropriate fruits. In other words, the child of the most tender
years should be regarded as a whole, and not as the mere fragment of a
being; as a perfect member of a family--occupying a full and complete,
only a more limited sphere than older members: and all the rules and
regulations and arrangements of the family should have a reference to
this point. So long as a child is reckoned to be a mere cipher in
creation, or at most, as of no more practical importance, till the
arrival of his twenty-first birth day, or some other equally arbitrary
period, than our domestic animals--that is, of just sufficient
consequence to be fed, and caressed, and fondled, and made a pet of--so
long will our arrangements be made with reference to the comfort and
happiness of adults. There may indeed be here and there a child's chair,
or a child's carriage, or newspaper, or book; but there will seldom be,
except by stealth, any free juvenile conversation at the table or the
fireside. Here the child must sit as a blank or cypher, to ruminate on
the past, or to receive half formed and passive impressions from the
present.
The arrangements of the infant school, also, seem designed for the same
purpose--to repress as much as possible the infantile desire for
amusement. Not that this was their original, nor that it now is their
legitimate intention. Their legitimate object is, or should be, not to
develope the intellect by over-working the tender brain, but to promote
cheerfulness and health and love and happiness, by well contrived
amusements, conducted as much as possible in the open air; and by
unremitting efforts to elicit and direct the affections.
Infant schools should repress rather than encourage the hard study of
books. Lessons at this age should be drawn chiefly from objects in the
garden, the field, and the grove; from the flower, the plant, the tree,
the brook, the bird, the beast, the worm, the fly, the human body--the
sun, or the visible heavens. These lessons, whether given by the parent,
as constituting a part of the family arrangements, or by the infant or
primary school teacher, should, it is true, be regarded for the time
being as study, but they should never be long; and they should be
frequently relieved by the most free and unrestrained pastimes and
gambols of the young on the green grass, or beside the rippling stream,
uninfluenced, or at least unrepressed, by those who are set over them.
The public or common school, overlooking as it does any direct attempts
to make provision for the amusement of the pupils, even during the
scanty recess that is afforded them once in three hours, would appear to
a stranger on this planet, at first sight, to be designed as much as
possible to defeat every intention of nature with reference to the
growth of the human frame. For we may often travel many hundred miles
and not see so much as an enclosed play ground; and never perhaps any
direct provision for particular and more favorable amusements.
I might speak of other schools and places of resort for children, and
proceed to show how all our arrangements appear to be the offspring of a
species of utilitarianism which rejects every sport whose value cannot
be estimated in dollars and cents. I might even refer to those schools
of our country where these ultra utilitarian notions are carried to an
extent which excludes amusing conversation or reading even during
meal-time; and devotes the hours which were formerly spent in
recreation, to manual labor of some productive kind or other.--But I
forbear. Enough has been said to illustrate the position I have taken,
that there is in vogue a system which bears the marks of having been
contrived, if not by the enemies of our race, either openly or covertly,
at least by those whom ignorance renders scarcely less at war with the
general happiness.
Now I would not deny nor attempt to deny that change of occupation of
body or mind is of itself an amusement, and one too of great value.
Undoubtedly it is so. To some children, studies of every kind are an
amusement; and there are few indeed to whom none are so. Labor, with
many, when alternated with study, is amusing. And yet, after all, unless
such labors are performed in company, where light and cheerful
conversation is sure to keep the mind away from the subjects about
which it has just been engaged, I am afraid that the purposes for which
amusements were designed, are very far from being _all_ secured.
But perhaps I am dwelling too long on the general principle that people
of every age, and children in particular, need, and must have
amusements, whether they are of a productive kind or not; and that it is
very far from being sufficient, were it either practicable or desirable,
to turn all study and labor into amusement. [Footnote: I will even say,
more distinctly than I have already done, that however popular the
contrary opinion may be, neither study nor work ought to be regarded as
mere amusement. I would, it is true, take every possible pains to render
both work and study agreeable; but I would at the same time have it
distinctly understood, that one of them is by no means the other; that,
on the contrary, work is _work_--study, _study_--and amusement,
_amusement_.] My business is with those who direct the first dawnings
of affection and intellect. Principles are by no means of less importance
on this account; but the limits of a work for young mothers do not admit
of anything more than a brief discussion of their importance.
I will now proceed to speak of some of the more common amusements of the
nursery.
I have seen very young children sit on the floor and amuse themselves
for nearly half an hour together, with piling up and taking down small
wooden cubes, of different sizes. Some of them, instead of being cubes,
however, may be of the shape of bricks. Their ingenuity, while they are
scarcely a year or two old, in erecting houses, temples, churches, &c.,
is sometimes surprising. Girls as well as boys seem to be greatly amused
with this form of exercise; and both seem to be little less gratified in
destroying than in rearing their lilliputian edifices.
Next to the latter kind of amusement, is the viewing of pictures. It is
surprising at what an early age children may be taught to notice
miniature representations of objects; living objects especially.
Representations of the works of art should come in a little later than
those of things in nature. I know a father who prepares volumes of
pictures, solely for this purpose; though he usually regards them not
only as a source of amusement to children, but as a medium of
instruction.