The Nervous Child Part 1

The Nervous Child.

by Hector Charles Cameron.

PREFACE

To-day on all sides we hear of the extreme importance of Preventive Medicine and the great future which lies before us in this aspect of our work. If so, it follows that the study of infancy and childhood must rise into corresponding prominence. More and more a considerable part of the Profession must busy itself in nurseries and in schools, seeking to apply there the teachings of Psychology, Physiology, Heredity, and Hygiene. To work of this kind, in some of its aspects, this book may serve as an introduction. It deals with the influences which mould the mentality of the child and shape his conduct. Extreme susceptibility to these influences is the mark of the nervous child.

I have to thank the Editors of _The Pract.i.tioner_ and of _The Child_, respectively, for permission to reprint the chapters which deal with "Enuresis" and "The Nervous Child in Sickness." To Dr. F.H. Dodd I should also like to offer thanks for helpful suggestions.

H.C.C.

_March_ 1919.

CHAPTER I

DOCTORS, MOTHERS, AND CHILDREN

There is an old fairy story concerning a pea which a princess once slept upon--a little offending pea, a minute disturbance, a trifling departure from the normal which grew to the proportions of intolerable suffering because of the too sensitive and undisciplined nervous system of Her Royal Highness. The story, I think, does not tell us much else concerning the princess. It does not tell us, for instance, if she was an only child, the sole preoccupation of her parents and nurses, surrounded by the most anxious care, reared with some difficulty because of her extraordinary "delicacy," suffering from a variety of illnesses which somehow always seemed to puzzle the doctors, though some of the symptoms--the vomiting, for example, and the high temperature--were very severe and persistent. Nor does it tell us if later in life, but before the suffering from the pea arose, she had been taken to consult two famous doctors, one of whom had removed the vermiform appendix, while the other a little later had performed an operation for "adhesions." At any rate, the story with these later additions, which are at least in keeping with what we know of her history, would serve to indicate the importance which attaches to the early training of childhood. Among the children even of the well-to-do often enough the hygiene of the mind is overlooked, and faulty management produces restlessness, instability, and hyper-sensitiveness, which pa.s.s insensibly into neuropathy in adult life.

To prevent so distressing a result is our aim in the training of children. No doubt the matter concerns in the first place parents and nurses, school masters and mistresses, as well as medical men. Yet because of the certainty that physical disturbances of one sort or another will follow upon nervous unrest, it will seldom happen that medical advice will not be sought sooner or later; and if the physician is to intervene with success, he must be prepared with knowledge of many sorts. He must be prepared to make a thorough and complete physical examination, sufficient to exclude the presence of organic disease. If no organic disease is found, he must explore the whole environment of the child, and seek to determine whether the exciting cause is to be found in the reaction of the child to some form of faulty management.

For example, a child of two or three years of age may be brought to the doctor with the complaint that defaecation is painful, and that there has existed for some time a most distressing constipation which has resisted a large number of purgatives of increasing strength.

Whenever the child is placed upon the stool, his crying at once begins, and no attempts to soothe or console him have been successful.

It is not sufficient for the doctor in such a case to make an examination which convinces him that there is no fissure at the a.n.u.s and no fistula or thrombosed pile, and to confine himself to saying that he can find nothing the matter. The crying and refusal to go to stool will continue after the visit as before, and the mother will be apt to conclude that her doctor, though she has the greatest confidence in him for the ailments of grown-up persons, is unskilled in, or at least not interested in, the diseases of little children.

If, on the other hand, the doctor pursues his inquiries into the management of the child in the home, and if, for example, he finds that the crying and resistance is not confined to going to stool, but also takes place when the child is put to bed, and very often at meal-times as well, then it will be safe for him to conclude that all the symptoms are due to the same cause--a sort of "negativism" which is apt to appear in all children who are directed and urged too much, and whose parents are not careful to hide from them the anxiety and distress which their conduct occasions.

If this diagnosis is made, then a full and clear explanation should be given to the mother, or at any rate to such mothers--and fortunately they are in the majority--who are capable of appreciating the point of psychology involved, and of correcting the management of the child so as to overcome the negativism. To attempt treatment by prescribing drugs, or in any other way than by correcting the faulty management, is to court failure. As Charcot has said, in functional disorders it is not so much the prescription which matters as the prescriber.

But the task of the doctor is often one of even greater difficulty.

Often enough there will be a combination of organic disturbance with functional trouble. For example, a girl of eighteen years old suffered from a pain in the left arm which has persisted on and off since the olecranon had been fractured when she was two years of age. She was the youngest of a large family, and had never been separated for a day from the care and apprehensions of her mother. The joint was stiff, and there was considerable deformity. The pain always increased when she was tired or unhappy. Again, a girl had some slight cyst.i.tis with frequent micturition, and this pa.s.sed by slow degrees into a purely functional irritability of the bladder, which called for micturition at frequent intervals both by day and night. In such cases treatment must endeavour to control both factors--the local organic disturbance must if possible be removed, and the faults of management corrected.

It is a good physician who can appreciate and estimate accurately the temperament of his patient, and the need for this insight is nowhere greater than in dealing with the disorders of childhood. It can be acquired only by long practice and familiarity with children. In the hospital wards we shall learn much that is essential, but we shall not learn this. The child, who is so sensitive to his environment, shows but little that is characteristic when admitted to an inst.i.tution.

Only in the nursery can we learn to estimate the influences which proceed from parents and nurses of different characters and temperaments, and the reaction which is produced by them in the child.

The body of the child is moulded and shaped by the environment in which it grows. Pure air, a rational diet, free movement, give strength and symmetry to every part. Faults of hygiene debase the type, although the type is determined by heredity which in the individual is beyond our control. Mothers and nurses to-day are well aware of the need for a rational hygiene. Mother-craft is studied zealously and with success, and there is no lack of books to give sound guidance and to show the mean between the dangerous extremes of coddling and a too Spartan exposure. Yet sometimes it has seemed as if some mothers whose care for their children's physical health is most painstaking, who have nothing to learn on the question of diet, of exercise, of fresh air, or of baths, who measure and weigh and record with great minuteness, have had their attention so wholly occupied with the care of the body that they do not appreciate the simultaneous growth of the mind, or inquire after its welfare. Yet it is the astounding rapidity with which the mental processes develop that forms the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of the infancy of man. Were it not for this rapid growth of the cerebral functions, the rearing of children would be a matter almost as simple and uneventful as the rearing of live stock. For most animals faults of environment must be very p.r.o.nounced to do harm by producing mental unrest and irritability. Thus, indeed, some wild animal separated from its fellows and kept in solitary captivity may sicken and waste, though maintained and fed with every care. Yet if the whole conditions of life for the animal are not profoundly altered, if the environment is natural or approximately natural, it is as a rule necessary to care only for its physical needs, and we need not fear that the results will be spoiled by the reaction of the mind upon the body. But with the child it is different; airy nurseries, big gardens, visits to the seaside, and every advantage that money can buy cannot achieve success if the child's mind is not at rest, if his sleep is broken, if food is habitually refused or vomited, or if to leave him alone in the nursery for a moment is to evoke a fit of pa.s.sionate crying.

The grown-up person comes eventually to be able to control this tremendous organ, this brain, which is the predominant feature of his race. In the child its functions are always unstable and liable to be upset. Evidence of mental unrest or fatigue, which is only rarely met with in grown persons and which then betokens serious disturbance of the mind, is of comparatively common occurrence in little children.

Habit spasm, bed-wetting, sleep-walking, night terrors, and convulsions are symptoms which are frequent enough in children, and there is no need to be unduly alarmed at their occurrence. In adult age they are found only among persons who must be considered as neuropathic. To make the point clear, I have chosen examples from the graver and more serious symptoms of nervous unrest. But it is equally true that minor symptoms which in adults are universally recognised to be dependent upon cerebral unrest or fatigue are of everyday occurrence in childhood. Broken and disturbed sleep, absence of appet.i.te and persistent refusal of food, gastric pain and discomfort after meals, nervous vomiting, morbid flus.h.i.+ng and blus.h.i.+ng, headache, irritability and excessive emotional display, at whatever age they occur, are indications of a mind that is not at rest. In children, as in adults, they may be prominent although the physical surroundings of the patient may be all that could be desired and all that wealth can procure. It is an everyday experience that business worries and responsibilities in men, domestic anxieties or childlessness in women, have the power to ruin health, even in those who habitually or grossly break none of its laws. The unstable mind of the child is so sensitive that cerebral fatigue and irritability are produced by causes which seem to us extraordinarily trivial. In the little life which the child leads, a life in which the whole seems to us to be comprised in dressing and undressing, was.h.i.+ng, walking, eating, sleeping, and playing, it is not easy to detect where the elements of nervous overstrain lie. Nor is it as a rule in these things that the mischief is to be found. It is in the personality of mother or nurse, in her conduct to the child, in her actions and words, in the tone of her voice when she addresses him, even in the thoughts which pa.s.s through her mind and which show themselves plainly to that marvellously acute intuition of his, which divines what she has not spoken, that we must seek for the disturbing element. The mental environment of the child is created by the mother or the nurse. That is her responsibility and her opportunity. The conduct of the child must be the criterion of her success. If things go wrong, if there is constant crying or ungovernable temper, if sleep and food are persistently refused, or if there is undue timidity and tearfulness, there is danger that seeds may be sown from which nervous disorders will spring in the future.

There are many women who, without any deep thought on the matter, have the inborn knack of managing children, who seem to understand them, and have a feeling for them. With them, we say, the children are always good, and they are good because the element of nervous overstrain has not arisen. There are other women, often very fond of children, who are conspicuously lacking in this power. Contact with one of these well-meaning persons, even for a few days, will demoralise a whole nursery. Tempers grow wild and unruly, sleep disappears, fretfulness and irritability take its place. Yet of most mothers it is probably true that they are neither strikingly proficient nor utterly deficient in the power of managing children. If they lack the gift that comes naturally to some women, they learn from experience and grow instinctively to feel when they have made a false step with the child. Although by dearly bought experience they learn wisdom in the management of their children, they nevertheless may not study the subject with the same care which they devote to matters of diet and hygiene. It is the mother whose education and understanding best fits her for this task. In this country a separate nursery and a separate nursery life for the children is found in nearly all households among the well-to-do, and the care for the physical needs of the children is largely taken off the mothers' shoulders by nurses and nursemaids. That this arrangement is advantageous on the whole cannot be doubted. In America and on the Continent, where the children often mingle all day in the general life of the household, and occupy the ordinary living rooms, experience shows that nerve strain and its attendant evils are more common than with us. Nevertheless, the arrangement of a separate nursery has its disadvantages. Nurses are sometimes not sufficiently educated to have much appreciation of the mental processes of the child. If the children are restless and nervous they are content to attribute this to naughtiness or to constipation, or to some other physical ailment. Their time is usually so fully occupied that they cannot be expected to be very zealous in reading books on the management of children. Nevertheless, in practical matters of detail a good nurse will learn rapidly from a mother who has given some attention to the subject, and who is able to give explicit instructions upon definite points.

It is right that mothers should appreciate the important part which the environment plays in all the mental processes of children, and in their physical condition as well; that they should understand that good temper and happiness mean a proper environment, and that constant crying and fretfulness, broken sleep, refusal of food, vomiting, undue thinness, and extreme timidity often indicate that something in this direction is at fault.

Nevertheless, we must be careful not to overstate our case. We must remember how great is the diversity of temperament in children--a diversity which is produced purely by hereditary factors. The task of all mothers is by no means of equal difficulty. There are children in whom quite gross faults in training produce but little permanent damage; there are others of so sensitive a nervous organisation that their environment requires the most delicate adjustment, and when matters have gone wrong, it may be very difficult to restore health of mind and body. When a peculiarly nervous temperament is inherited, wisdom in the management of the child is essential, and may sometimes achieve the happiest results. Heredity is so powerful a factor in the development of the nervous organisation of the child that, realising its importance, we should be sparing in our criticism of the results which the mothers who consult us achieve in the training of their children. A sensitive, nervous organisation is often the mark of intellectual possibilities above the average, and the children who are cast outside the ordinary mould, who are the most wayward, the most intractable, who react to trifling faults of management with the most striking symptoms of disturbance, are often those with the greatest potentialities for achievement and for good. It is natural for the mother of placid, contented, and perhaps rather unenterprising children, looking on as a detached outsider, seeing nothing of the teeming activities of the quick, restless little brain, and the persistent, though faulty reasoning--it is natural for her to blame another's work, and to flatter herself that her own routine would have avoided all these troublesome complications. The mother of the nervous child may often rightly take comfort in the thought that her child is worth the extra trouble and the extra care which he demands, because he is sent into the world with mechanism which, just because it is more powerful than the common run, is more difficult to master and takes longer to control and to apply for useful ends.

It is through the mother, and by means of her alone, that the doctor can influence the conduct of the child. Without her co-operation, or if she fails to appreciate the whole situation, with the best will in the world, we are powerless to help. Fortunately with the majority of educated mothers there is no difficulty. Their powers of observation in all matters concerning their children are usually very great. It is their interpretation of what they have observed that is often faulty.

Thus, in the example given above, the mother observes correctly that defaecation is inhibited, and produces crying and resistance. It is her interpretation that the cause is to be found in pain that is at fault. Again, a mother may bring her infant for tongue-tie. She has observed correctly that the child is unable to sustain the suction necessary for efficient lactation, and has. .h.i.t upon this fanciful and traditional explanation. The doctor, who knows that the tongue takes no part in the act of sucking, will probably be able to demonstrate that the failure to suck is due to nasal obstruction, and that the child is forced to let go the nipple because respiration is impeded.

The opportunities for close observation of the child which mothers enjoy are so great that we shall not often be justified in disregarding their statements. But if we are able to give the true explanation of the symptoms, it will seldom happen that the mother will fail to be convinced, because the explanation, if true, will fit accurately with all that has been observed. Thus the mother of the child in whom defaecation is inhibited by negativism may have made further observations. For example, she may have noted that the so-called constipation causes fretfulness, that it is almost always benefited by a visit to the country or seaside, or that it has become much worse since a new nurse, who is much distressed by it, has taken over the management of the child. To this mother the explanation must be extended to fit these observations, of the accuracy of which there need be no doubt. Fretfulness and negativism with all children whose management is at fault come in waves and cycles. The child, naughty and almost unmanageable one week, may behave as a model of propriety the next. The negativism and refusal to go to stool are the outcome of the nervous unrest, not its cause. Again, the nervous child, like the adult neuropath, very often improves for the time being with every change of scene and surroundings. It is the _ennui_ and monotony of daily existence, in contact with the same restricted circle, that becomes insupportable and brings into prominence the lack of moral discipline, the fretfulness, and spirit of opposition. Lastly, the conduct of the nervous child is determined to a great extent by suggestions derived from the grown-up people around him. Refusal of food, refusal of sleep, refusal to go to stool, as we shall see later, only become frequent or habitual when the child's conduct visibly distresses the nurse or mother, and when the child fully appreciates the stir which he is creating. The mother will readily understand that in such a case, where constipation varies in degree according as different persons take charge of the child, the explanation offered is that which alone fits with the observed facts. A full and free discussion between mother and doctor, repeated it may be more than once, may be necessary before the truth is arrived at, and a line of action decided upon. Only so can the doctor, remote as he is from the environment of the child, intervene to mould its nature and shape its conduct.

If the doctor is to fit himself to give advice of this sort, he must be a close observer of little children. He must not consider it beneath his dignity to study nursery life and nursery ways. There he will find the very beginnings of things, the growing point, as it were, of all neuropathy. A man of fifty, who in many other ways showed evidence of a highly nervous temperament, had especially one well-marked phobia, the fear of falling downstairs. It had never been absent all his life, and he had grown used to making the descent of the stairs clinging firmly to the stair-rail. Family tradition a.s.signed this infirmity to a fall downstairs in early childhood. But all children fall downstairs and are none the worse. The persistence of the fear was due, I make no doubt, to the att.i.tude of the parents or nurse, who made much of the accident, impressed the occasion strongly on the child's memory, and surrounded him thereafter with precautions which sapped his confidence and fanned his fears.

In what follows we will consider first the subject of nursery management, searching in it for the origin of the common disorders of conduct both of childhood and of later life. I have grouped these nursery observations under the heads of four characteristic features of the child's psychology--his Imitativeness, his Suggestibility, his Love of Power, and his acute though limited Reasoning Faculties. I feel that some such brief examination is necessary if we are to understand correctly the aetiology of some of the most troublesome disorders of childhood, such as enuresis, anorexia, dyspepsia, or constipation, disorders in which the nervous element is perhaps to-day not sufficiently emphasised. Finally, we can evolve a kind of nursery psycho-therapeutics--a subject which is not only of fascinating interest in itself, but which repays consideration by the success which it brings to our efforts to cure and control.

CHAPTER II

OBSERVATIONS IN THE NURSERY

_(a)_ THE IMITATIVENESS OF THE CHILD

It is in the second and third years of the child's life that the rapidity of the development of the mental processes is most apparent, and it is with that age that we may begin a closer examination. At first sight it might seem more reasonable to adopt a strictly chronological order, and to start with the infant from the day of his birth. Since, however, we can only interpret the mind of the child by our knowledge of our own mental processes, the study of the older child and of the later stages is in reality the simpler task. The younger the infant, the greater the difficulties become, so that our task is not so much to trace the development of a process from simple and early forms to those which are later and more complex, as to follow a track which is comparatively plain in later childhood, but grows faint as the beginnings of life are approached.

At the age, then, of two or three the first quality of the child which may arrest our attention is his extreme imitativeness. Not that the imitation on his part is in any way conscious; but like a mirror he reflects in every action and in every word all that he sees and hears going on around him. We must recognise that in these early days his words and actions are not an independent growth, with roots in his own consciousness, but are often only the reflection of the words and actions of others. How completely speech is imitative is shown by the readiness with which a child contracts the local accent of his birthplace. The London parents awake with horror to find their baby an indubitable c.o.c.kney; the speech of the child bred beyond the Tweed proclaims him a veritable Scot. Again, some people are apt to adopt a somewhat peremptory tone in addressing little children. Often they do not trouble to give to their voices that polite or deferential inflection which they habitually use when speaking to older people.

Listen to a party of nurses in the Park addressing their charges. As if they knew that their commands have small chance of being obeyed, they shout them with incisive force. "Come along at once when I tell you," they say. And the child faithfully reflects it all back, and is heard ordering his little sister about like a drill sergeant, or curtly bidding his grandmother change her seat to suit his pleasure.

If we are to have pretty phrases and tones of voice, mothers must see to it that the child habitually hears no other. Again, mothers will complain that their child is deaf, or, at any rate, that he has the bad habit of responding to all remarks addressed to him by saying, "What?" or, worse still, "Eh?" Often enough the reason that he does so is not that the child is deaf, nor that he is particularly slow to understand, but simply that he himself speaks so indistinctly that no matter what he says to the grown-up people around him, they bend over him and themselves utter the objectionable word.

We all hate the tell-tale child, and when a boy comes in from his walk and has much to say of the wicked behaviour of his little sister on the afternoon's outing, his mother is apt to see in this a most horrid tendency towards tale-bearing and currying of favour. She does not realise that day by day, when the children have come in from their walk, she has asked nurse in their hearing if they have been good children; and when, as often happens, they have not, the nurse has duly recounted their shortcomings, with the laudable notion of putting them to shame, and of emphasising to them the wickedness of their backsliding--and this son of hers is no hypocrite, but speaks only, as all children speak, in faithful reproduction of all that he hears.

Those grown-up persons who are in charge of the children must realise that the child's vocabulary is their vocabulary, not his own. It is unfortunate, but I think not unavoidable, that so often almost the earliest words that the infant learns to speak are words of reproof, or chiding, or repression. The baby scolds himself with gusto, uttering reproof in the very tone of his elders: "No, no," "Naughty,"

or "Dirty," or "Baby shocked."

Speech, then, is imitative from the first, if we except the early baby sounds with reduplication of consonants to which in course of time definite meaning becomes attached, as "Ba-ba," "Ma-ma," "Na-na,"

"Ta-ta," and so forth. Action only becomes imitative at a somewhat later stage. The first purposive movements of the child's limbs are carried out in order to evoke tactile sensations. He delights to stimulate and develop the sense of touch. At first he has no knowledge of distance, and his reach exceeds his grasp. He will strain to touch and hold distant objects. Gradually he learns the limitations of s.p.a.ce, and will pick up and hold an object in his hand with precision.

Often he conveys everything to his mouth, not because his teeth are worrying him, or because he is hungry, as we hear sometimes alleged, but because his mouth, lips, and tongue are more sensitive, because more plentifully furnished with the nerves of tactile sensation. By constant practice the sense of touch and the precision of the movement of his hands are slowly developed, and not these alone, for the child in acquiring these powers has developed also the centres in the brain which control the voluntary movements. When the child can walk he continues these grasping and touching exercises in a wider sphere. As the child of fifteen or eighteen months moves about the room, no object within his reach is pa.s.sed by. He stretches out his hand to touch and seize upon everything, and to experience the joy of imparting motion to it. The impulse to develop tactile sensation and precision in the movements of his hands compels him with irresistible force. It is foolish to attempt to repress it. It is foolish, because it is a necessary phase in his development, and moreover a pa.s.sing phase. No doubt it is annoying to his elders while it lasts, but the only wise course is to try to thwart as little as we can his legitimate desire to hold and grasp the objects, and even to a.s.sist him in every way possible. But the mother must a.s.sist him only by allowing free play to his attempts. To hand him the object is to deprive the exercise of most of its value. Incidentally she may teach him the virtue of putting things back in their proper places, an accomplishment in which he will soon grow to take a proper pride. If she attempts continually to turn him from his purpose, reproving him and s.n.a.t.c.hing things from him, she prolongs the grasping phase beyond its usual limits. And she does a worse thing at the same time. Lest the quicker hands of his nurse should intervene to s.n.a.t.c.h the prize away before he has grasped it, he too learns to s.n.a.t.c.h, with a sudden clumsy movement that overturns, or breaks, or spills. If left to himself he will soon acquire the dexterity he desires. He may overturn objects at first, or let them fall, but this he regards as failure, which he soon overcomes. A child of twenty months, whose development in this particular way has not been impeded by unwise repression, will pick out the object on which he has set his heart, play with it, finger it, and replace it, and he will do it deliberately and carefully, with a clear desire to avoid mishap. Dr. Montessori, who has developed into a system the art of teaching young children to learn precision of movement and to develop the nerve centres which control movement, tells in her book a story which well ill.u.s.trates this point.[1]

[Footnote 1: _The Montessori Method_, pp. 84, 85.]

"The directress of the Casa del Bambini at Milan constructed under one of the windows a long, narrow shelf, upon which she placed the little tables containing the metal geometric forms used in the first lesson in design. But the shelf was too narrow, and it often happened that the children in selecting the pieces which they wished to use would allow one of the little tables to fall to the floor, thus upsetting with great noise all the metal pieces which it held. The directress intended to have the shelf changed, but the carpenter was slow in coming, and while waiting for him she discovered that the children had learned to handle these materials so carefully that in spite of the narrow and sloping shelf, the little tables no longer fell to the ground. The children, by carefully directing their movements, had overcome the defect in this piece of furniture."

By slow degrees the child learns to command his movements. If his efforts are aided and not thwarted, before he is two years old he will have become capable of conducting himself correctly, yet with perfect freedom. The worst result of the continual repression which may be constantly practised in the mistaken belief that the grasping phase is a bad habit which persistent opposition will eradicate, is the nervous unrest and irritation which it produces in the child. A pa.s.sionate fit of crying is too often the result of the thwarting of his nature, and the same process repeated over and over again, day by day, almost hour by hour, is apt to leave its mark in unsatisfied longing, irritability, and unrest. Above all, the child requires liberty of action.

We have here an admirable example of the effect of environment in developing the child's powers. A caged animal is a creature deprived of the stimulus of environment, and bereft therefore to a great extent of the skill which we call instinct, by which it procures its food, guarantees its safety from attack, constructs its home, cares for its young, and procreates its species. If, metaphorically speaking, we encircle the child with a cage, if we constantly intervene to interpose something between him and the stimulus of his environment, his characteristic powers are kept in abeyance or r.e.t.a.r.ded, just as the marvellous instinct of the wild animals becomes less efficient in captivity.

The grasping phase is but a preliminary to more complex activities.

Just as in schooldays we were taught with much labour to make pot-hooks and hangers efficiently before we were promoted to real attempts at writing, so before the child can really perform tasks with a definite meaning and purpose, he must learn to control the finer movements of his hands. Once the grasping phase, the stage of pot-hooks, is successfully past--and the end of the second year in a well-managed child should see its close--the child sets himself with enthusiasm to wider tasks. To him was.h.i.+ng and dressing, fetching his shoes and b.u.t.toning his gaiters, all the processes of his simple little life, should be matters of the most enthralling interest, in which he is eager to take his part and increasingly capable of doing so. In the Montessori system there is provided an elaborate apparatus, the didactic material, designed to cultivate tactile sensation and the perception of sense stimuli. It will generally suffice to advise the mother to make use of the ordinary apparatus of the nursery. The imitativeness of the young child is so great that he will repeat in almost every detail all the actions of his nurse as she carries out the daily routine. At eighteen months of age, when the electric light is turned on in his nursery, the child will at once go to the curtains and make attempts to draw them. At the same age a little girl will weigh her doll in her own weighing-machine, will take every precaution that the nurse takes in her own case, and will even stoop down anxiously to peer at the dial, just as she has seen her mother and nurse do on the weekly weighing night. But at a very early age children appreciate the difference between the real and the make-believe. They desire above all things to do acts of real service.

At the age of two a child should know where every article for the nursery table is kept. He will fetch the tablecloth and help to put it in place, spoons and cups and saucers will be carried carefully to the table, and when the meal is over he will want to help to clear it all away. All this is to him a great delight, and the good nurse will encourage it in the children, because she sees that in doing so they gain quickness and dexterity and poise of body. The first purposive movements of the child should be welcomed and encouraged. It is foolish and wrong to repress them, as many nurses do, because the child in his attempts gets in the way, and no doubt for a time delays rather than expedites preparations. The child who is made to sit immobile in his chair while everything is done for him is losing precious hours of learning and of practice. It is useless, and to my mind a little distasteful, to subst.i.tute for all this wonderful child activity the artificial symbolism of the kindergarten school in which children are taught to sing songs or go through certain semi-dramatic activities which savour too much of a performance acquired by precise instruction. If such accomplishments are desired, they may be added to, but they must not replace, the more workaday activities of the little child. The child whose impulses towards purposive action are encouraged is generally a happy child, with a mind at rest. When those impulses are restrained, mental unrest and irritability are apt to appear, and toys and picture books and kindergarten games will not be sufficient to restore his natural peace of mind.

_(b)_ THE SUGGESTIBILITY OF THE CHILD

We may pa.s.s from considering the imitativeness of the child to study a second and closely related quality, his suggestibility. His conception of himself as a separate individual, of his ego, only gradually emerges. It is profoundly modified by ideas derived from those around him. Because of his lack of acquired experience, there is in the child an extreme sensitiveness to impressions from outside. Take, for example, a matter that is sometimes one of great difficulty, the child's likes and dislikes for food. Many mothers make complaint that there are innumerable articles of diet which the child will not take: that he will not drink milk, or that he will not eat fat, or meat, or vegetables, or milk puddings. There are people who believe that these peculiarities of taste correspond with idiosyncrasies of digestion, and that children instinctively turn from what would do them harm. I do not believe that there is much truth in this contention. If we watch an infant after weaning, at the time when his diet is gradually being enlarged to include more solid food, with new and varied flavours, we may see his attention arrested by the strange sensations.

With solid or crisp food there may be a good deal of hesitation and fumbling before he sets himself to masticate and swallow. With the unaccustomed flavour of gravy or fruit juice there may be seen on his face a look of hesitation or surprise. In the stolid and placid child these manifestations are as a rule but little marked, and pleasurable sensations clearly predominate. With children of more nervous temperament it is clear that sensations of taste are much more acute.

Even in earliest infancy, children have a way of proclaiming their nervous inheritance by the repugnance which they show to even trifling changes in the taste or composition of their food. We see the same sensitiveness in their behaviour to medicines. The mixture which one child will swallow without resentment, and almost eagerly, provokes every expression of disgust from another, or is even vomited at once.

In piloting the child through this phase, during which he starts nervously at all unaccustomed sensations and flavours, the att.i.tude of mother and nurse is of supreme importance. It is unwise to attempt force; it is equally unwise, by excessive coaxing, cajoling, and entreaty, to concentrate the child's attention on the matter. If either is tried every meal is apt to become a signal for struggling and tears. The phase, whether it is short or long continued, must be accepted as in the natural order of things, and patience will see its end. The management of this symptom,--refusal of food and an apparently complete absence of desire for food,--which is almost the commonest neurosis of childhood, will be dealt with later. Here it is mentioned because I wish to emphasise that if too much is made of a pa.s.sing hesitation over any one article of food, if it becomes the belief of the mother or nurse that a strong distaste is present, then if she is not careful her att.i.tude in offering it, because she is apprehensive of refusal, will exert a powerful suggestion on the child's mind. Still worse, it may cause words to be used in the child's hearing referring to this peculiarity of his. By frequent repet.i.tion it becomes fixed in his mind that this is part of his own individuality. He sees himself--and takes great pleasure in the thought--as a strange child, who by these peculiarities creates considerable interest in the minds of the grown-up people around him.