It is impossible, of course, to consider here all the processes of the child’s day in as minute detail as this question of his morning toilet. But the same procedure of “hands off” should be followed, because help that is not positively necessary is a hindrance to a growing organism. It is well to put strings for your vines to climb up, but it does them no good to have you try to “help” them by pulling on the tips of the tendrils. The little child should be allowed time to wash his own face and hands, to brush his teeth, and to feed himself, although it would be quicker to continue our Strasbourg goose tradition of stuffing him ourselves. He should, as soon as possible, learn to put on and take off his own wraps, hat, and rubbers. He should carry his own playthings, should learn to open and shut doors, go up and down stairs freely, hang up his own clothes (hooks placed low must not be forgotten), and look himself for articles he has misplaced.
Adults who, for the first time, try this régime with little children are astonished to find that it is not the patience of the little child, but their own, which is inadequate. A child (if he is young enough not to have acquired the invalid’s habit of being waited upon) will persevere unendingly through a series of grotesquely awkward attempts, for instance, to climb upon an adult’s chair. The sight of this laborious attempt to accomplish a perfectly easy feat reduces his quick-stepping, competent mother to nervous fidgets, requiring all her self-control to resist. She is almost irresistibly driven to rushing forward and lifting him up. If she does, she is very apt to see him slide to the floor and begin all over again. It is not elevation to the chair which he desires. It is the capacity to attain it himself, unaided, which is his goal, a goal like all others in his life which his mother cannot reach for him.
And if all this sounds too troublesome and complicated, let it be remembered that the Children’s Home looms close at hand, ominously ready to devote itself to making conditions exactly right for the child’s growth, never impatient, with no other aim in life and no other occupation but to do what is best for the child. If we are to be allowed to keep our children with us, we must prove worthy the sacred trust.
Materials for Teaching Rough and Smooth.
Copyright 1912, by Carl R. Byoir
For, practically, the highly successful existence of the Casa dei Bambini, keeping the children as it does all day, takes for granted that the average parent cannot or will not make the average home into a place really suited for the development of small children. It is visibly apparent that, as far as physical surroundings are concerned, he is Gulliver struggling with the conditions of Brobdingnag. He eats his meals from a table as high for him as the mantelpiece would be for us, he climbs up and down stairs with the painful effort we expend on the ascent of the Pyramids, he gets into an armchair as we would climb into a tree, and he can no more alter the position of it than we could that of the tree.
As for the conduct of life, he is considered “naughty” if he interferes with adult occupations, which, going on all about him all the time and being entirely incomprehensible to him, are very difficult to avoid; and he is “good” like the “good Indian” according to the degree of his silent passivity. When we return after a brief absence and inquire of a little child, “Have you been a good child?” do we not mean simply, “Have you been as little inconvenient as possible to your elders?” To most of us who are honest with ourselves it comes as rather a surprise that this standard of virtue should not be the natural and inevitable one.
I leave to the last chapter the question, a most searching and painful one for me, as to whether the Casa dei Bambini will not ultimately be the Home for all our children, and here confine myself to the statement, which no unprejudiced mind can deny, that such an institution, arranged as it has been with the most single-hearted desire to further the children’s interests, is now better adapted for child-life than our average homes, into which children may be welcomed lovingly, but which are adapted in every detail of their material, intellectual, and spiritual life for adults only. It is my firm conviction that, in my own case, a working compromise may be effected, thanks to my alarmed jealousy of the greater perfection of the Montessori Children’s Home; but I realize that it required the alarming sight and study of that institution to make me see that I was forcing my children to live under a great many unnecessary restrictions. And, if there is one thing above all others to be kept in mind by a convert to these new ideas it is that an unnecessary restriction in a child’s life is a crime. The most puritanical soul among us must see that there are quite enough necessary restrictions for the child, if they are all recognized and rigorously obeyed, to serve as disciplinary forces to the most turbulent nature.