The Nervous Child

by Hector Charles Cameron

TOYS, BOOKS, AND AMUSEMENTS

Any one who has an opportunity of watching little children must have observed that they are happiest and most contented when playing alone. The education of the little child is carried on by means of games and toys. Handling the various objects which we give him, imparting movement to them, transferring them from hand to hand and from one situation to another, he learns dexterity and precision of movement, and in the process hand and brain grow in power. When at play, his whole energies should be absorbed to the exclusion of everything else. He will often be oblivious to everything that is going on around him, intent only on the purpose of the moment. In order to permit this fervour of self-education it is necessary that the child should be accustomed to playing alone, and it is well, if only for convenience' sake, that he should be accustomed to playing in a room by himself. Something is wrong if the child cannot be left for a few moments without breaking into tears or displaying bad temper. Engrossed in his own tasks, he should be content to leave his nurse to move in and out of the room without protest. If this fault has appeared and the child cannot be left alone, our whole educational system is undermined, and play will be profitless and over-exciting, because it demands the constant participation of grown-up people. As a preliminary to all improvement in the management of a nervous child, we must see to it that he becomes accustomed to being alone. We must so arrange his nursery that he can do no damage to himself. Scissors and matches must not be left lying about, and a fireguard must be fixed in position so that it cannot be disturbed. Then, disregarding his protests, the nurse must leave him to himself, at first only for a moment or two, re-entering the room in a matter-of-fact way without speaking to him, and again leaving it. Soon he will learn that a temporary separation does not mean that we have abandoned him for all time. Then the period of absence can be gradually lengthened till all difficulty disappears. Once his attention is removed from the grown-up people who mean so much to him, his natural impulse to explore and experiment with his playthings will show itself. Those toys are best which are neither elaborate nor expensive. For a little child a small box containing a miscellaneous collection of wooden or metal objects, none of them small enough to be in danger of being swallowed, forms the material for which his soul craves. Everything else in the room may be out of his reach. A dozen times he will empty the box and then replace each object in turn. He will arrange them in every possible combination, and then sweep the whole away to start afresh.

At eighteen months of age observation and imitative capacity will have made more complex pursuits possible. As a rule the objects which are most prized and which have most educative value are those which lend themselves best to the actions with which alone the child is familiar. Hence the supreme importance of the doll and the doll's perambulator. The doll will be treated exactly as the child is treated by the nurse. It will be washed, and dressed, and weighed, and put to bed in faithful reproduction of what the child has daily experienced. Dusting, and sweeping, and laying the table will be exactly copied. If a child has no opportunity of being familiar with horses, if he has not seen them fed, and watered, and groomed, and harnessed, he may not find any great satisfaction in a toy horse, or pay much attention to it, no matter how costly or realistic it may be.

In the third year more precise tasks, such as stringing beads, drawing, and painting, will play their part, while at the same time the increased imaginative powers will give attraction to toy soldiers or a toy tea-service. Playing at shop, robbers, and rafts are developments of still later growth. In the child's games we recognise the instinct of imitation—playing with dolls, sweeping and dusting, playing at shop or visitors; the instinct of constructiveness—making mud pies and sand castles, drawing or whittling a stick; and the instinct of experiment—letting objects fall, rattling, hammering, taking to pieces. All this activity must be encouraged, never unduly repressed or destroyed. But whatever form it takes, the bulk of the play must be carried on without the intervention of grown-up persons, or it will lose its educative value and prove too exacting. If grown-up people attempt to take part, the child will lose interest in the play and turn his attention to them.

Children differ very much in their attitude towards books. One child quite early in the second year will be happy poring over picture books, while another will seldom glance at the contents and finds pleasure only in turning over the pages, opening and shutting them, and carrying them from place to place. Such differences are natural enough and foreshadow perhaps the permanent characteristics that divide men and women, and produce in later life men of thought and men of action, women who are Marthas and women who are Marys. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that there is danger in a training that is too one sided, and that books and toys have both their part to play in developing the powers of the child. All the activities of the child should be used in as varied a way as possible. The eye is but one doorway to knowledge and understanding, the ear is another, the hand a third.

From pictures an imaginative child will derive very strong impressions, and mothers should be careful in their choice. It is foolish to confuse the growth of æsthetic perceptions by presenting children with books which depict children as grotesquely ugly beings with goggle eyes and heads like rubber balls. Children love animals and endow them with all their own reasoning attributes, and in stories of the home life of rabbits, and bears, and squirrels they take a pure delight. Books of the "Struwwelpeter" type are less to be recommended. The faults which they are intended to eradicate become peculiarly attractive from much familiarity. A little boy of two and a half who resolutely refused all food for some days was in the end detected to be playing the part of that Augustus, once so chubby and fat, who reduced himself to a skeleton, saying, "Take the nasty soup away; I don't want any soup to-day." Tales of naughty children who meet with a distressing fate may either frighten the child unduly, or else produce in a child of inquiring mind the desire to brave his fate and put the matter to the test. Pictures should not be terrifying or horrible. Ogres devouring children are out of place as subjects for pictures and may cause night-terrors.

Children should be taught to be careful of books and toys. The indestructible book, generally falsely so called, is often responsible for the immediate dissolution of all others less protected which come to hand. The sympathy which little children have with the sufferings of all inanimate objects and their habit of endowing them with their own sensations may be made of use in teaching them care and gentleness. They are naturally prone to sympathise with the doll that has been crushed or the book that has been torn. They will learn very easily to be kind to a pet animal and to be solicitous for its feelings, and the lesson so learnt will be applied to inanimate objects as well.

There is, however, another side to the question. It is true that if the child is not to be over-stimulated upon the psychical side, we must see to it that his play, for the most part, is not dependent upon the participation of grown-up persons. In practice this excessive stimulation is the common fault with which we meet. There are few children in well-to-do homes, with loving mothers and devoted nurses, who suffer from too little mothering and nursing. Too many show signs of too much. To observe the opposite fault we must seek the infants and children who for a long time are inmates of institutions, orphanages, infirmaries, hospitals, and so forth. In such surroundings the mental life of the child may languish. His physical wants are cared for, but there the matter ends. In a rigid routine he is washed and fed, but he may not be talked to or played with or stimulated in any way. His day is spent passively lying in his cot, unnoticed and unnoticing. I have seen a poor child of three years just released from such a life, and after eighteen months returned to his mother, unable to talk and almost unable to walk, crying pitifully at the novelty and strangeness of the noisy life to which he had returned, worried by contact with the other children, and without any desire or power to occupy himself in the home. For an hour in the day mothers may devote themselves wholeheartedly to the children, and if they set them romping till they are tired out, so much the better. In the garden or in an airy room with the windows open, a game with a ball or a toy balloon, or a game of hide-and-seek, will be all to the good, and the children may climb and be rolled over and swung about to their heart's content. With an only child, especially with a child whose home is in town, and whose outings are limited to a sedate airing in the park, such free play is especially necessary. It may help more than anything else to quiet restless minds and tempers that are on edge all day long from excessive repression.

On the other hand, those forms of entertainment which are known as "children's parties" are generally fruitful of ill results, at any rate with nervous and highly-strung children. Sometimes they entail a postponement of the usual bedtime, and nearly always they involve over-heated and crowded rooms. Perverse custom has decreed that these gatherings shall take place most commonly in the winter, when dark and cold add nothing to the pleasure and a great deal to the risk of infection which must always attend the crowding of susceptible children together in a confined space with faulty ventilation. There is clearly on the score of health much less objection to summer garden parties for children, but these for some reason are less the vogue. As a rule parties are not enjoyed by nervous children. There is intense excitement in anticipation, and when at length the moment arrives, there is apt to be disillusion. Either the excitement of the child may pass all bounds and end in tears and so-called naughtiness, or the unfamiliar surroundings may leave him distrait with a strange sense of unreality and unhappiness. It is not always fair to blame the want of wisdom in his hostess's choice of eatables, if the excited and overstimulated child fails in the work of digestion and returns to the nursery to suffer the reaction, with pains and much sickness.

The same arguments may be urged against taking little children to the theatre. The nerve strain is apt to be out of proportion to the enjoyment gained. If children must go to theatres and parties, the treat should be kept secret from them until the moment of its realisation, in order that the period of mental excitement should be contracted as much as possible, and grown-up people should be advised to treat the whole expedition in a matter-of-fact sort of way that does nothing to add to the excitement or increase the risk of subsequent disillusion.