The biography of a baby

by Milicent Washburn Shinn

She was also physically strong, and once or twice in the fourth month sat quite alone on some one’s lap. I do not count this real sitting alone, however, for the lap gives under the baby’s weight, and steadies her a little: one should not record sitting alone till the baby has balanced successfully on a hard level, the floor or table. But as far as strength of back was concerned, our baby was now evidently ready to sit alone.

At this stage the babies of grandpa’s line have always been seated on the floor in a horse-collar, as befitted farm babies; and this latest one went into the collar at four months old, like the rest of us in our day, and spent much of her fifth month sitting there, sucking or brandishing her rattle, and looking happily about her. It is really a comfortable seat for a baby not yet quite ready to sit alone. When the collar is not brand new, one will of course scrub and disinfect it; and it is the better in any case for a blanket or thick shawl thrown over it. Also of course, one will never set a baby on the floor without seeing that all possible drafts, under doors or about loose window casings, are shut off with shawls and screens. Otherwise, there may be pneumonia to fight.

I have just spoken of the baby’s boldness. She showed fear now and then, however. About the middle of the fourth month she cried while a caller was present, dressed in black, with a large hat. Ten days later she was quite upset when her father leaned over suddenly, bringing his face into view from one side. Here were the first eye fears, considerably later than ear fears.

A still more advanced form of fear appeared two days later. The baby had waked and cried alone in the dark for some minutes, and when she was at last taken up, she had evidently become frightened, and was not easily reassured; she kept leaning toward her mother, and uttering troubled cries, and as it was some minutes before her mother took her, she grew more and more disturbed, and finally broke into a wail, and was soothed with difficulty, and all the evening she was anxious and easily upset. The next night, waking alone at the same hour, she began again to cry with the note of fright.

Here was not yet fear in the sense of definite expectation of harm. It was still purely instinctive, a sort of vague panic, from a sense of unfamiliarity. The darkness no doubt contributed to this unfamiliarity, but I do not think there was yet anything that could be called fear of the dark. It is doubtless, however, in large part from such experiences that fear of the dark is born; each one leaves its trace in the nervous system, and associations of terror with darkness and solitude are quickly formed. In these days of leaving babies to wail themselves to sleep for the good of their souls, and the convenience of mamma’s going out evenings, innumerable such associations must be bred—and again the schoolbooks take the blame when in later days the child proves nervous and excitable.

During the latter part of the fourth month, the baby was greatly interested in making sounds, and the one that most delighted her was a sort of harsh cawing or croaking, made deep in the throat, on the vowel â. She would lie and utter this sound at intervals, by the half hour, with deep satisfaction. But when she had not been making it for some hours, she was apt to forget just how, and to get it too high or low in the throat, producing an extraordinary collection of squeaks and grunts. She usually hit it at last; but after repeated losings, it became quite dissolved away among the many new ones it had apparently given rise to.

Later, she took much pains over some imperfect lip sounds; she would lie looking earnestly at me, draw her breath, gather her lips into shape, and finally explode the sound with a great expenditure of breath.

She made her little sounds often with an air of friendly response when we prattled to her, giving back murmurs, croaks, and gurgles for words. From the latter part of the fourth month, if we imitated to her some of these sounds, she seemed to imitate them back. Preyer, who records the same thing of his boy at the same age, thinks it marks a most important epoch, the beginning of action guided by ideas; but Baldwin, who considers the beginning of imitation even more important than Preyer does, thinks it cannot be so early, and that the repeating of the sounds must be mere coincidence.

This is likely enough, for a baby is always repeating his pet sounds, and it is not safe to conclude that he means to imitate us, even if he does chance to give back the same sound after us several times. But as to action guided by ideas, we scarcely need wait for the first imitation to see that. It appears in a simple form when the baby first looks for an object out of sight. This our baby had done weeks before, and by this time many of her actions seemed to be of ideomotor type. The effort to recall her croak was an instance. In the early weeks of the fifth month, she would seem to think suddenly of one of her little sounds, and dash at it, bringing it out with a comical doubling up of her body. In the same way she would have the happy thought, “Fingers in mouth!” and up they would come with a jerk, her head diving forward to meet them.

In the nineteenth week, she seemed to act once from something like a definite memory. Her grandfather entered the room while she was in her bath, and her usual joyous up and down movement of arms at sight of him produced a novel and fascinating splashing. Next day the baby splashed without suggestion, and again the next, looking up to my face and smiling; and after that no one could teach her anything about splashing. Yet even this was probably not really memory, but an association formed by a single vivid occurrence.