The biography of a baby

by Milicent Washburn Shinn

It was just before the sixth month began that the baby accomplished this feat, but it belongs with the developments of that month. She was already fond of playing with her toes; and sitting unclad that evening in her mother’s lap, she first tried to pull them straight to her mouth. This was, of course, the mere repetition of a frequent movement, learned by simple association. But when it failed—for the toes would kick away, just as her arms used to do, carrying the thumb from her lips—the little one put her mind on corralling them. She took them in one hand, clasped the other hand about her instep, and so brought the foot safely up. Still it escaped, and at last she clasped ankle and heel firmly, one with each hand, and after several attempts brought the elusive toe triumphantly into her mouth. It is true that by looking up to us for sympathy in her success, and relaxing attention, she promptly lost it once more; but she recaptured it, and from this time on, for weeks, had immense satisfaction in it every time she was undressed.

There may have been a certain element of instinct in this—getting the toe to the mouth is so persistent a habit with babies that it seems as if there must be some inheritance about it; but inheritance could hardly have given the special devices for managing the insubordinate foot; there was clearly some use of individual intelligence. All through the process of learning to manage the body, the baby showed instinct and intelligence most intricately mingled; and, indeed, we do so ourselves our lives long.

Of all a baby’s doings this toe business is the one that people find it most impossible to regard with scientific seriousness. But its indirect usefulness is considerable. The coöperation of different parts of the body that it teaches is remarkable; and it must have great influence in extending the sense of self to the legs and feet, where it has hitherto seemed but weakly developed. This is important in getting the body ready for standing and walking.

The baby now showed intelligence in her actions in several little ways, such as tugging with impatient cries at her mother’s dress when she wanted her dinner, and leaning over to pluck at the carriage blanket, under which her mother had laid some flowers to keep them from her. She slipped a long-handled spoon farther down in her hand to get the end of the handle into her mouth (almost exactly the same act as the one that Darwin thought first showed “a sort of practical reflection” in his child at about the same age: the boy slipped his hand down his father’s finger, in order to get the finger tip into his mouth). In the second week of the month she began to watch things as they fell, and then to throw them down purposely, to watch them falling.

I have already mentioned certain doubtful imitations in the fourth month, and a clearer one in the fifth. Now the baby began to imitate unmistakably. Her uncle had a fashion of slapping his hand down on the table by way of a salutation to her, and one day (when she had passed a week of her sixth month) she slapped down her little hand in return. The next day as soon as her uncle came in, she began to slap her hand down, watching him, delighted to repeat the movement back and forth, as long as he would keep it up. She would imitate me also when I did it; and in the course of the month several other little imitations occurred.

I have already spoken of the great importance psychologists attach to imitation. Professor Baldwin makes it the great principle of development in child and race—all evolution one long history of its workings; but he uses the word in a far wider sense than the ordinary one, tracing “imitation” from the mechanical repetition of life-preserving motions by the lowest living things, up to the spiritual effort of men and women to live up to their own highest ideals. Even using the word in its ordinary sense, we know what a potent force in the little one’s education imitation is. The age, however, at which it is most efficient is considerably later than the sixth month, and it did not count for much yet with our baby.

Her sounds had been more various and expressive from the first days of the month. She had taken up a curious puppy-like whine of desire or complaint, and a funny little ecstatic sniffing and catching her breath, to express some shades of delight; and she had also begun to pour out long, varied successions of babbling sounds, which expressed content, interest, or complaint very clearly. She would “talk to” any interesting object (a hedge in gorgeous bloom, for instance) with this expressive babble, sometimes holding out her arms to it at the same time. But now, in the second week of the month, the day after the first decisive imitation, a surprising advance beyond these means of communication took place.

I must explain that the wise grandma, who believed in encouraging babies to creep, as the best possible preparation for standing and walking, had begun to set the little one on her hands and knees on the big dining-table, putting a hand against her feet as a brace in case she should be moved to struggle forward. The baby had a habit of pushing with her feet when she felt anything against her soles; and pushing thus, thrust herself forward; and as the table-cover slid with her movement, she would half slide with it, half shove herself, across the table, grunting with exertion, and highly pleased.

On the day in question I was sitting with her by this table, and she pulled at the table-cover, as she was wont to pull and handle anything she could reach. Suddenly she threw herself back on my arm, and looked earnestly in my face; sat up and pulled at the cover again, then threw herself back and looked at me again.

“What does she want?” I said, surprised, and hardly able to think that the little thing could really be trying to say something to me. But grandma interpreted easily, and when I put the baby on the table accordingly, to make her sliding sprawl across the surface, she was satisfied.