OUR BABIES.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13739, 21 May 1910, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

(Br Htoeia.) ("Weekly Press and Referee.") FORMING A~CHARACTER, (By Dr. and Mrs. Fitz, New York.) But it is not always thc mother who is responsible for such a perversion or moral and mental development. The nurse who is neither over-conscientious nor over-intelligent finds in this same characteristic of child nature a most powerful temptation to ensure her position by rendering herself indispensable t:> both the mother and the child. Tlirough her constant attendance upon the child's whims she makes him dependent upon her. "When she takes her afternoon out and the care of the child devolves upon the mother, the mother is so nervously worn out by tho child's abnormally restless activity and dissatisfaction that she welcomes the nurse back with open arms, and vows that she could never get along without her. Moreover, in the eyes of many mothers this constant, meddling supervision stands for personal devotion. I once knew an otherwise very intelligent mother who in speaking of her children said that she regretted the necessity for having a nurse for each, since she could ill afford it, but she . found that a nurse could do justice to but one child. At the time that I visited her she had, a very young child, who was never out of the arms of her nurse. .... Such daily training in character weakness and dependence made mc wince, hut it passed for devotion In tho mother's eyes, and the mirse was almost as sure of her position as if she had been one of the family. If an ordinarily intelligent mother falls under the temptation of government by distraction, we must not blame too severely the nurse who also consciously or unconsciously yields. However unstable the child's attention, however superficial his intensity of desire, it is none tho less true that beneath the surface ebb end flow there is a rapid and powerful formation of habit. From the first day the child's intelligence* is awakening. . . . The response of to-day to a given condition is the habit of to-morrow. For example;*let him cry, to betaken up today, and take him up. To-morrow he will cry the mere readily and intelligently to the same end, and the association between the cry and the gratification of desire will have been clearly established.

THE ACTION OF TO-DAY THE HABIT OP TO-MORROW. The ease with which habit is formed in a young child is, however, tho foundation-rock upon which characterbuilding rests. The fact that you can tell a child to do a given thing to-day and bo reasonably sure that he will expect to do tho same thing under the same conditions to-morrow, and on tho next day will consider it the proper and natural thing to do, makes char-acter-building relatively simple. Yefc in this very simplicity lies the extreme responsibility of the parent in so guiding each initial step that she will welcome its repetition. The same psychological law holds whether the child is made to put up his playthings until he expects to do it regular.y and welcomes it as a part of his plaj, or whether he is allowed to bo destructive until he assumes the pleasure of destruction to be his right. And the moral of this law from the pointl of view of child-training is: Never to allow a child to do once without protest or punishment, if necessary, what you are not willing that he (and every other child) should continue to do for all time. A most striking illustration of this came to my attention a short time ago. A baby of less than two years, who through consistent training had learned to sleep until between 7 and 8 o'clock in tho morning, awoke one morning at a quarter to 6, and found himself in tho new quarters to which the family had moved. The mother sympathetically took the child into her bed. At almost the same time on the following morning the child awoke and began to cry. Tn spite of the father's warning remonstrances the mother, who was wakeful herself, again took tho little one. Thc third morning at a quarter to six the child repeated the performance, but this time the mother wag sleepy. The father, left with a clear field, got up, punished the child, and then, holding his hand over the crying mouth, reputed over and over, "Go to sleep, little one, go to sleep." In the course of a few minutes the crying passed into sobs, and then ceased, the eyelids drooped and closed, and the baby, who had already slept since six tho night before, slept another hour. Tho next morning he awoke at the usual hour (after seven), and the performance has never since been repeated. But think of what jt meant I Twice the demand of his cries were heeded, and the habit of Bleep of a year or more was broken up and an." other strongly entrenched. The mother, who had yielded once from sympathy, once from selfish indulgence, was truly frightened at the danger involved in even slight inconsistencies of training. In this instance cause and effect were so strongly marked in the formation ot habit as to be obvious even to the most blind. Unfortunately for our characterbuilding, they are not always so marked. As in the case of the hidden work of the coral builders, we are amazed when the atoll of some character formation is seen in the concealing waters. We fatuously wonder how our child could have done this, that, or the other= misdemeanour, forgetting that in our ignorance or laziness or indifference wo have never looked below the surface. We have accepted thc child as philosophers, who are men, not mothers., have painted him for us, a little animal par excellence, a creature of strong instil cts and fleeting desires, powerful in reflexes, weak in voluntary control, impulsive, shallow, unmoral, and we have waited for the time when the child should b?gin to eat of the strong meat o* the ethical and moral life. And when the advent of that time has been acknowledged, we bewail the existence A so many inherited tendencies to obstinacy, to selfishness, to disorderliness, or what not, for heredity always

stands ready as a convenient packhorse and scapegoat. v POTENTIALITIES OF UNSELFISHNESS LATENT IX BABIES. BUT HAVE TO BE DEVELOPED J>Y PARENTS. My experience has convinced mc that the human child is never an animal in t'.e moral sense Of course, the child's moral sense is crude. It is in the beginning dependent solely upon our expression of approval or disapproval. When my baby of a year, sleeping m a boat's cabin, on a berth adjacentvto mine, would repeatedly on awakening in the forning, purely of her own initiative, reach out her little hand and touch mc gently, and then, if 1 did not icspqnd, withdraw into her. berth and lie quietly until I made some movement, when she would greet mc with a laugh ot" delight, her unsolnsh self-control, her delicate consideration for mc. persuaded mc that she was possessed of that very essence of morality altruism. Or," again, when she takes tho bit of coveted sweetmeat which she is about to put between her open lips, and, reaching up her little hand, places it smilingly in mine, no philosopher ; can persuade mc that she has not the moral attributes of unselfishness and generosity, although her lips cannot yet lisp my name. Nor do I refer it to the inheritance of my own angelic disposition ! Stop by sten I can trace tho training of" which this is in part tho result just as inevitably as tho fragile blossom is moulded by tho favouring sun and warmth into the tier-feet fruit. CONSISTENCY. In the attempt to develop the child's moral sense, the first and supremo requisite of tho earliest stages, where habit is most potent and imitation is as yet quiescent, in consistency, loving, but unyielding: knowing no _.h«idow of turning. Such consistency requires tho exercise of the deepest intelligence of which a human being is capable, lest it degenerate into the unreasoning tyranny of detail which sliail fret tho childish soul and destroy the bloom of its spontaneity. In other words, tho mother is at once brought face to face with one of life's greatest problems— tho selection of the things worth whilo from the multitude of those not worth whilo—a selection which in the last resort involves tho wholo philosophy and theory of life. CORRESPONDENCE. "Mother," Duntroon, asks if ques-* tions on baby-feeding are ever answered privately.—Reply: All communications should be accompanied by the writer's name and address. If tho question is of wide general interest, tho answer, or an article bearing on tho matter, is published in this column. If not of wide interest, or if other subjects are being dealt with at the time, a private answer is forwarded, provided the question comes within the legitimate scope of our work.