Tram Your Child Wisely!

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1 July 1926, Page 37

Tram Your Child Wisely!

'By Viscountess Erleigh

This brilliant titled lady is 'prominent among the younger Society women of England who are not content to be "butterflies" She is intensely interested in child welfare.

It is during the first few years of life that a child's brain develops most rapidly. It grows more at that time than at any other period of life. Also during the first seven years the child is more open to suggestion and more pliable to outside influences than at any subsequent stage, which makes one realise that these first early years are, perhaps, the most important of all in the training of the child. The time lost then can rarely be made up later, and mistakes made are apt to leave impressions which are never subsequently eradicated.

A very famous religious order well known for its understanding of the processes of education has said: "If you give us the child for the first seven years of its life, you may do what you will with it afterwards." The Mother s Tart * I Mie importance of these early -*- years suggests that the mother is the most important factor in her child's development; for it is in the nursery days that good or bad foundations are laid. Some mothers are far too much inclined to keep their children babies, thus hampering their development from babyhood to childhood. It is not often realised how much valuable time and opportunity is lost with the children of the poor whose

mothers have to go daily out to work. These children are left to look after themselves, to play in the streets, or else shut up in their houses until their mothers come back. These children, when they reach the school age, have been trained in no good habits, have little power of attention, and it is some time before they are really fit to profit by their educational instruction. Their early important years have been wasted, and they have had no fair chance to develop either physically or mentally.

iiiiiiiiiiiKiiiiiiii^iniiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiniiiiiiiriiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiciiiiiiiiiniiiiiii In The "Day Nursery IT is for these children that kindergarten and day nurseries exist, where mothers can leave them while they are out at work, knowing they will be well cared for, trained in habits of cleanliness and obedience, and given opportunities for self-ex-pression in games, action songs, and clay-modelling, which all are agreed are so important for the young child. When the day-nursery children reach school age the schoolmistresses say they are far more able to attend to their lessons and profit by their instructions than children who have had no such previous training. It is difficult to over-estimate the value of proper care and thought for these little children, and one is repaid over and over again in later years for the trouble taken during this period.

Preparing For School It is the same in many respects with the children who one day go to preparatory and public schools. There is so much that can be done in the nursery to prepare children for school life. So frequently you hear people say, "Oh! when they go to school they will soon learn not to do that," or, "School will teach them that this behaviour won't do.' That, after all, is very unfair, both to the child and to the school. It is hard on the

child who has been allowed to persist in slack, tiresome habits at home to have the difficulty of overcoming them added to the difficulties of absorbing and being absorbed by the new life at school. The first years are essentially the habit-forming years, and if habits are formed aright they should become so much second nature as to cause the child no effort as he grows older. Good habits formed in childhood will last a lifetime.