"Please don't excite the Child"

Ladies' Mirror, Volume V, Issue 2, 2 August 1926, Page 71

"Please don't excite the Child"

'By "A Mother of Three"

f won't have him talked to or played with,” said young Mrs. Gray, in firm and solemn tones. “I want him to have as tranquil a babyhood as possible. I want his little brain to develop like some beautiful flower; to develop untouched, unhindered. If you meddle with the petals of an opening rose, what happens? The blossom is spoiled for ever!”

We sat round and murmured approval, applause, sympathy. All of us, that is, except Grandpa Gray. Grandpa Gray is incorrigible. Young Mrs. Gray tries to keep him in the background; what business had he at a tea-party of earnest mothers? But there he was, just come in from his beloved garden; and he delivered himself in these words: "That's all very pretty, Edith, my dear. But a rose is a vegetable. You wouldn't think it, but it is. And this baby of yours is an animal. There's no getting away from it. You can't treat animals like you treat vegetables. You ask old Til) down on the mat there."

We all looked at Tib, who is five years old, and lias had nearly forty children. All of us, at least, except young Mrs. Gray. "Really. Dad was what she said. "Out I saw Grandpa Gray's point. "*-* I hadn't the. moral courage to say so, but I saw it, sure enough. Tib does not treat her babies as though they were vegetables. She plays with them, talks to them, spars with them; in a word, she stirs them up. Sometimes. I fear, she thoroughly excites them. Whereas Mrs. Gray's slogan is : "Please don't excite the child."

Up to a certain point, of course, she is right. A baby who is constantly played with becomes nervous, irritable, exacting, and (very often) dyspeptic. Jogging and jumping and tickling arc bad for any infant. So is any kind of interruption of a

baby s "long, long thoughts”for instance, the habit of disturbing a perfectly good wide-awake baby to "make him smile.” Any reasonable being will agree that the more a child can be taught to amuse itself and to take pleasure in common sights and sounds, instead of expecting to be entertained, the better for itself and for all who have to do with it.

Out aren't we perhaps inclined to •*-' press this point a little too far nowadays? Aren't we in danger (horrid thought) of becoming selfconscious and pedantic in our relations with babies? People like Grandpa Gray, and average healthy young fathers, and ordinary aunts, and schoolgirls, and dear old-fash-ioned folk all the world over, from Indian ayahs to seaside land-ladies —do they not all instinctively "talk to" and "play with" babies whenever they find them? Are their instincts inevitably wrong? Are we to go on dismissing eager little maidservants and under-nurses because we can't somehow make them understand that Baby is NOT to be TALKED TO?

“Might as well not have a baby,” was Grandpa Gray’s disgusted comment when the More Excellent Way of his daughter-in-law had been thoroughly expounded. And one feels a good deal of sympathy.

Seriously, though, I often wonder if these babies who are shielded from every sudden noise, every external "stimulus," will grow up any the better for it. I know of a baby reared on these lines who, at a year old, is now so hyper-sensitive that the slightest attempt at a little "fun" or romping makes him quite ill with excitement. I know of other babies who are decidedly backward in mental development as a direct result (or so it seems to me) of unnaturally quiet and solitary times in early infancy. I see more "nerviness" among sheltered only children of well-to-do folk than among poor people's children, who have been used to noise and racket from their earliest days. And this brings me to the very crux of my argument: the natural environment of a baby —a family of children. Now, with a family of children, utter quiet is impossible. What is more, they love to play with the baby, and. short of locking them out of the room, you can't stop them. The nicest and most normal babies I have known have generally been the babies that started life with, two or three brothers or sisters all ready provided for them. Which reminds me again of Tib and her kittens; and of Grandpa Gray's remarks upon the difference between animals and vegetables—between babies and roses!