Child development

“ Moreover, since the early acquisitions of the child are the bases upon which all further knowledge and practice are founded, we must realise how important these first experiences are for the whole future development of the child. Further, we have seen that all education—all acquiring and organising of experience in early life—must be motived by the felt desire to satisfy some instinctive need of the child's nature, and that it is these instinctive needs which determine the nature and scope of his early activities. ”

“ It is true that those faculties of the mind by which we apprehend distant things and govern our conduct by them are not yet developed in the child; but they are to be developed, and the aid of the parent will be of the greatest service in promoting the development of them. At proper times, then, the pleasures and advantages of knowing how to read should be described to the child, and presented moreover in the most attractive form. The proper time for doing this would be when no lesson is in question— during a ride or a walk, or in the midst of a story, or while looking at a book of pictures. ”

“ During the first eight years of life, development is very rapid and not always relatively continuous. Sometimes it takes leaps, and sometimes appears for a time to be quiescent. But roughly the first stage, of a child's developing life ends when he can walk, eat more or less ordinary food, and is independent of his mother. At this point the Nursery School stage begins: the child is learning for himself his world by experience, and through play he chooses his raw material in an atmosphere of freedom. ”

“ The valuable services of surveys, guidance clinics, and school psychologists are clearly manifested in this group of cases.
4. The cases that have achieved most contented and socially useful adaptation are those in which parents, teachers, and principals have made prompt use of special gift identification, have sought educational guidance, have personally fostered and supervised the child's development and the solution of his adjustment problems, or have taken advantage of such experimental classes for exceptional children as the schools have offered at the time. ”

“ We watch with delight the marvelous development of the little mind keeping pace with the growth of bodily strength and dexterity. We are reluctant to see the day drawing near when the child must begin his long course of training in school. Sometimes we fail to recognize the fact that before school days come the child has already received a considerable part of his education; that the habits which will make or mar his future are often firmly implanted and in a fair way to become masters of the young life. ”

“ Education, the developing of the self-activity of the child, should begin in the first few days of life, and should be naturally fostered through the careful selection of every factor in his environment as well as through consistent cultivation adapted to his stage of development.
The Biological Basis of Education. Education is possible only because the baby is born so helpless and plastic, with many instincts, with the nervous system great in its possibilities but incomplete in its development, and with few habits formed. ”

“ Problems of babyhood; building a constitution, forming a character. **$1.25. Holt.
This two-fold study of the controllable aspects of child development furnishes conclusions reached from the standpoint of the physician, the teacher, the mother and the father. “It is hoped that thru its frank and practical treatment of some of the many problems presented by parenthood it may give courage to withstand the criticism of tradition and convention, strength to resist the modern tendency to indulgence, faith to fight for the child’s birthright of a sane mind in a sane body.” ”

“ Formerly too, the most attentive and patient observation of the progressive development of the mental faculties of a child were necessary to enable a parent to adapt his education to the sphere of life in which nature had destined him to move. ”

“ Parents should view their child in his necessary connection, in his obvious and living relations to the past, present, and future development of [141] humanity, in order to bring the education of the child into harmony with the past, present and future requirements of the development of humanity and of the race.... ”

“ ADOLESCENCE The Adolescent Period Is a Time of "Storm and Stress," When the Chief Crises of Life Arise
Most writers on psychology recognize in the life history of the child several more or less distinct periods of development. The child is almost a different being at different levels of his growth. Each period is marked by peculiar physical, mental and moral characteristics which demand specific treatment. ”

“ The intelligent worker with children in the home must be acquainted with what is normal and usual at any stage, in child anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Only with such knowledge is it possible to make intelligent observations of the development of the individual child, and to supply a normal environment and guidance suited to his stage of development. ”

“ One point which is established beyond all question is the remarkable influence which environment and nurture exercise upon the development and growth of the child, as well as upon the standard of physical excellence attained by the adult According to the statistics supplied to the British Association Committee, children vary to the extent of 5 in. ”

“ At the age of eight or nine, when the child emerges from infancy into early boyhood, he begins gradually and imperfectly to leave behind the characteristics of childhood and, with the development of his mental and physical processes, he acquires the distinguishing traits of the individualistic period. ”

“ Without any attempts to teach it, the child would walk when it reaches the proper stage of development, because it has inherited the capacity to do so, and because it is urged to do so in imitation of others. ”

“ It is a great help merely to know how difficult the task of training is, and that training there must be if we are to have a civilized child. We must take thought and plan for the education and training of our children. The task of education is in part one of changing human nature. This is no light task. It is one that requires, in the case of each child, some twenty years of hard, patient, persistent work.
Individual Development. Heredity is a corollary of evolution. Individual development is intimately related to racial development. ”

“ THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND.—The mother should read suitable articles in newspapers or good books, keep her mind occupied. If she cultivates a desire for intellectual improvement, the same desire will be more or less manifested in the growth and development of the child. ”

“ The educator is to "bring the child into relations and surroundings in all respects adapted to him" but affording a minimum of opportunity of injury, "guarding and protecting" but not interfering, unless he is certain that healthy development has already been interrupted. ”

“ But one is almost as far from real development as the other. Both are very far from the “firm, sensitive, and sure knowledge” which comes from using things for ends which appeal to the child. The things that the child uses in his household occupations, in gardening, in caring for animals, in his plays and69 games, have real simplicity and completeness of meaning for him. ”

“ Meanwhile, of course, the fertilisation of the child’s mind should also be continued by other educative measures—as the maintenance of an inspiring environment, ready and intelligent response to the child’s innumerable questions, and skilful guidance of his thoughts to subjects which it is especially desirable for him to study. ”

“ Our chapter of accidents here leads us to the great underlying field of education. Say that the child lives to grow up, during these wholly home-bound years; in spite of wrong clothing, wrong feeding, and the many perils we fatuously call "incident to babyhood" (when they are only incident to our lack of proper provision for babyhood) . If he battles through his infancy and early childhood successfully, what has he gained from his early environment in education? What are the main facts of life, as impressed upon every growing child by his home surroundings? ”

“ My mother used to say that the promise as to training up a child in the way he should go was not to be fulfilled in youth, but in age, and as my years advanced, I began to find that the training of childhood counted for more and more. ”

“ Putting into practice this first principle of education through the suggestive power of a parental example characterised by correctness of speech, soundness of thought, and the moral qualities of cheerfulness, unselfishness, kindness, politeness, industriousness, and the other virtues, the greatest care must also be taken to “fertilise” the child’s mind through proper adjustment of his physical surroundings. Nothing is more certain—and least appreciated by the average parent—than the fact that every detail in the child’s material environment is of suggestive significance to him. ”

“ Now, the ‘New Education’ deals entirely with individuals; not with children, but with the child; the faulty habit is supplanted, observe the word, the desirable habit produced, within a definite period, say a month or so, and then the parents’ easy work is to keep the child upon the lines of habit thus produced. ”

“ Without going to any such extreme as this, we can easily see, on reflection, how vast an influence on the ideas and conceptions, as well as on the principles of action in mature years, must be exerted by the nature and character of the images which the period of infancy and childhood impresses upon the mind. All parents should, therefore, feel that it is not merely the present welfare and happiness of their child that is concerned in their securing to him a tranquil and happy childhood, but that his capacity for enjoyment through life is greatly dependent upon it. ”

“ If observations of this kind were made with care and duly recorded, the science of education would have at its disposal a considerable quantity of material, from which, no doubt, valuable generalisations might be deduced. Every mother, especially, should keep a diary in which to note the successive phases of her child’s physical, mental, and moral growth, with particular attention to the moral; so that parents may be enabled to make a timely forecast of their children’s character, to foster in them every germ of good, and by prompt precautions to suppress, or at least restrain, what is bad. ”

“ At the conclusion of the elementary school, at the age of 14, the boys and girls are still children; they are developing, not developed, in either body or mind. They have not yet reached, in the main, the period of rapid acceleration of physical growth, intellectual expansion, or moral development ”

“ We propose to dwell, hereafter, somewhat minutely upon the all-important subject of infant training, and in a way to show the care and attention which both parents should bestow upon each child, so as to provide proper food, clothing, and the means of self-culture and amusement, and absolute control over it at the earliest possible period—the earlier the better, so as to secure "a sound mind in a sound body." ”

“ For, as psychologists are insisting more and more emphatically, the health, happiness, and efficiency of adult life depend preponderantly on the home influences of early childhood; and, obviously, in a home where the parental attention can be concentrated on a single child, better results should be attained than when the work of training involves a division of the attention among several children. ”

“ In encouraging the activity of children, and in guiding the direction of it in their hours of play, we must not expect to make it available for useful results, other than that of promoting their own physical development and health. ”

“ So to live that their children shall be strong and happy is a motive that a child can appreciate, and it can become the most powerful incentive for hygienic living, for industry, education, for social purity that is positive—noble in thought as well as restrictive in action. Trained thus through childhood, boys and girls will be prepared to meet with high-mindedness and moral stamina the storm and stress of adolescence ”

“ As the “formation of the mind must be begun very early, and the temper, in particular, requires the most judicious attention,” a child’s training should be undertaken, not from the time it is sent to school, but almost from the moment of its birth. Therefore a few words as to the relations between parents and children are an indispensable introduction to the larger subject of education, properly so called, which prepares the young for social life. ”

“ All children should be examined at intervals by a physician, and a record kept of their development. I measure my little boy every year. I know how he is growing. If he has been subject to too much excitement, there will be larger relative growth of the head, and we adjust his manner of life accordingly. The object of education is to develop the boy, not to put him through so much of arithmetic or so much language. ”

“ CHAPTER IX THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL IDEALS Change from childish to adult friends—Influence of favorite teachers—What children wish or plan to do or be—Property and the money sense—Social judgments—The only child—First social organizations—Student life—Associations for youth, controlled by adults.
In a few aspects we are already able to trace the normal psychic outgrowing of the home of childhood as its interests irradiate into an ever enlarging environment. Almost the only duty of small children is habitual and prompt obedience. ”