Child's mind

“ In view, then, of the extreme suggestibility of childhood, and in view of the fact that under ordinary circumstances the impressions most forcibly impinging on a child’s mind are those emanating from his parents, a good parental example is the first essential in utilising the power of suggestion as an aid in education. ”

“ She should know how to incite the child to effort through his desire of approbation, of excelling, of advancing, his desire of knowledge, his love of his parents, his sense of duty, in such a way that no one set of motives be called unduly into play to the injury of the child's character. ”

“ But this progress to a higher interpretation of the 'way' brings with it a revelation of our ignorance of the 'child.' We begin to see how little we really know of a child's mind, its capacity, its direction, and rate of growth, the lines of least resistance into it for each element of instruction. ”

“ WHOEVER would watch the growth of the human mind must first make the soul of the child the object of a methodical investigation. The new-born child in its pitiful helplessness is already an object of extraordinary interest for the psychologist; yet it seems incomprehensible that the progressive unfolding of the senses of the infant—of his will, his reason, his passions, his virtues—has not engaged the attention of any but his relatives. ”

“ We should wonder at this peculiarity in childhood, if we were not accustomed to see in all, even the most minute among the laws of nature, a beneficent design, by which preparation is made for a future state of being; and here, in the demand of the child for a narrative which has often been repeated, we recognise a provision for impressing the plastic nature of its mind and feelings, with facts which shall never be effaced. ”

“ Indeed, the younger the child is, within reasonable limits, the more susceptible he seems to be to the power of the imagination, and the more easily his mind and heart are reached and influenced through this avenue. At a very early period the realities of actual existence and the phantasms of the mind seem inseparably mingled, and it is only after much experience and a considerable development of his powers, that the line of distinction between them becomes defined. ”

“ To turn the thoughts away from self, to occupy the mind with new scenes, new amusements, new pursuits, to call forth by degrees self-control, and to let the child perceive rather by your manner than by what is actually said that the parents have not been duped by all his past vagaries ”

“ CHILD PSYCHOLOGY A SYSTEMATIC knowledge of the powers and limitations of the human mind and soul before maturity and the characteristic changes which they undergo at puberty will throw a flood of light on the boy-problem. ”

“ There is coming to be a greater sympathy between teachers and learners, as there is a clearer knowledge of the way the mind grows. But even yet one may detect a certain note of condescension in the treatment of the characteristics of early childhood. The child, we say, has eager curiosity, a [Pg 182] myth-making imagination, a sensitiveness to momentary impressions, a desire to make things and to destroy things, a tendency to imitate what he admires. ”

“ The unfolding, growing, developing mind of a child naturally asks questions. It is for this reason that a child is said to be an animated interrogation point. Some of the questions of a child may perplex a philosopher, tax the patience of a Job, or embarrass a brass monkey; but the naturalness and sincerity of the child demand honesty, frankness and wisdom on the part of parents. ”

“ After you come to a clear appreciation of the value of imagination in the child's development you will, instead of suppressing his feelings, look around for ways of encouraging this activity of his mind. You will see a new value in fairy tales and fables and a new significance in every turn of his fancy.
IV. THE LIES CHILDREN TELL None of the petty vices of childhood appears to shock adults so much as lying; and none is more widespread among children—and among adults. ”

“ This is how we find children—with intelligence more acute, logic more keen, observing powers more alert, moral sensibilities more quick, love and faith and hope more abounding; in fact, in all points like as we are, only much more so, but absolutely ignorant of the world and its belongings, of us and our ways, and, above all, of how to control and direct and manifest the infinite possibilities with which they are born.
Our conception of a child rules our relations towards him. ”

“ CHILD. Why will parents use that expression? What right have you to have a favorite child? The All-Father maketh his sun to shine alike upon the daisy and the rose. Where would you be, were His care measured by your merits or deserts? Is your child none the less your child, that nature has denied him a fluent tongue, or forgotten her cunning, when, in careless mood, she fashioned his limbs? Because beauty beams not from the eye, is there no intelligence there? Because the rosy flush mantles not the pale cheek, does the blood never tingle at your coldness or neglect? ”

“ Just so irrational, inconsequent, loving and heroic, and generally tiresome to the grown-up world were our own impulses that long ago, on which we look back with tenderness, but seldom with complacency. If we rise, after reading, The Story of a Child [See Appendix A] , a little more humble, a little more diffident, ready to believe more than we see, why, it will do us no harm, and should bless and help the children. ”

“ To seize every opportunity to unfold thought in a natural way, to consider duty, to awaken and keep alive conscience, and cultivate a mutual confidence and forbearance between the young, should be the aim in such a little world as a school. The flow of happy spirits should be unchecked, and no deep memory of faults should remain with a child, unless they are of the deepest dye, such as falsehood and selfishness. ”

“ To nourish a child daily with loving, right, and noble ideas we believe to be the parent's next duty. The child having once received the Idea will assimilate it in his own way, and work it into the fabric of his life; and a single sentence from his mother's lips may give him a bent that will make him, or may tend to make him, painter or poet, statesman or philanthropist. The object of lessons should be in the main twofold: to train a child in certain mental habits, as attention, accuracy, promptness, etc., and to nourish him with ideas which may bear fruit in his life. ”

“ Each has within himself an intelligent guide, a reasoner, a questioner and one to answer questions.
With little children the one who has them in charge most closely must be all this and more. She must understand the proportions and relations of things and wherein they touch—the bearing and trend of mental and physical phenomena. She must furnish self-poise to the nervous child and stimulus to the phlegmatic one. ”

“ How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes of the mother and infant, mutually emparadised in child's play (that mutually educating communion of trust and love, by which the child is put into gradual possession of his body, and joyous consciousness of his individuality) ,—how is it, I say, that we find education has lost its ideal, and as soon as the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom, an antagonism has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we find ourselves to be, as soon as we come to reflect? ”

“ We endeavour that all our teaching and treatment of children shall be on the lines of nature, their nature and ours, for we do not recognise what is called 'Child-nature.' We believe that children are human beings at their best and sweetest, but also at their weakest and least wise. ”

“ What can the child have, if she spends her life here? No education, no pleasure,—nothing. Nice little place, no doubt, for those that are used to it, but—Lord! a child that has the whole world before her, to pick and choose! ”

“ For all that surrounds a child, all that it sees, hears, feels or touches, helps to create its moral and intellectual nature. See then how fortunate were my first six years. My physical being was well cared for by loving parents in a sweet orderly home, and my mental life well fed by books stimulating the imagination. ”

“ Thus, O parents, could your children, on whom you force in tender years forms and aims against their nature, and who, therefore, walk with you in morbid and unnatural deformity—thus could your children, too, unfold in beauty and develop in harmony."
At first play is activity for the sake of activity, not for the sake of results, "of which the child has as yet no idea." Very soon, however, having man's special capacity of learning through experience, the child does gather ideas. ”

“ You need to go back and pick up again a part of your child nature, with its careless and cheerful type of thought. "The minds of the group of children at play are unconsciously concentrated in drawing to their bodies a current of playful thought. Place a child by itself, deprive it of its companions, and soon it will mope and become slow of movement. ”

“ It is true the child in certain measure is a repetition of the child nature of all times, but at the same time, and this in a far higher degree, an absolutely new synthesis of soul qualities, with new possibilities for sorrow and joy, strength and weakness. ”

“ What an unnatural thing it is to confine a child several hours a day to his lessons; why, you might as well put a colt in harness, and make him work for his living! A child is made for play; his roguish little eye, his lithe figure, his antics, and his drollery, all point out that he is cut out for play—that it is as necessary to his existence as the food he eats, and as the air he breathes! ”

“ I have had pupils with as violent passions, as determined will, as much intellectual insight, and a temperament that made every emotion as keen as the stroke of a Damascus blade, but a sensibility that would respond to the gentlest touch, and a conscience whose stings were like a sharp goad. This keenness of nature made childhood's experience like that of a matured mind that had seen and felt the consequences of evil ”

“ As the intelligence of the child awakens, it no longer perceives in the lazy, dreamy way in which the infant is conscious of a light; it apperceives, takes into itself the object, the word, the thought, and grows thereby. ”

“ There are, fortunately, many parents who arrive at an understanding of the nature of the child through sympathetic insight, through quick observation, through the application of sound sense and the results of experience to the problems that arise. ”

“ VII.--The Child Gets Knowledge By Means Of His Senses
Nature's Teaching.--Watch a child standing at gaze at some sight new to him--a plough at work, for instance--and you will see he is as naturally occupied as is a babe at the breast; he is, in fact, taking in the intellectual food which the working faculty of his brain at this period requires. In his early years the child is all eyes; he observes, or, more truly, he perceives, calling sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing to his aid, that he may learn all that is discoverable by him about every new thing that comes under his notice. ”

“ The child's interest in expressions of face, its subtle, unconscious responses to the moods and to the current general nervous conditions of its nurse or mother, its delights, and later its terrors in the contemplation of strange persons, these things go far beyond what the mere association of ideas can warrant or explain. ”

“ Some of you, I daresay, are unconscious of this latent power. We don't expect much of a child, do we? A child eats and plays and sleeps. But children of the tenderest years have performed amazing, incredible deeds. ”

“ They enter into spiritual combination with it, never afterward to be wholly decompounded,"—also with a previously quoted assertion, founded on actual experiments, that "it is the medium in which a child is habitually immersed" which helps most in forming the child's character. ”

“ The will of the child is pitifully feeble, weaker in the children of the weak, stronger in the children of the strong, but hardly ever to be counted upon as a power in education.
The nature of the child--his human nature--being the sum of what he is as a human being, and what he is in right of the stock he comes of, and what he is as the result of his own physical and mental constitution--this nature is incalculably strong. ”

“ Children, abstracted from the homely details of their management, and the anxiety which they always occasion, are a delightful study—a study, I maintain, fitted alike to engage the speculations of the philosophic, and the affections of the benevolent, mind. I cannot, I must say, form the idea of a man of extended views and sympathies, who does not like children. ”

“ If it faithfully depict the psychology of child life, of adolescence, of dawning maturity, devoid though it be of plot and, as a whole, of dramatic interest, it may yet, as a typical human portrait, justify itself; may aid the young to a better understanding of their own natures, and help those no longer young to a keener remembrance, a deeper sympathy, and a broader tolerance concerning the struggles, problems, and complexities that beset the young lives around them. ”

“ When given freedom and self-activity and self-expression, the child's philosophy appears also. And it is the inner truth of the tale rather than the outer forms of sense and shapes of beauty which, when suited to the little child, appeals to this child-philosophy and makes the deepest impression upon him. ”