Infancy

“ And here it ought to be particularly observed that nothing is admissible, except what is appropriate to the state of infancy, calculated to exercise the physical energies, and likely, by their invigoration, to lay the basis of a sound and powerful intellect. ”

“ The rise of parenthood.—Consistently with this fact and with the argument of the previous chapter is the tendency towards the lengthening of infancy, a very characteristic condition of the evolution of the higher forms of life. This lengthening and accentuation of infancy makes for variety of development, and, as we have seen, is supremely instanced in man, where it depends upon, and makes possible, the transmutation of fixed instincts into the plastic thing we call intelligence. ”

“ We must likewise attend to the early education of our children. It is during infancy and childhood that our heads are filled with "nursery tales" and marvellous stories. They are told us by those to whose care we are early intrusted, either to frighten us into obedience, to gratify our thirst for the new and wonderful, or to while away a tedious evening. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To those who know not the sacredness of such tender connexions, or who feel not the delightful endearingness of children, the birth of an infant seems an event of little interest; but O! who that loves to contemplate the purest innocence under the purest and loveliest form, the unconscious trust and dependance of infancy, the charm of its smiles, its caresses and its slumbers, who that loves or pos{236}sesses a child can deem the mother’s and the father’s joy a trifling emotion? ”

“ After this general survey, the subject of innate tendencies may be considered through the discussion of such chapters as Drummond's "The ascent of the body," "The scaffolding left in the body," "The arrest of the body," "The dawn of mind," "The evolution of language," etc. These discussions naturally lead to a consideration of the lengthening period of human infancy, and the importance of infancy in education. This in turn leads to a brief consideration of the periods of childhood, adolescence, and maturity, largely from a biological point of view. ”

“ It is true that the legal denotation of the term infancy is "the period front a person's birth to the attainment of the age of twenty-one years," but in common speech an infant is "a child during the first two or three years of life," whilst writers on infant mortality restrict the term to the sense employed in the text. ”

“ The first age is infancy, the second boyhood, the third youth, the fourth adult age, the fifth manhood, the sixth fulness of years, the seventh old age. Thus we have the infant, the boy, the youth, the young man, the man, the elder, the aged. ”

“ The child, on the other hand, has an extremely long period of infancy, and as a result, the nervous system is so plastic that it may be moulded, fashioned and developed in almost any manner or direction, according to the will of parents and the nature of the environment. The child, consequently, may be educated. By education we mean the training and developing of desirable instincts and capacities and the inhibiting of undesirable ones so that the child may be able constantly to adjust himself to an ever-changing environment. ”

“ Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours. ”

“ There is nothing so unreasonable as infancy, excepting the maturer stages of life. ”

“ Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy. ”

“ Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ”

“ If an inborn love of children and of school-keeping are qualifications for judging of the best means of educating them, I may claim to have known something of the theory and practice best adapted to that end. ”

“ The young are growing up to maturity, the old dropping into their graves; but the infant of her affections ever remains an infant—her charge in middle life, when all her other children have left her and gone out into the world, and, amid the weakness of decay and decrepitude, the child of her old age. ”

“ Behold the new-born infant—the most helpless and imbecile of all nature’s productions—what labor, watchfulness, and care, before he comes to the maturity of manhood! how slowly do the powers of intellect expand! ”

“ The tiny infant, on whose little lips the breath of life so doubtingly hovered, lived;—lived to a vigorous maturity, to a hale old age;—lived to become the boast of his country, the wonder of his time, and the "ornament of his species." ”

“ An infant born in the smallest town of the most despised nation of the earth—an infant whose mother had not what the poorest and most wretched female in any one of our cities has, a room for birth—an infant born in a stable and laid in a manger!... ”

“ Thus are they generally suffered to run on to near the Age of Seven, with little or no Variation, except that of their Appetites gaining head of their Reason, and multiplying in proportion to the Objects which excite them. And as during that Term of Life which we distinguish by the Name of Childhood, Parents look upon the infant Reason of their Children, as incapable of producing Fruits, they are but too apt to leave that uncultivated, and to overlook, with an injudicious Contempt, their early Deviations from it. ”

“ Upon the growing boy.”
6 The little child, in his father’s house and under his father’s care, feels the stir of newborn gregarious instincts, and takes his first steps into the larger life of the world. Boyhood proper begins with the rise of impulses which make us citizens and lead us to take care of ourselves; and it ends with the rise of impulses which make us heads of families and lead us to take care of other people. Each step is an enlargement of life. ”

“ Every mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction,—to come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life—a word which signifies active relation;—and, in its highest sense, spiritual relation. ”

“ The birth of an infant into this world is its matriculation into a university, where it graduates in successive degrees. And do you know in this great school of human life, where I come with you to study the traits of our kind, that we never reach a grade that we are not influenced by what touches us? ”

“ Who of us, if he could keep afresh the feeling of awe and tenderness with which he looked on the face of his first-born infant, and felt what an undiscovered world was opened to him, who would ever need to learn his duty? What a work it is, how ceaseless, how growing at each step, how delicate in all its adaptations, how asking all our love, our thoughtfulness, our patience! ”

“ On the psychological side our knowledge of infant life is almost nil.... A prominent professor of education once said to us, “You will find when you have taught as many children as I have that you can do nothing with a child until it is over five years of age.” Our own view after studying 246many hundreds of infants is that one can make or break the child so far as its personality is concerned long before the age of five is reached. ”

“ These people “believe that an infant is the child, not of its parents, but of the spirits, and in this belief they go through the following formalities. As soon as an infant is born it is bathed and dressed, laid upon a rice-sieve, and placed—by the grandmother if present, if not, by the next near female relative—at the head of the stairs or of the ladder leading to the house. ”

“ For when the infant first wakes to consciousness, and commences its converse with the world, the first ray of knowledge, and the earliest of its discriminations, beam from a mother’s eye; and the emotions of its little heart receive their modulation from the melody of a mother’s voice. ”

“ To hold one's sleeping baby, watch one's children take their first tottering steps and hear them say their first words, boast with pride about their first home run or first music recital, and witness firsthand their journey into adulthood—these are some of the most precious rewards of parenthood. ”

“ The culture of young minds, in their more advanced stages, has indeed been entrusted to me, and I have loved the office. But never before, have I been so blest, as to nurture the infant, when as a germ quickened by Spring, it opens the folding-doors of its little heart, and puts forth the thought, the preference, the affection, like filmy radicles, or timid tendrils, seeking where to twine. ”

“ The little child from three to six is interested in sun, moon, and stars, in day and darkness, in rain, snow, wind, in flowers and trees, as well as in animals and birds. Natural, spontaneous questions regarding the biological origin and development of life are asked between three and eight, and this is the period especially recommended for teaching the child of the mother’s part in his prenatal care, and the value of the father’s share, and thereby fostering his wholesome attitude of gratitude, and his respect for all motherhood and fatherhood. ”

“ As was noticed in the preceding sermon, the word rendered 'sons' might more accurately be translated 'children.' If so, we may fairly say, 'We are the children of God now—and if we are children now, we shall be grown up some time.' Childhood leads to maturity. The infant becomes a man. ”

“ An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. ”

“ He begins with the newborn infant, and demands that, if possible, it shall not be taken from its mother. He sets his face strongly against the custom of committing the child during the tenderest and most impressible period of its whole life to the care and companionship of an ignorant nursemaid, or of servants who have not the mother’s instinct, or the knowledge that can tell them how to behave in its presence. ”

“ When we examine the matter a little farther in regard to infants, we perceive, that all the little arts used by the mother or the nurse, to "amuse the child," as it is called, are nothing more than means employed to excite this reiteration of ideas by the mind. A toy, for example, is presented to the infant, and his attention is fixed upon it. ”

“ We thus have reason to connect education, family government, together with the rich emotional capabilities, the complex intellectual powers that follow in their train, with the apparently insignificant fact that the human infant enters life in a much less mature condition than the young of other species. ”

“ An infant understands to a certain extent, and as I believe at a very early-period, the meaning or feelings of those who tend him, by the expression of their features. There can hardly be a doubt about this with respect to smiling; and it seemed to me that the infant whose biography I have here given understood a compassionate expression at a little over five months old. When 6 months and 11 days old he certainly showed sympathy with his nurse on her pretending to cry. ”

“ Now this generation of children, when they come to maturity, marry—the earlier the more dependent they are and the less serious their views of life—and begin the story of their own parents, and their own childhood, all over again. ”

“ Answer child’s questions regarding origin of life reverently, seriously, honestly, with emphasis upon nurturing and on social coöperation of mother and father; give a bias toward the social and spiritual relations of family life, and a suggestion of the future parental responsibilities of the child. ”

“ Then the mental education begins also at birth. The baby is building his brain by everything he sees and does, and it is the mother’s duty to see that this brain-building goes on in accordance with the law of his nature. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Infants are the poetry of the world; the fresh flowers of our hearts and homes; little conjurers, with the magic of their natural ways, working by their spells what delights and enriches all ranks and {58} equalizes the different classes of society. Every infant comes into the world, like a delegated prophet, the harbinger and herald of good tidings, whose office it is to make young again hearts well-nigh wearied with the cares of years. ”

“ You take a wretched puling infant, just like fifty thousand other wretched infants, and you go and fix it for life with some sort of name that you think sounds pretty, or that its grandmother or its maiden aunt had, quite oblivious of the fact that Nature may not have intended it for anything of the kind. ”

“ 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. ”