DISCUSSION

1. How does embryonic life begin?

2. What is characteristic of the cell?

3. What secret does it hold?

4. What is the princ.i.p.al need of the embryo?

5. State fully how the blood supply may be vitiated and what terrible consequences may follow.

6. How should the mother be cared for during this critical period?

7. How may mother drudgery in the home be reduced to a minimum?

8. What directions does Mrs. West give for the care of the mother? (See bulletin, "Parental Care," by Mrs. West, which may be had free for the asking. Address Children's Bureau, Department of Labor, Washington, D.C.)

9. _References_: The following books will be found helpful: "The Training of the Human Plant," by Burbank; "The Right of the Child to be well born,"

by Dawson; "Being Well Born," by Guyer.

If these are available, they may be circulated through the parents'

library.

THE PLASTIC AGE OF CHILDHOOD

_Prolonged Infancy and the Long Period of Plasticity in the Infant Make Training and Education Possible_

The child is born the weakest and most helpless of creatures. Unlike the young of most animals, which within a few hours after birth move about and perform most of the movements necessary to their existence, the infant is so helpless that all its needs must be supplied by parents, otherwise it would perish. Immediately after birth a colt or calf can walk or run almost as fast as its mother; the chick just out of its sh.e.l.l can run about and peck at its food. The child at one year of age can barely totter around and all of its needs must be looked after by others. Moreover, the infant at birth is practically blind and deaf and the senses of taste and smell and touch just sufficiently developed to enable it to take nourishment.

This slowness of development, or prolonged infancy as it is called, is of vast significance to the child. It marks at once the chief distinction between the human infant and the young of all other animals. It makes possible a long period of adjustment and training which otherwise would be impossible. Most animals are born with a nervous system highly developed and with most of the adjustment to the environment ready made, so that after a short time all the activities of life are perfected and thereafter automatic action and instinct rule their lives. Because of this lack of infancy and absence of plasticity of the nervous system, animals are little more than machines that perform their task with unvarying regularity in response to outside stimulations. Animals, therefore, are unable to adjust themselves to a change in environment, and as a result their lives are in constant danger. In fact, countless millions of the lower forms of life are perishing every hour because of the lack of possibility of adjustment.

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.

Fiske, in "The Meaning of Infancy," Chapter 1, says: "The bird known as the fly-catcher no sooner breaks the egg than it will snap at and catch a fly.

This action is not very simple, but because it is something the bird is always doing, being indeed one of the very few things that this bird ever does, the nervous connections needful for doing it are all established before birth, and nothing but the presence of the fly is required to set the operation going. With such creatures as the codfish, the turtle, or the fly-catcher, there is nothing that can properly be called infancy. With them, the sphere of education is extremely limited. They get their education before they are born. In other words, heredity does everything for them, education nothing.

"All mammals and most birds have a period of babyhood that is not very long, but it is on the whole longer with the most intelligent creatures.

The period of helpfulness is a period of plasticity. The creature's career is no longer exclusively determined by heredity. There is a period after birth when its character can be slightly modified by what happens to it after birth, that is, by its experience as an individual. It is no longer necessary for each generation to be exactly like that which has preceded.

The door is opened through which the capacity for progress can enter.

Horses and dogs, bears and elephants, parrots and monkeys, are all teachable to some extent, and we have even heard of a learned pig, and of learned a.s.ses there has been no lack in the world.

"But this educability of the higher mammals and birds is, after all, quite limited. Conservatism still continues in fashion. One generation is much like another. It would be easy for foxes to learn to climb trees, and many a fox might have saved his life by so doing; yet quick-witted as he is, this obvious device has never occurred to him."

The vital problem with parents is how to fill this period of plasticity, how to provide an educative environment of the right kind.

Luther Burbank, in "The Training of the Human Plant," expresses complete confidence in the power of the environment through appropriate training to fashion the normal child, just as he could a plant, into a most delightful and beautiful specimen of its kind. He says: "Pick out any trait you want in your child, granted that he is a normal child, be it honesty, fairness, purity, lovableness, industry, thrift, what not. By surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and your own heart, by giving the closest communion with nature, by feeding this child well-balanced, nutritious food, by giving it all that is implied in healthful environmental influences, and by doing all in love, you can thus cultivate in the child and fix there for all its life all of these traits, and on the other side, give him foul air to breathe, keep him in a dusty factory or an unwholesome school-room or a crowded tenement up under the hot roof; keep him away from the sunshine, take away from him music and laughter and happy faces; cram his little brains with so-called knowledge; let him have vicious a.s.sociates in his hours out of school, and at the age of ten you have fixed in him the opposite traits. You have, perhaps, seen a prairie fire sweep through the tall gra.s.s across a plain. Nothing can stand before it, it must burn itself out. That is what happens when you let weeds grow up in your child's life, and then set fire to them by wrong environment."

Mr. Burbank is probably over-enthusiastic in his belief that natural education can do everything for the child; but it is certain that environment does exercise a powerful influence, during the plastic age, in determining his character.

LESSON IV

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Compare the helplessness of the infant at birth with the ability of the young of other animals.

2. At one year of age, what is the comparison?

3. What is the significance of prolonged infancy respecting (a) possibility of adjustment to environment, (b) possibility of training and education, (c) possibility of profiting from experience, (d) the relation to heredity?

4. What advantage is it that man is born with the germs of many capacities instead of with a few activities that are perfectly developed?

5. What is the chief function of education?

6. What does Burbank say respecting the possibilities of training?

7. What common-sense training should every child be given during this period?

Good books, for further study on these points, are: "The Care and Training of the Child," by Kerr, and "Fundamentals of Child Study," by Kirkpatrick.

If these volumes are in the library or otherwise available, it may be well to have some member read and give a brief report on one or the other of them.

THE NEEDS OF THE INFANT

_The Infant's First Needs Are Physical, and May Be Summed up in the Word Nutrition_

The new-born child differs in nearly all particulars from the adult. It is very unfortunate that the child in the past has been regarded as a miniature adult and treated like "a little man."

The structure of muscle and bone and the proportion of various parts of the body differ materially; the bones of the child for some time are soft and largely composed of cartilages which may be easily bent out of shape and permanently injured. The ratio of some of the parts is about as follows:

Height of head of adult to that of infant--2 to 1 Length of body of adult to that of infant--3 to 1 Length of arm of adult to that of infant--4 to 1 Length of leg of adult to that of infant--5 to 1

Besides these easily observed differences, there are others of far more consequence not easily seen, such as differences in the size, structure and activity of vital organs, and in the almost total lack of nervous development in the child as compared with the adult. All of these things make of the child an individual so different from the adult that he must be treated in accordance with his own nature and needs and with little regard to the way in which an adult is considered.

Practically everything that the infant needs may be summed up in the one word _nutrition_. A sufficient supply of pure milk from the mother is the one supreme requirement. If this is a.s.sured, everything else is almost certain to follow. Of course, the little one must be kept at the right temperature, which is comparatively high during the first few months. An abundance of pure, fresh air also must be supplied to both mother and child. It is wise for both to spend much time in the open air and to sleep on a screened porch.

The child should be kept quiet and permitted to sleep as long as nature dictates. It is a positive sin to s.n.a.t.c.h the child from its bed, toss it up and down and screech at it for the edification of curious visitors. Kissing the child in the mouth should also be positively prohibited. The use of patent medicines likewise, or even many of the "old mother remedies" should never be indulged except on the advice of a competent physician. The needs of the child for some time are strictly physical. Inner forces are at work which cannot be a.s.sisted except indirectly through care of the physical organism. So far as nervous or mental development is concerned the rule should be, "Hands off, let Nature take her course."