Читать книгу The Nervous Child онлайн

12 страница из 22

It is in the second and third years of the child's life that the rapidity of the development of the mental processes is most apparent, and it is with that age that we may begin a closer examination. At first sight it might seem more reasonable to adopt a strictly chronological order, and to start with the infant from the day of his birth. Since, however, we can only interpret the mind of the child by our knowledge of our own mental processes, the study of the older child and of the later stages is in reality the simpler task. The younger the infant, the greater the difficulties become, so that our task is not so much to trace the development of a process from simple and early forms to those which are later and more complex, as to follow a track which is comparatively plain in later childhood, but grows faint as the beginnings of life are approached.

At the age, then, of two or three the first quality of the child which may arrest our attention is his extreme imitativeness. Not that the imitation on his part is in any way conscious; but like a mirror he reflects in every action and in every word all that he sees and hears going on around him. We must recognise that in these early days his words and actions are not an independent growth, with roots in his own consciousness, but are often only the reflection of the words and actions of others. How completely speech is imitative is shown by the readiness with which a child contracts the local accent of his birthplace. The London parents awake with horror to find their baby an indubitable Cockney; the speech of the child bred beyond the Tweed proclaims him a veritable Scot. Again, some people are apt to adopt a somewhat peremptory tone in addressing little children. Often they do not trouble to give to their voices that polite or deferential inflection which they habitually use when speaking to older people. Listen to a party of nurses in the Park addressing their charges. As if they knew that their commands have small chance of being obeyed, they shout them with incisive force. "Come along at once when I tell you," they say. And the child faithfully reflects it all back, and is heard ordering his little sister about like a drill sergeant, or curtly bidding his grandmother change her seat to suit his pleasure. If we are to have pretty phrases and tones of voice, mothers must see to it that the child habitually hears no other. Again, mothers will complain that their child is deaf, or, at any rate, that he has the bad habit of responding to all remarks addressed to him by saying, "What?" or, worse still, "Eh?" Often enough the reason that he does so is not that the child is deaf, nor that he is particularly slow to understand, but simply that he himself speaks so indistinctly that no matter what he says to the grown-up people around him, they bend over him and themselves utter the objectionable word.