It gives activity as well as strength to the muscles or moving powers, and has many other important advantages. There is some danger, according to Dr. Pierson [Footnote: See his Lecture before the American Inst.i.tute of Instruction] of distorting the spine by playing at shuttlec.o.c.k too frequently and too long; but this will seldom be the case with little children in the nursery. Neither shuttlec.o.c.k nor any other amus.e.m.e.nt will secure their attention long enough to injure them very much.
Perhaps this exercise comes nearer to my ideas of a perfect amus.e.m.e.nt than almost any which could be named. The mind is agreeably occupied, without being fatigued; and if the amus.e.m.e.nts are proportioned to the age and strength of the child, there is very little fatigue of the body.
It gives, moreover, great practical accuracy to the eye and to the hand.
A rocking-horse is much recommended for the nursery. I have had no opportunity for observing the effects of this kind of amus.e.m.e.nt; but if it is one half as valuable as some suppose, I should be inclined to recommend it. But I am opposed to fostering in the rider lessons of cruelty, by arming him with whips and spurs. If the young are ever to learn to ride, on a living horse, the exercises of the rocking-horse will, most certainly, be a sort of preparation for the purpose.
Tops and marbles afford a great deal of rational amus.e.m.e.nt to the young; and of a very useful kind, too. Spinning a top is second to no exercise which I have yet mentioned, unless it is playing at shuttlec.o.c.k.
Dr. Dewees recommends a small backgammon table, with men, but without dice. He says, also, that "children, as soon as they are capable of comprehending the subject, should be taught draughts or checkers. This game is not only highly amusing, but also very instructive." In another place he heaps additional encomiums upon the game of checkers. "It becomes a source of endless amus.e.m.e.nt," he says, "as it never tires, but always instructs." Of exercises which instruct, however, as well as amuse, I shall speak presently.
The amus.e.m.e.nts called "morrice," "fox and geese," &c., with which some of the children of almost every neighborhood are more or less acquainted, are of the same general character and tendency as checkers.
So is a play, sometimes, but very improperly, called dice, in which two parties play with a small bundle of wooden pins, not unlike knitting pins in shape, but shorter.
The writer to whom I have referred above recommends nine-pins and b.a.l.l.s of proper size, as highly useful both for diversion and exercise. If they can be used without leading to bad habits and bad a.s.sociations, I think they may be useful.
For girls, who demand a great deal more of exercise, both within doors and without, skipping the rope is an excellent amus.e.m.e.nt. So also is swinging. Both of these exercises may be used either out of doors, or in the nursery.
Trundling a hoop I have always regarded as an amusing out-of-door exercise; and I am not sorry when I sometimes see girls, as well as boys, engaged in it, under the eye of their mothers and teachers.
Playing ball, of which there are many different games, and flying kites, employ a large proportion if not all of the muscles of the body, in such a manner as is likely to confirm the strength, and greatly improve the health. The same may be said of skating in the winter, and swimming in the summer. But these last are exercises over which the mother cannot, ordinarily, have very much control.
Under the head of amus.e.m.e.nts, it only remains for me to speak of a few juvenile employments of a mixed nature. Of these I shall treat very briefly, as they are a branch of the subject which does not necessarily come within the compa.s.s of my present plan. They are exercises, too, which should more properly come under the head of Infantile Instruction.
Dissected maps afford children of every age a great fund of amus.e.m.e.nt; but much caution is necessary, with those that are very young, not to discourage or confound them by showing them too many at once. Thus if we cut in pieces the map of one of the smaller United States, at the county lines, or the whole United States, at the state lines, it is quite as many divisions as they can manage. Cut up as large a state, even, as Pennsylvania or New York is, into counties, and try to lead them to amuse themselves by putting together so large a number, many of which must inevitably very closely resemble each other, and it is ten to one but you bewilder, and even perplex and discourage them. The same results would follow from cutting up even the whole of a large county, or a small state, into towns. I have usually begun with little children, by requiring them to put together the eight counties of the small state of Connecticut. In this case the counties are not only few, but there is a very striking difference in their shape.
A black board and a piece of chalk, along with a little ingenuity on the part of the mother, will furnish the child with an almost endless variety of amus.e.m.e.nt. Let him attempt to imitate almost any object which interests him, whether among the works of nature or art. However rude his pictures may be, do not laugh at, but on the contrary, endeavor to encourage him. He may also be permitted to imitate letters and figures.
The elements of letters, too, both printed and written, may be given him, and he may be required to put them together. Dissected pictures, as well as dissected maps and letters, are useful, and to most children, very acceptable.
In short, the devices of an ingenious, thinking mother, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of her very young children, are almost endless; and the great danger is, that when a mother once enters deeply into the spirit of these exercises, she will subst.i.tute them for those much more healthy ones which have been already mentioned, such as require muscular activity, or may be performed in the open air.
CHAPTER XII.
CRYING.
Its importance. Danger of repressing a tendency to cry. Anecdote from Dr. Rush. Physiology of crying. Folly of attempting wholly to suppress it.
"Crying," says Dr. Dewees, "should be looked upon as an exercise of much importance;" and he is sustained in this view by many eminent medical writers.
But people generally think otherwise. Nothing is more common than the idea that to cry is unbecoming; and children are everywhere taught, when they suffer pain, to brave it out, and _not cry_. Such a direction--to say nothing of its tendency to encourage hypocrisy--is wholly unphilosophical. The following anecdote may serve in part to ill.u.s.trate my meaning. It is said to have been related by Dr. Rush.
A gentleman in South Carolina was about to undergo a very painful surgical operation. He had imbibed the idea that it was beneath the dignity of a man ever to say or do anything expressive of pain. He therefore refused to submit to the usual precaution of securing the hands and feet by bandages, declaring to his surgeon that he had nothing to fear from his being untied, for he would not move a muscle of his body. He kept his word, it is true; but he died instantly after the operation, from apoplexy.
There is very little doubt, in the mind of any physiologist, in regard to the cause of apoplexy in this case; and that it might have been prevented by the relief which is always afforded by groans and tears.
It is, I believe, very generally known, that in the profoundest grief, people do not, and cannot shed tears; and that when the _latter_ begin to flow, it affords immediate relief.
I do not undertake to argue from this, that crying is so important, either to the young or the old, that it is ever worth while to excite or continue it by artificial means; or that a habit of crying, so easily and readily acquired by the young, is not to be guarded against as a serious, evil. My object was first to show the folly of those who denounce all crying, and secondly, to point out some of its advantages--in the hope of preventing parents from going to that extreme which borders upon stoicism.
One of the most intelligent men I ever knew, frequently made it his boast that he neither laughed nor cried on any occasion; and on being told that both laughing and crying were physiologically useful, he only ridiculed the sentiment.
Crying is useful to very young infants, because it favors the pa.s.sage of blood in their lungs, where it had not before been accustomed to travel, and where its motion is now indispensable. And it not only promotes the circulation of the blood, but expands the air-cells of the lungs, and thus helps forward that great change, by which the dark-colored impure blood of the veins is changed at once into pure blood, and thus rendered fit to nourish the system, and sustain life.
But this is not all. Crying strengthens the lungs themselves. It does this by expanding the little air-cells of which I have just spoken, and not only accustoms them to being stretched, at a period, of all others, the most favorable for this purpose, but frees them at the same time from mucus, and other injurious acc.u.mulations.
They, therefore, who oppose an infant"s crying, know not what they do.
So far is it from being hurtful to the child, that its occasional recurrence is, as we have already seen, positively useful. Some pract.i.tioners of medicine, in some of the more trying situations in which human nature can be placed, even encourage their patients to suffer tears to flow, as a means of relief.
Infants, it should also be recollected, have no other language by which to express their wants and feelings, than sighs and tears. Crying is not always an expression of positive pain; it sometimes indicates hunger and thirst, and sometimes the want of a change of posture. This last consideration deserves great attention, and all the inconveniences of crying ought to be borne cheerfully, for the sake of having the little sufferer remind us when nature demands a change of position. No child ought to be permitted to remain in one position longer than two hours, even while sleeping; nor half that time, while awake; and if nurses and mothers will overlook this matter, as they often do, it is a favorable circ.u.mstance that the child should remind them of it.
Crying has been called the "waste gate" of the human system; the door of escape to that excess of excitability which sometimes prevails, especially among children and nervous adults. To all such persons it is healthy--most undoubtedly so; nor do I know that its occasional recurrence is injurious to any adult--a fastidious public sentiment to the contrary notwithstanding.
Some have supposed, that what is here said will be construed by the young mother into a license to suffer her child to cry unnecessarily.
Perhaps, say they, she is a laboring woman, and wishes to be at work.
Well, she lays down her child in the cradle, or on the bed, and goes to her work. Presently the child, becoming wet perhaps, begins to cry, as well he might. But, instead of going to him and taking care of him, she continues at her employment; and when one remonstrates against her conduct as cruelty, she pleads the authority of the author of the "Young Mother."
All this may happen; but if it should, I am not answerable for it. I have insisted strongly on guarding the child against wet clothing, and on watching him with the utmost care to prevent all real suffering.
Mothers, like the specimen here given, if they happen to have a little sensibility to suffering, and not much love of their offspring, generally know of a shorter way to quiet their infants and procure time to work, than that which is here mentioned. They have nothing to do but to give them some cordial or elixir, whose basis is opium. Startle not, reader, at the statement;--this abominable practice is followed by many a female who claims the sacred name of mother. And many a wretch has thus, in her ignorance, indolence or avarice, slowly destroyed her children!
I repeat, therefore, that I do not think my remarks on crying are necessarily liable to abuse; though I am not sure that there are not a few individuals to be found who may apply them in the manner above mentioned--an application, however, which is as far removed from the original intention of the author, as can possibly be conceived.
CHAPTER XIII.
LAUGHING.
"Laugh and be fat." Laughing is healthy. A common error. Monastic notions yet too prevalent on this subject.
Laughing, like crying, has a good effect on the infantile lungs; nor is it less salutary in other respects. "Laugh and be fat," an old adage, has its meaning, and also its philosophy.
There is an excess, however, to which laughing, no less than crying, may be carried, and which we cannot too carefully avoid. But how little to be envied--how much to be pitied--are they who consider it a weakness and a sin to laugh, and in the plenitude of their wisdom, tell us that _the Saviour of mankind never laughed_. When I hear this last a.s.sertion, I am always ready to ask, whether the individual who makes it has read a new revelation or a new gospel; for certainly none of the sacred books which I have seen give us any such information.
But I will not dwell here. The common notion on this subject, if not ridiculous, is certainly strange. I will only add, that, come into vogue as it might have done, there is no opinion more unfounded than the very general one among adults, that children should be uniformly grave; and that just in proportion as they laugh and appear frolicsome, just in the same proportion are they out of the way, and deserving of reprehension.
It is strange that it should be so, but I have seen many parents who were miserable because their children were sportive and joyful. Oh, when will the days of monkish sadness and austerity be over; and the public sentiment in the christian world get right on this subject!
CHAPTER XIV
SLEEP.