Shyness, 1932 – Ursula Wise points out that what causes emotional upset for one child may have no effect on another.

April 20, 1932 in Nursery World

Shyness

“Devon” writes: “ I should greatly appreciate your help and advice on the problem of an acute and distressing shyness which has lately shown itself in my little girl. Sheila is four and three quarters, an only child and, as she is unfortunately without the natural companionship of brother or sister, we have always encouraged friendship with other children, and general independence of ourselves, feeling that she would thus have an easier and happier time when starting school. Up to a few months ago she would cheerfully be left with friends or relations or spend the day with little friends, etc., but of late she has become increasingly shy and nervous with anyone in the least strange, and simply refuses to go anywhere without me. When Christmas and party time came round all invitations which did not include parents had to be turned down. She did not mind in the least forfeiting the parties- but worked herself into a perfect agony of distress when it was suggested that she was being selfish in disappointing others. In one instance we tried taking her, waiting till she was happily engrossed with other children, and then slipping away, but on calling back were met with a sad tale of tears and uneaten tea and general upset. We feel that if this extreme shyness persists her early school days will be misery, and at the same time she is forfeiting the present friendship and companionship that she might enjoy. I might add that when used to people one could not find a more friendly or happy little soul – her nature is sunshine itself. Is there anything one can do to overcome this nervousness, or must a child grow out of it? I had wondered if any health reason could be at the back of it, but Sheila has always been the picture of health – though a little highly strung and imaginative – as only children so often are. However, she always goes to bed in the dark without the least fuss.”

It rather sounds to me as if Sheila has had some sort of experience which had made her shy and nervous and dependent upon yourself, but if so it is evidently something of which you are unaware. And it could be some quite slight happening that would not appear to have any significance to you. Things have such different meanings and values to a little child from what they have to us. A quite slight stimulus to the imagination will sometimes start a sensitive child into ways of nervousness and shyness, although it might leave another child unaffected and not seem to have any importance to the grown-ups.

Behaviour to animals, 1933 – Ursula Wise references one of her correspondent’s advice to address a problem of animal cruelty and general destructiveness.

 17 May, 1933 in Nursery World

Behaviour to Animals

Retaliatory Punishment is not a good method of dealing with cruelty to animals

“E.T.”  writes: “Could you give me your advice as to the best method of dealing with a three years old boy who will kick and beat his pets the cats and dogs. He is really very fond of them, and until recently treated them very kindly, but now seems to delight in making them run away from him. I would like to know particularly what you think of treating this kind of behaviour (and also of throwing stones playfully at his father) by mild retaliation of a like nature, i.e., kicking the small boy lightly but hard enough to be uncomfortable on the leg when he kicks the dog, and throwing a stone at him gently when he throws one at father, to show him that it hurts and that if he hurts others he will be hurt himself. I feel very strongly against this method personally, and would like to know if there is any justification for adopting it. He is a very easy child to deal with, but I am not quite sure of the best line to take in this case. .”

I don’t think it is at all good to kick or pinch the child for doing this to a dog or to a human being, or in any way to use retaliatory punishment. I don’t say this from mere theory, but from having tried it myself with a group of children. I found that it had no educative value at all, since it simply demonstrates to the child that the grown-ups will behave exactly as he does if only he gives them enough provocation, and does not show to the child any other ideal of action than that he had developed spontaneously. It is not really possible to pass on from this idea of punishment to the more desirable idea of refraining from hurting others out of love and kindliness. It dos not create a wish not to hurt, but only the desire to avoid the punishment. Those cruel actions of little children do not spring (after infancy) from a mere want of realising their effects. The children know quite well that kicking and pinching and throwing stones hurts the other person or animal. The only way to help the child is to deflect the desire for power which now expresses itself in this particular way into some other activity. If he were really cruel to the dog I should deprive him of the opportunity, taking the dog away from him, even refusing to have one in the family. But it is not necessary to go to these lengths with a small child, though it might be with an older boy who is persistently cruel.

The letter which follows shows very clearly how possible it is to deflect children’s activities from an undesirable to a more desirable direction. I am very glad to be able to print this next letter along with yours, because it does directly answer the particular problem which you raise. I am sure that the suggestion of giving the child an inanimate object to kick, so that when he feels he must hit out he can get some satisfaction for that impulse, and yet know that he is not hurting a living thing, is an excellent one. I have found a punch-ball satisfactory in the same way for older boys, just as competitive games of tug-of-war or even learning to box are a very excellent outlet for their aggressive impulses.

“Bridget” writes: “I had been meaning to write to you about a problem with regard to the behaviour of my small son of two and a half years, but I have now found a solution myself and am writing to you in the hope that it may be of help to your other readers. We have a dog, a gentle but highly nervous terrier. My small son early discovered that he could, by squealing in the dog’s ear, make him burst into hysterical howling. I tried slapping without the slightest effect. T. enjoyed his own performances so much that he inflicted them on us as well as on the dog till he succeeded in making us all, dog, maid and me, highly irritable – nothing we could do stopped him. At that time T. had no playroom of his own. He liked to trot around the house beside my maid or me or play beside us. As he grew older and accumulated more and more toys my husband and I decided that he must for his own sake and ours have a playroom. We converted our biggest bedroom into a day and night nursery, moving ourselves into a smaller room (after all space is not so much a pressing need to an adult). With the advent of the nursery the squealing problem (and others) was solved. T. was told that the sitting room was Mummy’s room –he mustn’t squeal there. The dining room was Daddy’s room, the kitchen the maid’s room  - he mustn’t squeal in either of those. The nursery was his room – he could squeal there as much and as often as he liked. Each time thereafter that he began to squeal he was led gently but firmly to his nursery and told to squeal there.

Privacy for the adolescent, 1939 – Susan Isaacs talks about the pitfalls of trying to ‘break through barriers’ with the teenager.

September 1938 in Home and School “Readers’ Questions”

            “B.B.” writes: “I read with great interest the recent article in ‘Home and School’ on “What is the truth about the young person?” and hope there will be further articles on the same subject. It made me personally think a lot, and wonder how often in the day my own children (of fourteen, eleven and eight years) have felt small, guilty or frightened – and I fear it must be several times a day! At least for a boy of eleven, who is very shy and dreadfully reserved.

            I would very much like to give some suggestions as to how to break through the barriers the reserved secretive ones have built round themselves. (By the way have you found that shyness and secretiveness always, or generally, go together?) How can we lessen the feelings of guilt and fear; and especially how can we help back boys and girls to share troubled thoughts? My boy of eleven will never tell me anything about himself – I do not know what he is feeling or thinking about. He hides everything he can eg. The twopennyworth of sweets he buys , and the comic papers – although he ought to know I would not forbid them! He is so afraid of the slightest censure. He is extremely intelligent and quick at learning, but he has little self-confidence, and I am worried to think what will happen when he goes to Public school, and when everything becomes increasingly difficult for him in adolescence. He is a happy boy, sweet-tempered and liked – but unapproachable. To any question about likes and dislikes, he answers, “I don’t know”. What can I do about this?”

            It is very natural that parents should want to get behind the barriers of reserve and shyness, and gain the full confidence of their children. Especially it is natural for those parents who desire their children to feel happy as well as behave sensibly. It seems as if we could not be of any use to our children unless we know their likes and dislikes, share their secrets and learn what they are pondering about. And we all feel easier with children (or with grown-ups for that matter) who are open and frank. It is not merely what they tell us, but the actual fact that they can tell us, which is so cheering. And it is not merely the thoughts and experiences which the secretive child hides from us, but the fact that he needs to hide them, which disturbs us so much. We cannot altogether help suspecting that is wish to hide from us is a slur upon our own good fellowship and understanding – as well as a possible sign of doubt and pain in himself.

            It is easier and pleasanter when children are frank and simple in the expression of their thoughts and feelings. But it takes all sorts to make a world, and nothing we could do, no way of responding to them, could ever make all children alike in this respect. Even from birth genuine differences of temperament appear. The child’s experiences may lessen or encourage his wish to hide from us, but the readiness to share his thoughts and feelings, or to deal with them alone, is in part a temperamental difference which has to be accepted.

Mother and daughter difficulties, 1939 - Susan Isaacs replies to a Headmistress about a girl approaching her teens and discusses the importance of ‘breaking the close and vicious circle of over devotion of mother and child'.

April 1939 in Home and School “Readers’ Questions”

Mother and Daughter difficulties

“Headmistress” writes:

            I should be grateful if you could tell me what is the right treatment for the following case. I have in my school a girl of 12 ¾ years of age. The mother is a widow and until the age of 11 Pollie was brought up in an orphanage. The she came back home and lived with her mother, who goes out to work all day. The mother is considerably distressed about the difference between the child’s behaviour at home and at school.

            At home, she seems to concentrate on her mother to a rather abnormal degree. She waits on her hand and foot although the mother says she does not want this or encourage it. She is extremely, and I think unchildishly, kind and considerate and never wants to go without her mother, and although at the orphanage, she was popular and had friends, she does not now seem interested in having them. She is most thoughtful and reliable.

            At school, she is unreliable, forgetful, disobedient and certainly not doing her best. I am not disposed to take the behaviour at school as seriously as her mother does because, as I have told her, it is a perfectly natural reaction from the strain that the child is putting on herself to behave so perfectly as she does at home.

            I told the mother that I thought Pollie was concentrating far too much on her and that she should encourage her to make friends. She says she has tried to do this but without success.

            Is there anything you could suggest my doing with the child at school which might adjust the balance and make her interests and emotions spread out into more channels than this one? The mother really is very worried about it and sincerely wants to help. I think she may be quite unconsciously a very emotional person whose personality makes demands upon the child without her knowing it.

            The problem you describe is an unusual and very difficult one. It seems likely that Pollie is terrified that she will lose her mother again if she shows any faults at all. She is probably also very resentful about having been sent to an orphanage in her earlier years, and her fear of loss is she should express any of her resentment calls out this abnormal effort for perfection at home. Naturally such an effort cannot be sustained all round, and the child is bound to be unreliable, forgetful and disobedient at school simply in order to maintain her mental balance. It would obviously not be possible for anyone to be so perfect over the whole field of life. I quite agree with you that her faults at school are a natural reaction to the strain of home life.

Children’s Drawings, 1934 – Ursula Wise discusses what these might and might not indicate about a child.

April 4, 1934 in Nursery World

Children’s Drawings

“N. G. M.” writes: “ I wonder if you would be so kind as to give me your criticism of the enclosed drawing? F. is two years three months. He was in the nursery alone with his pencil and paper, and when I arrived, said, “Look Nan, train smoke chimney wheels.” I feel it is rather good work, but one is very apt to feel that one’s charges are above the average. I would also like to say, as a result of your helpful advice, I have a wonderful, happy, independent charge."

I am glad to have seen this drawing, and to have had the opportunity of asking the Editor to reproduce it for the interest of other readers. It is quite remarkably good for the age of the child – at least a year or fifteen months ahead of the average achievement for his age. A great many studies have been made in recent years of the levels of ability shown in the drawings of children of successive ages. Most of these comparative studies have been made of drawings of a man or a house, and there are now definitely recognised stages of development in these, according to age. We have no such clear knowledge of ability in drawing engines such as this; but by comparing what the average three year old can do in the way of drawing a man, and comparing the many drawings of engines by young children, which I have myself collected, I can certainly say that this drawing is at least a year in advance, and probably 15-16 months.

Smacking, 1939 - Susan Isaacs replies frankly to a reader who is convinced that smacking is the way to bring up a decent human being.

July1939 in Home and School "Readers’ Questions"

Smacking

“L.E.M.” writes: I have been arguing with some of my friends about physical punishment, and I should like to know what you think about it. My own view is that the average child from about one year to three or four understands nothing else so well - they cannot be argued with, and some punishment is necessary if a proper discipline is to be maintained. A small smack is not really inflicting much pain, is soon over, and I find a small child bears no more malice than a puppy. Children of that age are not sentimental - they don’t feel humiliated - and even of they did, a certain amount of humility is a virtue none too common these days. I am afraid the result of no smacking would be a man or woman with no sense of discipline or obedience - a trouble which is filling the children’s police courts with boys and girls whose parents admit, “they can do nothing with them” a most lamentable result of giving in to them too much when young. My father is a doctor, and over and over again he is called in to sick children who have been given unsuitable food or who are allowed to get up when ill because “Well, you see, he wanted to!” Heaven help the country in the next generation starts life with the idea that they can do everything they want to. My friend’s boy of sixteen months who is allowed to decide whether he wants to rest or not will find that other people are not so accommodating as his mother - As Kipling says, “Angels may come to you, Willie my son, but you’ll never be wanted on earth, dear.”

I wonder why you think that not smacking a young child is exactly the same as letting him do just as he wants? Why do you assume that there is no other form of training a child, and that the only alternative to smacking is simply indulgence? This is very far from true. The child has many other motives which can be used in is training besides that of fear of physical pain. In children who have not been spoilt by early subjection to physical chastisement, so that this has become the key to their relation with grown-ups, the child’s own wish to develop skills and abilities, and his pleasure in co-operating with grown-ups, are real and genuine motives. But to give the child the opportunity for developing these skills and independence needs more patience, more time, more understanding on the part of the grown up than to administer a sharp smack and say, “Do this” or “Don’t do that”. It always interests me when people say that without smacking the child will never learn to adapt himself to the ordinary social world of grown-ups. Such a view assumes that decent behaviour among grown-ups is entirely the result of fear of imprisonment and punishment. It needs but little reflection to show how very far from true this is. Imprisonment and punishment are limiting factors which are necessary for exceptional cases but do not represent by any means the actual motives which lead ordinary grown-ups to be well-behaved and considerate and responsible people. Law-abiding citizens and people who are successful in social relations are such because of their positive loyalties and interests and sympathies, not because they are frightened by dread of punishment. It is just because physical chastisement is such an inadequate means of education for real social life that one turns away from it.

Thumb sucking, 1939 – Susan Isaacs reassures her correspondent that this will pass unless there are deep-seated emotional problems

July 1939 in Home and School "Readers’ Questions"

Thumb sucking

‘Still in Difficulties’ writes: I am so much interested in the correspondence of your January issue on the subject of thumb-sucking, and in Dr. Isaacs’ tolerant outlook in relation to it. But I should be glad to know whether the cure she advocates has actually been known to cause a cessation of the habit in many cases. It is a solution of which I have read many times, but one which I feel must often leave the problem unsolved.

            Both my own children - a boy of 7 ½ and a girl of 4 years - invariably suck their thumbs at the first hint of fatigue, the boy from birth and the girl from the age of about one year. With the boy, my monthly nurse waged a battle-royal, with the obvious results. The girl, we were determined, should be left entirely free - but she developed the habit none the less, though possibly in imitation. Both children were breast-fed - the girl for four months only.

            Neither child had had to suffer from any of the recognised causes requiring compensation - i.e. unhappy or unharmonious home, lack of or biased affection, etc., - home life is warm, alive and jolly and these two children are devoted to one another. I do not believe that any nursery school could induce my small girl to put her mouth to any happier use than those which occupy it at present, as she sings or talks most of her days, and is a most concentrated creature, with a great variety of interests - but- opposes any attempts to get her to go off to sleep, or to cuddle up against someone, without its support.

Yes, I have found as a rule that children grow out of the need to suck their thumbs if all their emotional needs are adequately met. It is true that there is no panacea for this or any other problem in children’s development. There is no single remedy that will cure any particular difficulty. It might be that your little girl imitated the older boy whose passion for thumb sucking had been increased by the very struggle of the nurse to deprive him of that pleasure.

A problem at school, 1930 – Susan Isaacs recommends professional advice for a child frightened by other children’s behaviour towards him. Interestingly she does not mention the word ‘bullying’.

June 11, 1930 in Home and School "Readers’ Questions"

Problems with other children

“Mrs W” writes: “I am very interested in your articles, and wonder if you could help me with my problem. My little boy of seven started school last year, and seemed to like it very much, and was very happy at first – til about Christmas time. Since then he has taken quite an aversion to it, and it is all I can do to persuade him to go off to school in the mornings. I have managed to get out of him that the bigger boys at school used to frighten him with pistols, saying they were going to shoot him, and would put him up against a wall and fire at him. If they had been a little less rough with him, and there had not been quite so many of them, he might have seen that nothing terrible happened after their plays, and would thus have got over his fright. I can see that to a child of his vivid imagination this treatment would have a bad effect, but surely he ought to have conquered this feeling of fear by now and learnt to stand up for himself. He seems to have been greatly affected by it all, and now shuns the companionship of other children.

            “His father went to the school and spoke about the ways the bigger boys frightened him, and I think that stopped it, but still R. has not go over his fear. If I could get him to play with other little boys, they could play at soldiers, and so accustom him to make-believe and get him used to the sound of pistols; but he gets very nervous and starts to cry whenever I suggest having other children in to play. Can you give me some help or advice on how to deal with this question? R. is such a dear, jolly little fellow otherwise.”

            I think you would do well to have first-hand advice about this problem, and I would like to urge a consultation very much. They are quite beyond the control of the child himself, and may affect his later life considerably. Even if he manages to hide them for a time, they might come out again at any time or crisis in later life; and they are obviously going to handicap the boy’s social development. It would, therefore, really be worthwhile having psychological advice, and I hope very much that you will arrange to do so. I should be glad suggest consultants.

             

The Teaching of number, 1934 – Ursula Wise offers her thoughts about the ‘teaching’ of maths referring to some methods as 'quite useless'.

 January 17, 1934 in The Nursery World

The Teaching of Number

“X. Y. Z.” writes: “How soon do you think I ought to begin to teach my little boy of three, who seems to be quite ordinarily intelligent to count? I heard of a boy not much older who was doing little sums with his governess. Do you think this is a good thing, and if so, how should I teach him?”

The question of the age at which to we should begin to introduce arithmetical ideas to young children is really bound up with the question of how we should do it. Everything does depend upon how we go about it.

              In the first place, all those who have been studying little children to see how they do learn to use arithmetical notions are agreed that formal lessons are quite useless in the early years. Indeed they are worse than useless, because they teach the child that arithmetic is dull and dreary; and once that emotional attitude towards the subject has been set up it is extremely difficult to change. It has been found that more children get held up in their understanding of number from emotional reasons than happens with any other subject of the school curriculum. Fear and boredom are the two biggest factors in backwardness in arithmetic among school children. It is easy to make minor mistakes of presentation in showing the child how to add or subtract or divide, but these do not matter in comparison with the fundamental mistake of associating arithmetic with a notion of duty, or with situations of boredom and anxiety. It is very difficult for even the best teaching later on to break down such an attitude once it has been built up. The very first essential is, therefore, to make sure that from the very beginning our methods are such as to let the child feel the natural interest of number relations between things, and to discover that their practical value in his own active interests and pursuits.

Sleeping, 1934 – Ursula Wise responds to a reader concerned that she is spoiling the child if she stays with him until he falls asleep. Is it a slippery slope?

April 4, 1934 in Nursery World

Sleeping

“Happy Nannie” writes: “I have noticed several times in your pages when you answered queries as to how to manage children who cry when put to bed, you have advised the mother or nurse to stay in the room until the child falls asleep. I wonder how many mothers and nurses have insisted that once one starts to do that one has to go on literally for years? I thought that myself until recently – and I thought it might perhaps interest you to hear of my experience. I have one charge, aged nineteen months. He cannot walk yet, and does not talk very much, but clearly understands all that is said to him, and also is clever with his fingers. He was fairly good at bedtime until, unfortunately, a few weeks ago he had to have an operation for appendicitis. While he was in the hospital he was very good (all the more remarkable as in the usual way he cannot bear strangers), and I believe he never cried until I went to see him three days before he was coming home – and then he cried when I left him. After he came home, he grizzled and cried at bedtime. I never stayed with him then, but he used to stay in the next room where he could hear me. Also every night at some time he would wake up screaming – and I could only quieten him by walking up and down with him. He would stay awake for two hours or more, and if I attempted to put him down, or even to take him into my bed there would be more screams. This went on for a wee, and then we came to stay with his grannie. I felt that it was impossible to let him cry at all at bedtime in someone else’s house, and so on when I put him to bed, I gave him his two favourite soft toys as usual, and then sat in the room – not too near him, but where he could see me – until he went to sleep. I did that every night, never taking any notice of him – and not only did he always go to sleep happily, but there was no screaming in the night. Sometimes he started grizzling, but stopped and settled down again as soon as I spoke to him. And now he mostly sleeps through the night quietly until he wakes at 5 a.m. I am now very pleased to be able to tell you that after staying with him until he went to sleep every night for a week, I then started leaving him alone again, with happy results. He talks to his toys happily until he falls asleep. I also had trouble with him over his daytime sleep, but that was overcome by staying with him and it is now possible to leave him alone again.

            I am not at all surprised to hear that the help you gave your charge when he was struggling with the great anxiety due to the operation and hospital experience has helped him to settle down happily and become serene again. I have found over and over again that this sort of help, given in the right way when the child most needs it, does not make the child dependent on the adult permanently. Indeed, it gives him independence and contentment far more quickly than leaving him to scream, or staying with him under protest and in such a way as to make him feel he is bad for wanting it, will ever do. And this applies just as much when the child’s distress arises from other causes too - not only such severe experiences as an operation. Sometimes a temporary anxiety, that shows itself in night terrors or in inability to settle to sleep without mother or nurse, may spring from some source of emotional conflict – jealousy about the new baby or other children, or the child’s fear of his own angry impulses, as well as from really frightening external causes. Sometimes it is hard to discover the cause. But whatever the source of the anxiety, it has been found by wise mothers and nurses that the quickest and easiest way to help the child over it is to give the comfort of their presence freely and ungrudgingly for the time the child needs it. This is no more a case of “spoiling” a child than giving him a special diet or a suitable medicine for a physical ill is “spoiling him”; or than it “spoils him” to help him sit up before he can walk.

The Home-Work Question, 1931 – Susan Isaacs offers her thoughts and opinions on home-work for a nine year old

 March 11, 1931 in Home and School "Readers’ Questions"

The Home-Work Question.

“Casa” writes: “I would be grateful if you could advise me with my problem of how to deal with lack of sleep on the part of the schoolboy. My little son, aged nine and a half, lies awake every night until generally about 9.45 p.m., and even sometimes as late as 11 p.m. I have done everything to make sleep easy for him, but all my efforts seem useless. He lives a very ordinary schoolboy’s life. He starts at school at a boy’s college at 9 a.m. – having about fifteen minutes’ walk – and finishes at 4 p.m., with an hour and a quarter’s break for dinner, for which he returns home. He has tea at 4.30pm. and   then until 6 p.m. does his homework (of which he has rather a lot, in my opinion), and from 6-7.30p.m. He generally plays with his toys or reads. His supper consists of cereal and milk and three biscuits. He then has a hot bath and is in bed at 8 p.m., with a hot water bottle at his feet. He has a room of his own, and sleeps in the dark with his door open. When questioned as to why he does not go to sleep he says his thoughts keep him awake. He does not play in bed. We keep the house very quiet once the children are in bed. My little girl of five goes to bed at 6 p.m., but also does not sleep until around 8 p.m. I have tried giving the boy a drink of hot Ovaltine, after he goes to bed, and even shutting his bedroom door, but finding him not quite happy with it shut so have gone back to having it open. Both children’s bedrooms get a tiny bit of light from a landing light, but not enough to see to play. I often think the boy looks heavy eyed in the morning, and many a school morning, he would stay in bed. He has just had a very mild attack of chicken pox, during which time I have kept him all day out of doors, but it does not seem to have helped him to go to sleep early. Once he is asleep nothing (thunderstorms or any noise) wakes him. He sleeps absolutely soundly. I think he is of more than average intelligence, with rather a large amount of general knowledge, especially about trains and aeroplanes. He has a wonderful memory, and learns very quickly. The reports form school have been very good up till Christmas, when he seems to have fallen off in his exams, and his report says he is capable of far better work if he would exert himself more. He takes Scott’s Emulsion all the winter, and towards end of term or if he seems pale, Parish’s food. Beyond slight colds he has never been ill and has escaped infectious diseases, although exposed to infection in a marked degree. He is not particularly good at games. He is left-handed, but now writes with his right hand equally well. He has great difficulty in bowling a hoop, skipping, riding a bicycle or hitting a cricket ball, but he is improving as the interest grows. Do you think it would be better if I kept him up later? Up to the present I have felt he was resting although not asleep.”

No, I don’t think it would be advisable to keep your boy up later. You are quite right in saying that the rest and relaxation are good even though he does not sleep. It sounds as if the homework were too heavy for him after a long school day, especially now the evenings are growing lighter and he could be getting exercise and play out of doors after tea. I should be very much inclined to cut down his homework or cut it out altogether, but I don’t feel able to suggest this without knowing more of the school and the boy. So many boys of this age would loathe having an exception made for them in this way, especially if that meant any handicap in school work as a result. To make a special arrangement for him to have no homework might quite possibly increase the troubles in his mind that keep him awake at night. It might perhaps be possible to lessen the amount of it by a talk with the headmaster, as it is quite on the cards that he would do better in school if he had more recreation in the open air and more sleep. Apart from this tentative suggestion I think all you can do is to go on keeping his conditions of life as satisfactory as possible. By the way, you speak of a hot bath. I suppose you are careful to see that this is not too hot? A really hot bath does make some people restless.

Secret language, 1939 – Susan Isaacs talks about the benefits of this in keeping the adults at bay.

June 1938 in Home and school "Readers’ Questions"

Secret codes

            “A. B. C.” writes: My two children, a girl of eleven and a boy of nine, are always talking to each other in some sort of gibberish or secret language which they have invented themselves, and which no-one else can understand. It seems to amuse them very much, although it is very annoying to other people who are present. They have a sister of fifteen who gets very annoyed when the two younger ones are obviously having a lot of fun between themselves, and I suspect are making rude remarks about her. She suspects it too and tells them what bad manners they have. I don’t know what it is they talk about, but they sometimes get quite excited, and of course, the moment they think that other people are annoyed or puzzled by their talk they do it all the more. Do you think I ought to stop them, or to punish them for it?”

            It is very tantalising for older children when younger ones have this secret way of communicating, which seems to be at the expense of others, and many grown-ups too find it very provoking. It is, however, a common practice just at the age of your two children. Most children in a family invent some sort of language or code or sign by which they can express their feelings to each other, and keep the grown-ups at bay.

            These code words are not always worthy of the name of ‘a language’. Sometimes mere tones of voice will do the trick, or special endings to certain words, or just two or three words substituted for the real ones in a sentence. But every now and then a full-blown secret language appears, with its own words and its own rules of grammar.

Bed-wetting, 1933 - Ursula Wise shares ‘gran's’ advice for those children who wet the bed at night.

March 15, 1933 in Nursery World

Bed-wetting advice from Gran

“Torch” writes: “Has it ever occurred to you that older children who wet their beds may be afraid to get up into a dark room though showing no other signs of fear? At Christmas the children’s ‘Gran’ came to stay. I told her how disappointed I was that Veronica, nearly three, wet her bed most nights. I showed her all the preparations I had made which you suggested – change from a high cot to a low bed, ‘pot’ put near, etc. – all of no use. Gran said at once, ‘the poor little thing is afraid to get out of bed into a dark room.” I pooh-poohed the idea as V. has always slept alone without a qualm. However, Gran bought a little electric torch, and as she tucked her up at night she showed her how to press the button, and told her a fascinating story all about sailors, searchlights, etc., finishing up by telling V. she was a sailor in a boat, and when she required her pot she must shine her searchlight to help to find it. We have not had one wet bed since. The child seems to find her torch a great comfort to her. When I go to pick her up at ten she always has it clasped in her hand, or if she hasn’t will not settle down till she has found it. Gran thinks there would be far less night terrors if each child past the baby stage had either a light he could put on from his bed or torch. She thinks this much more soothing to a nervous child than a night-light, which causes rather weird shadows. Gran has never read a book or an article on child welfare, but she somehow seems to understand them in a wonderful instinctive way. Perhaps this little hint may be a help to some other harassed mother.

            I am sure readers will find this a very interesting suggestion and one that might be tried often in cases of children who were afraid to get out and help themselves. It is another striking example of the fact that if we can only find ways of helping children to be independent so many of their difficulties disappear. I have not any doubt that there are a great many grannies and mothers who have never read books on child welfare, who have a native gift of understanding problems from the child’s point of view. And, of course, if one has not that to some extent, no amount of reading of other people’s opinions will be of much use to one. I often feel that the whole point of studying child welfare and reading child psychology is really to enable one’s own mind to work freely over the child’s situation rather than to view it in a fixed way through one’s own worries or prejudices.