Sensitive to Failure, 1935 – Ursula Wise talks about the importance of appreciating what a child can be successful in and not focus only on the technical side of learning

June 12, 1935 in Nursery World

Sensitive to Failure

A reader writing from Kenya asks advice this week about her eight year old charge

“Kenya Colony” writes, “I always read your pages with great interest, and I am hoping that you will be able to help me with my problem. The eldest of my three charges who is very nearly eight years old has been doing lessons with me for the last eighteen months; she is quite quick and intelligent, can read easily and with expression, and enjoys composition. The trouble is that over such things as tables, sums and dictation, there are often tears. She is miserable if she gets a fault in her sums or her dictation and it very often ends I storms of tears. The same thing happens sometimes with games and races, if she does not win she is inclined to make a fuss and sometimes cry. She has plenty of companionship here during holiday time, but during the term time she only has smaller children to play with. There is no school here to which she can go, and no child with whom she can share lessons. There are one or two boarding schools, but they are all a long way from here, and she is very young to be away from home. We go home in a year’s time, but until then she will be doing lessons with me, and I do feel that there must be some way in which I can conquer this hatred of being at fault or not being able to do a thing perfectly at once. I would be most grateful if you could give me any hints as to how to deal with the situation. She is very neat with her fingers and is really clever at making all her own dolls’ clothes and knitting. She also enjoys painting and loves gardening.”

            I do not think you need to feel too distressed about the sensitivity of your charge to failure. This is a very common attitude at her age. Six and seven years is a period of special sensitivity with many children, and after eight they often change a great deal, becoming far more settled and stable and confident in themselves. The child has so many ways in which she is skilful; for example, her sewing, knitting, painting and gardening, that she will gradually gain more confidence in herself from these and not mind quite so much if she is not skilful all round. School and friendship with other children in school will help her over this difficulty, especially if she goes to one that is reasonable and understanding and where the standards of intellectual achievement are not too high. It is not surprising that a child who has so little companionship with other children of her own age in work should feel very sensitive about failing. When she does make a mistake, if you take up the attitude that failures and errors happen to all of us, and that whilst we want to make as few as possible, we need not feel we have to be perfect or equally good in everything, and if you show how much you appreciate the things she can do, I am sure she will gradually grow out of the special sense of shame with regard to failure in arithmetic and dictation. I should, by the way, not give her too much dictation, but let her have plenty of opportunity of expressing her own ideas in discussions with you as well as in writing. Let her feel that you do appreciate what she herself can contribute quite as much as any success she has with the purely technical side of learning to write as measured in dictation. 

Making friends (undated) – Ursula Wise responds to a concern about a lonely child - a letter that is a sign of the times when socialising was far more tricky to organise

Undated – loose typed manuscript

Making friends 

 “PERPLEXED” writes: “I am faced with the problem of an only child, and would like to ask your advice concerning companionship for my little girl of three and a half years. My doctor tells me I must not have ay more children, which is a great disappointment, as I am passionately fond of them. I am anxious to adopt a child or to have a little companion, as I feel very strongly that my child is badly in need of a playmate. Unfortunately, my husband and I do not agree on this point. He is devoted to the child – in fact, spoils her and indulges her every whim – but cannot see that she is lonely. I was a lonely child myself, and just dread that my own little one should ever feel the same as I did. We have the means, a happy home, nurse, in fact everything to provide for another child and it does seem to me that one ought not to deny the child the happy companionship of children, especially as she is beginning to be self-centred. There is no nursery school in this town to which I could send her, and though she has little friends occasionally to tea, I feel it is not enough. When with other children she acts like a stranger. It is really pathetic, as she seems to have no idea of how to play and romp with them, always being with the grown-ups, I suppose. I should be so grateful to have advice in this matter, as I know my husband would do anything which he considered would be for the child’s good. “

            I certainly think you would be very wise to try to get a companion for your little girl. You are quite right in feeling that she must be so lonely, even though she enjoys so much having her parents all to herself. The child of even the best parents does need the companionship of other children. As you wisely feel, your little girl cannot always have you both to herself, and to have you in that way now hardly makes the best preparations for school life or for later experience in the world outside the home. Your little girl’s behaviour with other children shows very clearly how much she needs them, and I think she would be very much better off if she had a constant playmate. 

            

Sleepless Nights, 1935 – Ursula Wise explains in detail how emotional difficulties may express themselves in sleep disturbances, and how to deal with this

July 17, 1935 in Nursery World

Sleepless Nights 

 “A.M.W.” writes: “I have been helped before with your advice, and should now like further advice on my little daughter, aged three and a half. She has always been a very difficult child as regards going to bed and sleeping the whole night. In fact, since she was a year old we have hardly been able to count on having the while night undisturbed, with the possible exception of a month or two before this last Christmas. We put her in the next bedroom to ours as she slept so badly in our bedroom, then she was disturbed by the people next door, who are very noisy, so I moved her back into the back bedroom, and she was quite good until the middle of January this year. Then she took to waking about 9 o’clock and walking downstairs. We stopped this, and then she started to wander about upstairs in her bare feet, and got a very bad cold. The next development was that she would sleep until between 10.30 and 12.30 and then would not settle for an hour or two, although I sat and held her hand often until 3 in the morning, finally taking her into our bed. 

The trouble this year first started when I received word from the nurse I had engaged for the birth of my baby in May, that she could not come. C. overheard me discussing it with Daddy, and when I interviewed several more nurses she was at home and would be with me. She seemed to get so bewildered seeing so many and hearing their different names, that I think this started the phase. Baby was born a month ago, and I had arranged for C. to go to Grannie’s for a part of the time that I was in bed, on account of her being so much trouble at night. She went the night before baby was born, and the nurse, whom she liked very much, told her that Mr. Stork was probably going to bring her a baby brother that night, and she would be able to see him the next morning. Baby was not born, however, until dinner-time, and Grannie could not let her come when she asked to come after breakfast. She cried bitterly and Daddy, calling on his was home for dinner, found her very upset and had to bring her back with him. From that day she would hardly leave my bedroom, and every night Daddy had to bath her and out her to bed and hold her hand until he fell asleep. Sometimes she was not asleep until 10 p.m., then she would wake up at about one o’clock and beg Daddy to take her into his bed. We gave in, so that she could at least have a few hours sleep, as she was getting very pale and heavy. I asked the doctor for some sleeping tablets for her, but these had little effect as she fought against going to sleep. She is also afraid of cats, which often come into the next garden, their cat being female; also we found a stray cat dying in our garden one morning and it upset her very much. This was just before baby was born and she seemed afraid even to be left in any room downstairs during the day. 

Now that the nurse has gone, she still wakes up and Daddy, who is back again in my room, has had to go back into the other room and take her with him, in order to get her to go to sleep. We tried one or two nights to get her to sleep in her own bed, by leaving her door wide open and the landing light on. But she kept shouting for first one thing and then another, so that finally, after not sleeping a wink, Daddy went back to the other room and took her in with him. 

This is the only way in which we can all manage to get a good night’s rest, and as I am breast-feeding the baby, this is essential for me. The trouble is, how are we to break her of this habit of sleeping with Daddy, as it is not good for her, and it is getting on all our nerves, not knowing whether we are going to be disturbed in the night or not. I still hold her hand when she goes to sleep in the evenings, and she drops off in about ten minutes. I might say that she is very devoted to her baby brother, and she has plenty of attention form Daddy and me, as we do not want her to feel jealous of the baby. She is very good during the day, but is always tired nowadays due to lack of sleep. I do hope that you will be able to help us, as I feel we cannot continue in this way for much longer., especially if we go for a holiday soon.”

Your little girl has evidently from infancy been one of those children whose emotional difficulties express themselves in disturbances of sleep. In other children, the inevitable stresses and strains of adaptation to other people show themselves in day-time tantrums, or in thumb-sucking or feeding difficulties, and so on. When, however, the child’s conflicts are shown in this inability to sleep with or without a variety of day-time difficulties, the situation becomes most trying for everybody concerned. The child herself, and the father and the mother and nurse, all suffer from the lack of sleep, and the exasperation of not understanding what it is all about. 

I Smacked Her, 1936 – Ursula Wise at her most uncompromising – smacking is stupid, stern, un-understanding and has detrimental outcomes

January 22, 1936 in Nursery World

I Smacked Her

A strong protest against the point of view that which sees smacking as the most satisfactory way of training a child 

Nanny writes: “After reading two letters on the question of smacking children, I would like to tell you my experience. My charge was nearly a year old when I took her. She was eighteen months old before I had a good night’s rest. She would wake up every night and cry, sometimes for hours. As she was a healthy, normal child, I put it down at first to teething time, and tried to soothe to sleep again. But it was of no avail. Sometimes mummie would come in and take her into her room in order to give me a few hours’ rest. She would cry for an hour on end without a tear in her eye. Then one night, instead of petting her, I gave her a smacking instead. For the rest of the night it was effective. She was very quiet. So, every night after that, when she woke up and cried without reason, I smacked her. At the end of three weeks, I found I had nights of undisturbed rest. She is getting on for two and a-half years now, but I have had no more trouble. I found that when I took her on that she would not go to sleep without being rocked, even when she was put down after her bath at night: Why? Because until I came, mummie brought her up. It is my opinion that where the upbringing of children is concerned, the present-day mothers are hopeless. If my little one sits and dreams over her meals instead of eating her food up, I give her hand a sharp smack, but this is very rare. If I say to her, “Nannie wants you,’ she comes straight away. I never have to tell her twice to do anything. If ever she is really naughty, I put her to stand in the corner. ‘Alison’s Mother should try this. If she is going to feel ‘awful’ every time she punishes her child now, it is nothing to what she will feel when her child defies her and makes a scene in public. This is exactly what my charge does when mummie takes her out alone. But mothers think if they smack their children they will lose their love, little realising that the hand that loves them must sometimes hurt them for their good. In spite of the ‘brutality’ I have shown to my little one, she always says when she sees me going out without her, “Nannie no go away. Nannie stay.”

I am glad to have an opportunity to take this subject up further, and I am going to say quite frankly what I think about the methods described by the writer of this letter. I will begin by saying that I would allow no one with such a point of view and such a way of handling a tiny child to come anywhere near a child for whom I was responsible. The method works for the practical convenience of the nurse. It is convenient to have a child who will do everything one wants at a moment’s notice., and who will hide all troubles and difficulties instantly by going to sleep for fear of smacking.

The Lazy Child, 1937- Ursula Wise does not believe in this term for a child's behaviour.

January 27^th, 1937 in Nursery World.

The “Lazy” Child

“I do not believe in the term ‘laziness’ as an explanation of a child’s behaviour”

"Pauline” writes: “I should value your advice. My elder girl, of seven and a-half years, has worried me for at least  a year, and although I was hoping she would outgrow this fault, it hasn’t lessened at all. Although obviously a child of ordinary intelligence, she always deliberately does things wrong, especially in her school work. For instance, she will spell quite simple word like ‘cat’ or ‘dog’ which she knows quite well, as ‘cabt’ and ‘dod,’ and will often say, ‘Does A, P, Q, D, Z spell “world”?’ or some such silly combination of letters . when doing a simple page of homework, I give her a little help sometimes, especially in spelling. Last week after telling her in a quiet, deliberate tone three times how to spell ‘chiefly’ she put down ‘jejle’. There were at least six bad mistakes on the one page, and it was marked ‘Your work is untidy and lazy.’ She had to copy out two pages set for her and did it nicely, though she grumbled all the time. I give her a seat at Daddy’s desk, and a good light to work by in a quiet room, and I fear she is naturally lazy, but how to treat it I really don’t know. Her sums are even worse, there she doesn’t try, and can’t say her three times table yet. Her health is perfect, so are her teeth. She goes to a private school, the Headmaster’s wife taking the juniors (twenty) up to nine. There may be little slackness there. Do you think the sharper discipline of a Council School would be better for this type of child? She started the present school at five and a half. She has a near relation who was of this type and was pampered as a child, consequently even a Public school failed to correct the misapplied early years. I have one other child, a girl of four years. She doesn’t seem very jealous, but there are the usual squabbles and making up. The elder girl has a very pretty bedroom to herself. I read to her at bedtime, and leave a night-light. Don’t you think if children don’t get the rhythm of learning properly by at least eight years, they lose a lot. I feel that as she will have to earn her living, and we want her to go to a very excellent Secondary School at eleven years, she should be getting the groundwork in now. I think our home life is quite good; everything is orderly and regular, a lovely garden, and the sea nearby. She cycles a mile to school, but is not over tired, and he Daddy treats us all with kindness and consideration. If you could tell me what to say when she deliberately asks stupid things I should be so grateful. The younger child is quite different and can write quite a lot of self-taught letters and pictures.”

From what you say about your little girl’s behaviour over her school work, when she deliberately does things wrongly that she knows quite well, it seems quite likely that this is chiefly due to unwise methods in the school. If her school work is treated as a task it is her duty to perform, and if she is called “lazy” by her school teachers when she does not conform to this standard, she will be contrary all the more. I do not believe in the term “laziness” as an explanation of a child’s behaviour. If a healthy child is “lazy”, this is either s sign of emotional difficulties, or a means that the natural interests and activities of the child are not being adequately provided for.