Cause and Effect, 1934 - Ursula Wise warns never to underestimate the emotional effect of significant life events on the child - children come up with their own theories of what is going in their immediate environment and these will present in their behaviour.

April 18, 1934 in The Nursery World

Cause and Effect 

“Penelope” writes: - “Your answers in The Nursery World have interested me so much that I now wonder of you can help me to understand my little girls’ behaviour. She is now 2 years and 7 months, and until a few weeks ago has been the happiest baby I ever knew – good tempered, always singing and with the most charming manners. As she is highly-strung and easily tired out with any nervous strain (such as visitors or going out to tea) she has been kept to a very regular and quiet nursery life, with walks every morning and afternoon. She is an only child, and as we live in the country she has no playmates her own age, but about once a week she plays with a little girl of 18 months whom she dearly loves. However, I feel that she hardy misses other children so far, as she has a young nurse who not only understands and loves her, but is able to play as a child herself. (The two of them have such joyous romps). Recently, however, D.’s easy-going manner has changed, and instead of placidly doing what we ask her, she looks positively antagonistic and refuses. We have tried changing the subject, but when she is in one of these moods, nothing we suggest seems to please her. I would so like to know what the poor mite is feeling. Obviously, she has left babyhood behind and now wants to exert her own will, but why she wants to fight over it I cannot see, as she has not been treated as too much of a baby. She is always spoken to as a reasonable being, and is always ‘asked’ to do a thing, never ‘commanded’. Lately, we have had to resort to several ‘spankings’ on her little hand (although she was well warned beforehand that this would be the result of her naughtiness) because we seemed to be unable to get her to ‘pull herself together’ otherwise. (She has almost seemed to find them a help – the spankings, I mean.) When she does really impish things in a determined way, what is the correct response on our part? For instance, she will follow me into the bathroom and turn on the bath taps as hard as they will go (I am so afraid she will get scalded), and she seems deaf to any plea of mine. When asked to come and get dressed (even though she knows we are going to go somewhere especially nice) she puts on this antagonistic expression and simply refuses to come, although she is not busy with ‘work’ of her own. I really cannot see any reason for this wilfulness. No doubt it will wear off, but I would like to know how I can help her in the meantime. I may just add that she has plenty to do, although she has no modern educational toys. She loves to draw and ‘paint’ and does needlework (with a bodkin and webbed dish cloth) and does ‘housework’ with her sweeper and mop. Also, she is never parted from her dolls and dolls’ pram and seems to get enormous satisfaction from them. Perhaps you will tell me of a book which will help me to understand her. My nurse begs me to tell you that D.’s ‘naughtiness’ seems to date from a month ago, when I was forced to be away from home for two nights owing to the death of D.’s grandfather. Nurse says D. was really upset at my absence and showed it by her silence and unwillingness to laugh. Could the general atmosphere of sadness have got through to the child, and would that account for it? I answered D.’s questions afterwards as well as I could.” 

Second letter

“Since writing to you, I have discovered a most interesting clue to my small girl’s odd behaviour. (You remember, I told you that she suddenly began to be ‘antagonistic’ and contrary for apparently no reason.) I told you in a postscript that her grandfather died a month ago, and in writing this I think I brought home to myself that it was disturbing D. Until he died (suddenly) grandfather visited us every Saturday and always brought D. some sort of toy. Then suddenly he stopped coming and so did the toys. I do not think D. was at all hurt by the loss of her grandfather, as he was not one of her intimate circle, but I do think she has been quite shocked at the fact that snice then she has had no new playthings. Could it be possible for such a mite to wonder if she would never have any more toys? Anyhow, working on that supposition, I went up to Town and bought her a new ball and a most fascinating ‘fitting’ toy, and believe it or not, we have had no more bother and she is her own little contented self again. I do not think she specially wanted the toys themselves, but juts needed to know that they would still come. Do you think I am right? Or is it just coincidence, and she may get ‘antagonistic’ in her manner again?”

You have really answered your problem yourself in your second letter. There can be no doubt that the cause of your little girl’s sudden antagonism was the loss of her grandfather’s visits and of the delights of the regular gift of toys, as well as the anxiety aroused in her mind by the mysteriousness of the sudden cessation of these events, of your own absence and doubtless of your own feeling of sadness as well. All these things would be bound to affect an intelligent child very profoundly. Moreover, these events would have a logic of their own to the child. We have to remember that a child of this age cannot understand the real connection or lack of connection between things which do occur together in her experience. What your little daughter actually experienced was that, first, you were unaccountably absent for two nights, and then that grandfather and his toys did not appear again – all in the midst of an atmosphere of sadness and strain. She could not know about the death as such, but there must have been some logical connection in her mi mind between your unusual absence, in itself a loss and this further loss of the grandfather and the toys. I have no doubt that you are right that the child thought that she would never have any more toys, and I am not in the least surprised to hear that she is now her happy self once again. I am sure you are right, too, that it was not the toys

The imaginative Child, 1932 - Ursula Wise clarifies the difference between a free and mobile imagination and one that is concerning.

November 16, 1932 in The Nursery World

The Imaginative Child 

A little girl whose imaginative stories often deceive her mother is discussed this week.

"B.S." writes: - “Your letters are always the first thing I turn to when I get The Nursery World, so I am writing to you about two problems concerning my daughter who will be four next month. I know that you tell people to encourage imagination. But is it possible, in your opinion, to have too much of it? V. is an only child. She goes to dancing class, which she adores, once a week. A nursery school is out of the question, as we live in the depths of the country and the nearest is thirteen miles away. The nearest children live three miles away, and she sees them about twice a week. V. has various constructional toys, mosaics, jig-saw puzzles, etc. She is quick at them all, and plays with them fairly often, but she would just as soon have no toys, at all. She loves books and knows “Alice in Wonderland”, “Stories of King Arthur’s Knights,” and several other books almost by heart, but immediately we have read a story we have to act it. She gives me a part and has a part herself, the dolls are pressed into service, and if there are not enough of them anything from a chair to a bit of paper may become a living character – really living to her.

            “The whole day, even eating, bathing, etc, she is pretending to be someone else and I am told who I am to be. When I am busy she runs about in the garden for hours talking to herself the whole time. She has no idea of the truth, but can this be expected at three years old? She tells me thrilling stories of what she has just been doing, and we both enjoy a ‘good story,’ but it is difficult to show how that is different to giving me a circumstantial account of some incident which sounds so true in every detail that I am quite deceived, only to find, often days later, that it was an entire fabrication. She sleeps badly at night, and seems to dream a lot, but when she wakes with a dream she drops off to sleep again at once. 

“She is very fond of other children, and always thrusts her toys upon them, but she never talks to them much, though afterwards it is clear that she has listened to them and observed them, as she pretends to be one of them and imitates their words and gestures. I have tried to explain that her fanciful world is almost more real than her own home to her, and would like to know if you think this can matter and whether it may be responsible for her disturbed sleep at night. She never sleeps in the day, but rests for an hour and a half with books.