November 1, 1933 in The Nursery World
Through the Child’s Eyes
Understanding of the child’s perception of events is very different from a mere spoiling of the child. The person who spoils a child never does understand his needs.
“Two Kay” writes: “I was very interested in the letter from “Prospice” asking for advice about preparing her small son for the advent of another baby, and I wondered if you would care to pass on to her the following small hints? I have had the same problem and I thought out my plans beforehand and never had any trouble when the baby came. My small boy, at the age of fourteen months, showed great distress when he saw me holding a little niece in my arms and as my second baby was due in four months, I saw that great care would have to be taken if he were not to suffer greatly from jealousy. Your advice will help “Prospice” in all her general handling of the situation, but I venture to suggest two small points. During the first two or three visits of ex-baby to the nursing home, let him see the new baby in the cot or in the nurse’s arms; and let him nurse the baby for a moment if it is at all possible. Secondly, when he sees the baby in “Prospice’s” arms, if she keeps her eyes fixed on ex-baby, he will not feel cut off from her. This sounds an unimportant point, but I have found from experience that it is of great reassurance in those first anxious weeks. After all, when a mother looks down at a baby in her arms, they look so complete and so absorbed in each other, that any on-looker feels excluded. I do hope “Prospice,” whose little son sounds so charming, will be as happy with her two babies as I was and that when they grow a little older, they will mean as much to each other as mine do. “
These two points, which are likely to be very important to the older child on his first introduction to the new baby, seem to be extremely valuable suggestions. They are valuable, however, not only because of their specific importance but because they illustrate so clearly the possibility of appreciating the feelings of the little child from the inside. An understanding of the child’s perceptions of events, and the feelings that are bound to arise because of the way he perceives, is very different from a mere spoiling of the child, in the sense of indulgence or coddling. The person who “spoils” a child never does understand his needs. One of the essential features of spoiling is that the child’s less controllable emotions, anger, greed, jealousy, and so on, are stimulated by carelessness and unimaginativeness on the part of the grown-ups, and then the child is alternately indulged and thwarted in their expression. To base one’s treatment of the child on a real appreciation of his problems is quite a different affair.
If we understand how things seem to him, and the way in which we may so readily stimulate uncontrollable feelings, we can avoid such situations as are likely to be too much for the child and thus grade the demands that we make upon him to the possibilities he has of real control. When he is, for example, introduced to the new baby and his mother in bed, with the baby not in the mother’s arms but in a cot or in the arms of a nurse, he still has a stimulus to jealousy. He still has to deal with the real fact that his mother’s love is no longer exclusively his own, but to be shared now with the little new-comer. That is a reality which cannot be escaped. But by arranging things in the manner suggested, the situation may be not overwhelmingly difficult for him. Mother and baby do not then seem to be one indivisible whole. It will not seem to him that he has to separate them before he can get to his mother for himself. She is more likely to remain his mother, as well as baby’s, if he sees her in this way. There are many other points of detail in the handling of children which can be understood on similar lines, if only one comes to appreciate that the first condition of being able to help a child to sense and self-control is an understanding of what the real difficulties are for him. 
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