A Child’s Wonder of Life, 1930 - Ursula Wise addresses the young child's questions about birth and death

April 23, 1930 in The Nursery World

A Child’s Wonder of Life 

How to answer your child’s questions about birth and death

A week or two ago I promised “A.E.G.” and “E.M.M.” to take up again the points of their letters on the subject of children’s questions as to “where babies come from,” and I should like to go into the problem more fully now. 

It cannot be denied that the problem of how best to deal with little children’s questions on these matters is one that demands a good deal of honest thought. It cannot be settled off-hand by anyone. The difficulties that my correspondents and the letters in “Over the Teacups” have raised are perfectly genuine ones, and have to be frankly faced from the outset. No one can offer simple ready-made advice which clears away all future difficulties and makes everything quite easy and straightforward. After all, we are in contact here with some of the most intimate aspects of human relationships, ones that have always been fraught with the most significant emotions, and the deepest moral and personal issues. It is very hard for us to be as calm and objective when the child touches upon these things as when he asks about engines or birds or butterflies. It is a great help if we can be equally calm and dispassionate; but not easy for the ordinary parent to be so. The trained biologist can look upon birth and marriage, life and death in human beings as objectively as upon any other facts of the science of life- when he is dealing with them asscientific questions. But I have known even trained biologists, with a great store of knowledge at their command, feel embarrassed and hardly know what to reply on the spot when their own children asked for information about their own origin. So that we must not pretend there aren’t any difficulties, or that one or two easy instructions to parents will sweep them away all together. 

            The one thing that has to be remembered, however, is that the child’s difficulties are even greater than the parents. His questions are not a matter of idle curiosity, nor of pure desire for knowledge as such. They spring from deep ponderings about his relationship to his parents and his brothers and sisters, and the relationship of his parents to each other; and from a groping and searching after some meaning in what he dimly senses of his own history and growth, his own past and future.

Slow Development - Ursula Wise reiterates that development cannot be hurried - it is individual to the child.

April 8, 1931 in The Nursery World

Slow development 

 “K.P.H.” writes: - “Sometime ago I wrote to you about my little charge, who is now three years and three months old, and I wish to thank you for your advice. I am very pleased to say that since then he has greatly improved; although he is still rather wilful, he is much more obedient, and will do things now with little fuss, so that for almost three months I have had no reason to shut him up alone in a room. Once again, I need your help, but this time I am worried about his being so backward. Of course, some children are not so clever as others, I know, and I must not forget to add that. ‘D.’ was very ill at the age of eight months and that same illness lasted until he was about eighteen months old, which, of course, put him back almost a year. (I was not with him then, but I have heard all about it from his Mummy and Daddy.) But even so, putting him back one year, he is still a backward, because a child of two says more than ‘D.’ He is just beginning to talk now and make short sentences. His Daddy suggests giving him about ten minutes’ ‘object lessons’ every day, and gradually working up until we get to the stage when he could be taught his alphabet. I am starting tomorrow, so must hope for the best possible results. The thing that distresses me most is the fact that he simply will not ask for attention. He is attended to at 6.30 a.m., 9 a.m., 12 noon, between 3 and 6 p.m., and at 10 pm., but if he does want anything between those times he will just walk round and round and up and down until someone happens to see him. If nobody is about he never thinks of coming in to ask (he won’t ask even if one is right next to him), and the result is fatal. I have tried any amount of ways to teach him to ask, but have found nothing that will succeed. My last effort has been to send him to the bathroom to attend to himself (this he can do perfectly well), thinking that perhaps in time he would go off by himself; but even that he has failed, and now I am puzzled as to what to do next. His bladder is not weak, and I’m very much afraid that it is laziness on his part. He can ask for things like milk and chocolates and toys – anything that is nice! – but I do hope you will be able to answer - your suggestions are s helpful. P.S. – it may interest your readers to know that I have had the same trouble with ‘D.” and his small brother over hair-washing, but we have just recently overcome that fear by playing ‘wow-wows’ – having a bath, kneeling in the bath on hands and knees. I carefully soap, and rinse their hair, and they think it is great fun; barking and growling goes on all through the performance. I wonder if this one will help some mother or nanny with wee ones?” 

First, with regard to the question of backwardness. It does sometimes happen that an intelligent boy speaks very little at three years of age, so that I should not feel worried about it. On the other hand, I agree that everything should be done to stimulate his interest in the world and to foster any inquiring tendencies that he may happen to show. But I don’t think that definite “object-lessons” of any formal kind will be the best help. Free and lively talk about things you are yourself interested in, or things to which he shows any spontaneous attention will certainly be useful; for example, things you see on your walks together, flowers and animals, or motor cars and shops and people, or the child’s own playthings in the home and garden. I should share in his play and follow up any game that he starts, enjoying it with him, being ready to answer any questions, and in general letting him have as lively and free a companionship with you as you can possibly give him. But I should very definitely avoid anything formal or anything in the shape of lessons. Nor would it be desirable to introduce the alphabet for a year, or even two years to come. Let the child do things with his hands and find out by actual experience and actual play. He will then develop a wish to read and write in the normal course. 

As regards the other problem, I think your plan of training him to attend to himself is the best. But you cannot expect it to succeed in a short time.

Two Year Olds are often Cruel, 1931 - Ursula Wise replies to a mother concerned at her child's cruelty to her dog.

July, 1931 in The Nursery World 

Two Year Olds are very cruel 

This week a mother asks what she can teach her little girl to be kind to animals. She has a dog whom she really enjoys hurting or teasing. 

“E. C. G.” writes: “I have two points upon which I should like to consult you with regard to my little girl, aged two years and four months. I do so want her to be kind and considerate to animals, but we have a dog and she is a positive little horror to him. He is devoted to her and most patient, but she really frightens him, either by pushing her wooden horse or doll’s pram into him and after him, or by chasing him with something that squeaks (which he hates at all times), or by treading on his paws or prodding him with sticks. This wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t serious about it, but seems to take a fiendish delight in plaguing him. I have talked to her. I have shut the dog away from her, and I have gone so far as to treat her in a similar manner, but without avail, and I am at a loss to know how to proceed with her. The other problem is the ever-present one of new foods, but with the difference that she has been really frightened. We went to a children’s party when she was twenty months old, and someone gave her an ice. She had taken a large mouthful before I could get to her, and I thought I should never stop her crying and shaking. Now when I give her anything new she puts the spoon to her mouth as though she is going to try it, gives a sudden shudder and puts it down again. I pursue the method of removing the dish at the proper time and producing nothing in its place, but she goes hungry rather than try it. Persuasion and making a game about it are equally futile.”

This problem of the little child’s cruelty to animals is a fairly common one, and I think it is rather surprising that (as far as I remember) yours is the first letter which has raised the question in my columns. Most little children in their earliest years show occasional impulses of what amounts to cruel behaviour to animals, although it is not always cruel in the sense that the child really wishes to inflict pain. Sometimes, and especially in the second and third years it is simply lack of understanding that certain actions cause pain. But it is not always this, at any rate, after the end of the second year, and it sounds to me from your description as if your little girl really did wish to hurt the dog. I happen to have made a fairly detailed study of this particular problem in my own observations of children between two and seven years of age, and I have found very few children who did not show the impulse to hurt occasionally, although some children do it so very rarely, and others much more often. But what is clearly striking is that one very rarely sees a child who has not equally strong impulses of tenderness and sympathy with animals. According as the mood takes them, they will be tender and cherishing or hostile and unkind.

Now, since these impulses are so general there is not any need for you to dread that the child will necessarily be cruel when she is a little older.

The Self-Reliant child, 1934 - Ursula Wise reply to a mother about her little boy exemplifies the friendly, co-operative attitude on the part of the grown-up which is of such great importance to the child’s development

January 31, 1934 in The Nursery World

The Self-Reliant child

       "G.R." writes:- "I have just been reading ‘P.J.’s’ problem in THE NURSERY WORLD. I feel I would like to tell you about my little boy, who was three years old last November. I am only a working-class mother and have no help whatever. When my little son was fourteen months old his sister was born, so maybe that is the reason he is so grown-up. Since before he was two he has gone to the bathroom and stood by a pail, by himself, whenever he wanted to do a little job, and every night when he goes to bed I put the pot on a stool right close to the bed and he looks after himself. In the morning he gets out, puts his dressing gown on, then sits on the pot and wraps a blanket around his legs. I go in to him at 7.30 (after I have seen my husband off to work) and he has usually done his duty. He takes the chamber into the bathroom himself and empties it and runs the tap in it and stands it in the bath for me to finish off. He also helps me with the baby. If I am busy, baking or washing up, and Maureen wants to sit down, he will get the pot and see to her for me. I do not know if you will think he is an unusual type of child. I would like your opinion on the subject – he really is very good. He has two hours’ sleep every afternoon, and goes to bed at 7 every night – a little late, perhaps, but I keep them up until Daddy comes home, as he does not see them in the morning. I am sending you some snaps so that you can see wat an intelligent looking little fellow he has been from the start.”

I was interested to receive this letter. G.R.’s little boy is obviously unusually intelligent and sensible and the photographs show him to be a perfectly happy land jolly child as well. His skill in handling utensils and looking after himself is certainly unusual. But it is quite clear from the expression of his face that he is not feeling these things to be a burden at all. G.R. must have had the gift of winning his co-operation in these things in such a way that they become simply problems of skill for him, and not duties or burdens. She is to be congratulated on her success in getting this friendly cooperation. I am sure that P.J. and many other mothers will be interested in this letter, and it will encourage mothers to believe that it is possible to allow little children to do things for themselves without any undue pressure, and that this is a much better solution than treating the child like a little automaton who must do what he is told, or stand still and have things done for him. G.R.’s letter confirms however, what I often feel when I am making practical suggestions about what to do – that in the last resort everything comes down to the personal skill of the mother or nurse, and that no advice can take the place of a really friendly co-operative attitude on the part of the grown-up – an attitude which takes pleasure in the child’s development of skill, without feeling shame at his mistakes on the basis of duty.

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. 

Learning to read and write, December, 1934 - Ursula Wise offers her opinion on this matter whilst recognising that there are many approaches

 December 24, 1930 in The Nursery World

Learning to read and write: some modern methods

I have had a letter form a correspondent who is an advocate of the `Montessori method of teaching and reading and writing, and who appears to feel that I have not done justice to the merits of this method in my recent remarks about it. As the subject is undoubtedly one of general interest, I am quoting extracts from her letter (too long to print as a whole). I am naturally anxious that many readers should feel that in these columns they do get a representative view of such modern methods as have any serious claims to respect. 

But in the end, of course, one judges between rival methods on the evidence as one sees it, and when correspondents ask me to advise them about methods of teaching and reading and writing, I can but offer them the fruit of my own experience with children and my knowledge of the general consensus of opinion among practical teachers and psychologists. 

Here is the letter.

“X” writes: -

            “I noticed in your answers on November 5^ththat you did not seem aware of the value of the sandpaper letters originated by Dr. Montessori. I enclose a short account of the Montessori way of teaching two of the three R’s, as I am sure your correspondents will be interested in it, and will succeed in it, if they will only concentrate on hearing the sounds in words themselves. Adults lose the sensitivity of children. The Montessori way of teaching writing and subsequently reading is very simple, but it does not require to be understood by the adult before she initiates a child into it. Her most delicate work comes at the start. People who embark on it ought to do so because they recognise its superiority and are determined to make a success of it. The Montessori child comes to ‘letters’ accustomed to recognising shapes both through sight and with muscular experience in his play with the geometrical insets and form-cards. His little hand has gained strength and control in using coloured pencils in filling-in the shapes he has himself outlined. He knows something about sound, because in mastering vocal language he has had to listen carefully, and has often been corrected when he has substituted one sound for another in some word he has had to listen. ‘Not “chimley,” “chimney,”’ his mother may, perhaps, have said. The moment having arrived when he wants to learn ‘letters’ his mother takes two of the sandpaper letters, two vowels. She sits down beside him, and she shows him how to touch or trace over the sandpaper of the first one, ‘a’ (pronounced as in ‘at’), and at the same time she makes this sound. The child imitates her in tracing and sanding. Then she does the same for the second letter, ‘e’ (pronounced as in ‘egg’). Again, the child imitates her in the tracing and the sounding. Then the two sandpaper letters lie on the table. ‘Give me the “e.”’ Again the child joyfully offers the right card. Now comes the third stage of this little lesson. The mother takes up one of the cards. “What is this?” she asks, showing one of the letters to the little one. ‘A’ or ‘e’, as the case may be, he answers, and so also with the second one. This whole lesson, given on the plan devised by the Frenchman Seguin, occupies three minutes at most. The child is free to take the sandpaper letters with him and trace and sound at his will. As the lesson comes to an end long before he has begun to tire, at a time when his interest is fresh, there is an impulse to repeat on his own. If the lesson is prolonged, this impulse does not manifest itself. If ‘b’ and ‘d’ are taken next, and are immediately combined with the ‘a’ and ‘e, the transition to whole words comes at once. Some children themselves suggest the consonant sound necessary to convert these beginnings of words into known words, as when a little girl turned ‘be’ into ’bed’, or ‘da’ into ‘dad’. The mother or teacher follows, within the limitations imposed by the child’s incomplete knowledge of the symbols, the child’s lead, always suggesting words which as names of actions and objects are of interest to the child. the effect of hitting upon words which are emotionally interesting to a child is very great. Anyone who has never tried this way can have no idea of the facility of a child of four in analysing words he can say and is interested in into their component sounds, and representing these by movable letters. He will occupy himself thus for long periods with contentment and without strain, because of the exercise involved in fetching and replacing the letters and arranging them in words on his mat.”

This gives a clear account of the initial steps in the Montessori method of teaching reading and writing.

            At various times in these columns I have suggested quite other ways of beginning reading and writing – those that are known as “word-whole” or “look-and-say” methods. In these methods one does not begin with sounds and letters, but with actual names of things and people and actions in which the child is interested. The most natural unit of speech in the young child is the word. There are some psychologists who suggest that the real unit of speech is in fact the sentence, and some very interesting experimental work is now being carried on by one psychologist with a “sentence-whole” method in which the child is taught from the beginning the written forms of short, simple, sentences that are of vital interest to him. Most of us, however, think that the word is a more practicable unit for the young child, although we are awaiting the result of this experiment with great interest. For the young child, of course, a word very often does the duty of the sentence. “Down’ may mean “I want to go down “; “Out” “I want to go out.” Even “Daddy,” when said with an expressive gesture, may mean “Lift me up” or “Come along and play with me.” In any case, all through his early years the child has a great passion for naming all the things around him, and clearly gets a delightful sense of power from knowing the names of things.