Baby Learns Quickly

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 30, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 18.

Baby Learns Quickly.

A COMPETENT nurse says most children’s naughtiness is taught by mother or nurse. “Baby does not cheerfully kiss you. See, mama cry if baby will not kiss her. Boo-hoo! and mama makes believe to cry in her hands till baby pulls her fingers away from the deceiving eyes, and mama laughs and does not always remember when she stops boo-hooing to exact the kiss. Of course by a mere animal process of reasoning baby learns to cry for what it wants. Has it not had the ‘line upon line’?”

“When baby makes a misstep and down he goes, avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of nursery shipwreck. Neither make a great fuss over the bump, and weaken his self-control by too much sympathy, nor do that other miserable thing, strike the offending object of collision, saying: ‘Naughty old table. Whip the table for hitting little boy’s head.’ This is often the first lesson in combativeness, and the baby who hits back the passive chair that is said to have hit him, becomes equally active in slapping children or other folk who morally or physically oppose.”—Chicago Interior.