8o4 Reading-Course for Farmers' Wives. 



THE BABY 



The new born baby receives and deserves our sympathy. All at once 

 it is called upon to face new and very strange surroundings, to exercise 

 retently developed functions, to adjust itself to a new set of conditions. 

 A new food supply has to be digested by a previously untried digestive 

 apparatus ; a new way of taking ox}-gen begins through lungs never before 

 called into play ; previously circumscribed limbs are now free and must 

 be exercised; and often, worst of all, it is faced by a large acquaintance 

 of persons as ignorant of it and its real needs as it is of them. Its educa- 

 tion now begins. A pathetic little figure, we must agree! 



Our great ignorance of the growth and development of the human 

 organism during the nine months it lies so snugly hidden away makes us 

 feel that an unbridgable chasm separates the child which is born from 

 the child before it is born. This very fact leads to much of our ignorant 

 management of the small baby. In the few moments or hours which 

 are occupied in accomplishing the entrance of the child into the outside 

 world, there has not been time for it materially to change its needs. It 

 has been accustomed to uninterrupted quiet, to a sightless, possibly a 

 soundless and a certainly monotonous period of existence in which to 

 accomplish a most wonderful growth and development. Its food has 

 been supplied automatically, and under normal conditions satisfactorily. 

 When it is born it is just an immature and undeveloped bit of humanity 

 ready to use the newly developed functions, ready to be educated and 

 trained to use others, but not ready to share largely the lives of the more 

 completely developed. It still needs and should have something approx- 

 imating as closely as possible the previous environment, but which will 

 be consistent with its new responsibilities of digesting its own food, getting 

 rid of its own wastes, taking in its own oxygen, wearing clothes to supply 

 its need of warmth, learning little by little to move its muscles, to 

 correlate its actions and to adjust itself to other human beings. 



What the new born baby is we know. What it is to be will depend 

 about equally on twO' factors, inheritance and environment. A good 

 inheritance may be marred by a bad environment, but the reverse is also 

 true, for a poor inheritance may be overcome by careful training. It is a 

 fatal mistake to think that education begins with school years. It begins 

 with the first breath the child draws, and the education or training of the 

 infant is as important in determining its ultimate characteristics as any 

 that may come later. This is the period for establishing regular physical 

 habits which will not only be the basis for the future health, but which 

 will give the first foundation for an idea of obedience to law. If the child 

 learns during the first year of its life to adjust itself to regular hours of 

 sleep, to regular meal times, to a regularity of various body habits, its 



