8oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



parents. Wishing our cliildren to have vigorous, robust bodies, we 

 endeavored to have them live the kind of free life lived by boys, and 

 gave them no dolls, but the instinct of the girl turned to dolls like a 

 needle to the pole. There is nothing so fascinating to them as dolls. 

 The doll life during this period is not complex. Such simple plays 

 as " patty-cake " come soon after three, dissecting maps and such 

 things a little later, " drop the handkerchief " later yet. The child 

 is immensely inquisitive, and wishes to find things out. Its play is 

 much influenced apparently by this feeling. I do not think that the 

 destructive play of boys at this period is merely destructive; it is 

 related to the acquisition of knowledge and the construction of other 

 things. Children are interested in but not sympathetic with animals 

 and bugs by l^ature. They will play with flies, pulling the wings 

 off to make them tame, and many other things, indicating a total lack 

 of appreciation of the suffering of animals. Children before seven 

 rarely play games spontaneously. They do so sometimes under the 

 stimulus of older children or of adults. The same fact may be stated 

 in regard to competition. The plays before seven are almost exclu- 

 sively noncompetitive. Comparing the plays of this period with 

 those of babyhood, I would say that they were far more constructive, 

 far greater in range; that the muscular movements involved were 

 larger, more powerful, more sustained, but still of much the same 

 character. Unless influenced by adults, there is but little fine work 

 with the fingers and wrists, not very much of delicate co-ordination. 

 The movements are the larger movements of the trunk, shoulders, 

 and elbows. It is a time of great activity. There is but little sitting 

 still, or keeping still, when awake. 



During what I have called later childhood — from seven to twelve 

 in girls — we have the height of the doll plays, elaborate house- 

 keeping arrangements. Two of our children are now in this stage. 

 They have secured all of the broken dishes, bits of tin, and other 

 things that can be used for housekeeping, and in old boxes, in im- 

 aginary houses, or whatever is available, are going through with these 

 elementary housekeeping arrangements. At about ten the interest 

 in dolls seems to wane, but taking its place there is an interest in 

 babies. It is a common thing to see girls at this age asking to borrow 

 neighbors' babies to wheel them round in baby-carriages, to play with 

 them, to swing them. Every one of our babies has been borrowed by 

 neighbors' children of about this age. Boys do not borrow our 

 babies; it is distinctly a feminine instinct to play with babies. Boys 

 want knives, to whittle, all sorts of plays with strings, flying kites. 

 The ball games are played, " one old cat," an elementary baseball 

 game, swimming and rowing. Boys delight in the use of tools during 

 this period, and in building all sorts of things; making little streams 



