CHILD 



1322 



CHILD 



the average baby doubles its weight; in a year 

 he trebles it. So a year-old child should weigh 

 about twenty-one pounds. By the sixth year 

 the average boy weighs about forty-five 

 pounds, the average girl about forty-three, and 

 the boy should be just a trifle over, the girl 

 just a trifle under, forty-four inches in height. 

 The first table below shows a child's increase 

 in weight and height from the age of six to 

 sixteen years: 



The preceding paragraph from Miss Shinn's 

 book is only an imaginative way of saying 

 that a baby, although it is not born with its 

 eyes closed, like a kitten, does not see; it does 

 not hear, or smell; it does not think; it I eels 

 only vaguely and unconsciously. And yet, in 

 this animal-like little being all the elements 

 of the future man or woman are present, and 

 its growth and development during the first 

 years of its life are truly marvelous. We have 



The second table, giving heights in inches, is 

 made up from the measurements of American- 

 born children in three American cities; in com- 

 mon with Canadian children, they are a little 

 taller and heavier than the average English, 

 Irish, German or Scandinavian child: 



no way of measuring accurately how fast or 

 how far a child progresses in these first years, 

 but we do know that he is learning to use all 

 of his senses, that he has a constant and in- 

 sistent desire to touch, taste and handle every- 

 thing around him; that he is pleased with 



The Development of the Senses. In a re- 

 markable book called the Biography of a Baby, 

 Miss M. W. Shinn describes the state of a 

 new-born baby thus: 



She took in with vague comfort the gentle 

 light that fell on her eyes, seeing without any 

 sort of attention or comprehension the moving 

 blur of darkness that varied it. She felt mo- 

 tions and changes ; she felt the action of her 

 own muscles, and after the first three or four 

 days disagreeable shocks of sound now and then 

 broke through the silence or perhaps through an 

 unnoticed jumble of faint noises. She felt touches 

 on her body from time to time, but without the 

 least sense of the place of the touch. * * * 

 From time to time sensations of hunger and 

 thirst, and once or twice of pain made them- 

 selves felt through all the others, and mounted 

 until they became distressing ; from time to time 

 a feeling of heightened comfort flowed over her 

 as hunger or thirst was satisfied. * * * For 

 the rest she lay empty-minded, neither consciously 

 comfortable nor uncomfortable, yet on the whole 

 pervaded with a dull sense of well-being. Of the 

 people about her, of her mother's face, of her own 

 existence, of desire or fear, she knew nothing. 



bright and beautiful colors; that he is alert 

 to pleasant sounds and sensitive to harsh ones; 

 that he acquires very positive likes and dislikes 

 about the food he eats; and that he develops 

 a liking for pleasant odors and a distaste for 

 those that are unpleasant. 



This is exactly as it should be, for a child 

 lives by his senses. They are his only way 

 at first of acquiring knowledge of any sort. 

 They furnish all the material his mind has to 

 work with. If his senses are not satisfied, his 

 mind will starve; if they are not developed, 

 his mind will not develop. It is important, 

 therefore, that from the second month on, 

 when the senses begin to be active, plenty of 

 material be furnished for stimulating and de- 

 veloping each sense. 



Smell and Taste. It is practically impossible 

 to test a baby's sense of smell, but it is quite 

 probable that this sense does not develop 

 rapidly because the clean surroundings of the 

 well-cared-for baby are practically odorless. 



