The Nervous Child

THE IMITATIVENESS OF THE CHILD

It is in the second and third years of the child's life that the rapidity of the

development of the mental processes is most apparent, and it is with that age

that we may begin a closer examination. At first sight it might seem more

reasonable to adopt a strictly chronological order, and to start with the in-

fant from the day of his birth. Since, however, we can only interpret the

mind of the child by our knowledge of our own mental processes, the study

of the older child and of the later stages is in reality the simpler task. The

younger the infant, the greater the difficulties become, so that our task is

not so much to trace the development of a process from simple and early

forms to those which are later and more complex, as to follow a track which

is comparatively plain in later childhood, but grows faint as the beginnings

of life are approached.

At the age, then, of two or three the first quality of the child which may arrest

3 HECTOR CHARLES CAMERON

our attention is his extreme imitativeness. Not that the imitation on his part

is in any way conscious; but like a mirror he reflects in every action and in

every word all that he sees and hears going on around him. We must recog-

nise that in these early days his words and actions are not an independent

growth, with roots in his own consciousness, but are often only the reflec-

tion of the words and actions of others. How completely speech is imitative

is shown by the readiness with which a child contracts the local accent of his

birthplace. The London parents awake with horror to find their baby an

indubitable Cockney; the speech of the child bred beyond the Tweed pro-

claims him a veritable Scot. Again, some people are apt to adopt a somewhat

peremptory tone in addressing little children. Often they do not trouble to

give to their voices that polite or deferential inflection which they habitually

use when speaking to older people. Listen to a party of nurses in the Park

addressing their charges. As if they knew that their commands have small

chance of being obeyed, they shout them with incisive force. "Come along

at once when I tell you," they say. And the child faithfully reflects it all back,

and is heard ordering his little sister about like a drill sergeant, or curtly bid-

ding his grandmother change her seat to suit his pleasure. If we are to have

pretty phrases and tones of voice, mothers must see to it that the child habit-

ually hears no other. Again, mothers will complain that their child is deaf,

or, at any rate, that he has the bad habit of responding to all remarks ad-

dressed to him by saying, "What?" or, worse still, "Eh?" Often enough the

reason that he does so is not that the child is deaf, nor that he is particularly

slow to understand, but simply that he himself speaks so indistinctly that

no matter what he says to the grown-up people around him, they bend over

him and themselves utter the objectionable word.

We all hate the tell-tale child, and when a boy comes in from his walk and

has much to say of the wicked behaviour of his little sister on the afternoon's

outing, his mother is apt to see in this a most horrid tendency towards tale-

bearing and currying of favour. She does not realise that day by day, when

the children have come in from their walk, she has asked nurse in their hear-

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