In each new experience we find it the same, the healthy baby yields,
_lets himself go,_ with an case which must double his chances for
comfort. Could we but learn to do so, our lives would lengthen, and
our joys and usefulness strengthen in exact proportion.
All through the age of unconsciousness, this physical freedom is
maintained even where the mental attitude is not free. Baby wrath is
as free and economical of physical force as are the winsome moods,
and this until the personality has developed to some extent,--that
is, _until the child reflects the contractions of those around him._
It expends itself in well-balanced muscular exercise, one set of
muscles resting fully in their moment of non-use, while another set
takes up the battle. At times it will seem that all wage war
together; if so, the rest is equal to the action.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to recommend anger, even of
the most approved sort; but if we will express the emotion at all,
let us do it as well as we did in our infancy!
Channels so free as this would necessitate, would lessen our
temptations to such expression; we, with mature intellects, would
see it for what it is, and the next generation of babies would less
often exercise their wonderfully balanced little bodies in such an
unlovely waste.
Note the perfect openness of a baby throat as the child coos out his
expression of happiness. Could anything be more free, more like the
song of a bird in its obedience to natural laws? Alas, for how much
must we answer that these throats are so soon contracted, the tones
changed to so high a pitch, the voice becoming so shrill and harsh!
Can we not open our throats and become as these little children?
The same _openness_ in the infant organism is the child's protection
in many dangers. Falls that would result in breaks, strains, or
sprains in us, leave the baby entirely whole save in its "feelings,"
and often there, too, if the child has been kept in the true state
mentally.
Watch a baby take its food, and contrast it with our own ways of
eating. The baby draws it in slowly and evenly, with a quiet rhythm
which is in exact accord with the rhythmic action of its digestive
organs. You feel each swallow taken in the best way for repair, and
for this reason it seems sometimes as if one could see a baby grow
while feeding. There cannot be a lovelier glimpse of innocent
physical repose than the little respites from the fatigue of feeding
which a baby often takes. His face moist, with open pores, serene
and satisfied, he views the hurry about him as an interesting phase
of harmless madness. He is entirely outside of it until
self-consciousness is quite developed.
The sleep of a little child is another opportunity for us to learn
what we need. Every muscle free, every burden dropped, each breath
carries away the waste, and fills its place with the needed
substance of increasing growth and power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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