Child development; Infant psychology; Motor ability in children
There was a decided advance, too, in her acquaintance with her own
body. Sitting as usual in her horse-collar, she was bending herself
back over it, a thing that she had done before; but to-day she kept it
up so persistently, and bent herself back with such exertion, that at
last the back of her head touched the floor. She righted herself with
an expression of great surprise. Evidently she had been experimenting
in new muscular sensations only, and (as happens to all experimenters
sometimes) had got an extra result that she did not bargain for and
did not understand. She bent back again, with her head screwed around
to see what had given her the touch. In this position, she did not
reach the floor. She sat up again, looked at me with a perplexed
face, and tried it over, a full dozen times, till her mother picked
her up to stop it, on the ground that the baby was more valuable than
the experiment, and that she would break her little back. For days,
however, the baby returned to the investigation, doubling herself back
over the arm of any one who held her till her head hung straight down,
or over the horse-collar till it rested on the floor.
We may perhaps fairly guess that in this incident she had for the
first time discovered the back of her head as a part of herself, and
any of us might well be surprised to find himself extending off behind
into space that way, if he had never known about it before. The baby
had of course felt daily and hourly touches on the back of her head,
from pillow and floor and lap, from cap and hair brush; but all her
previous behavior, and her surprise now, indicate that this was the
first time she had externalized these touches--which implies also the
first time she had felt _herself_ as receiving them.
One of the first things she did when she began grasping zealously was
to seize her own toes, and she bent her foot forward on the ankle to
bring it better in reach. This may have been a purely instinctive
coöperating act at first, but it helped on the control of feet and
legs, and the recognition of them as parts of herself--the more as they
were now for some time favorite playthings every time the baby was
undressed.
Another significant movement the next day, also brought about by the
advance in grasping, was the first attempt to scramble forward as she
lay on her stomach, to get hold of something--a futile effort, but the
forerunner of creeping.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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