AMERICAN HOME SERIES NORMAN E. RICHARDSON, Editor THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT IN CHILDREN Prepared originally by THE LITERARY STAFF of the AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHILD LIFE FOURTH EDITION (Revised) [Illustration: The Abington Press] THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright 1914, by AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHILD LIFE INTRODUCTION THE development of the dramatic instinct in children is the special responsibility of parents. The public school and church school programs are gradually including dramatics and the teachers in many of these schools can go far in sharing this responsibility. But it is in the home where room and time, equipment and motive, suggestions and cooperating friends are found. Parental skill is revealed in helping a child to try on a new character or virtue as well as a new blouse or pair of shoes. Social and moral imagination in the child can be realized under the direct guidance of father or mother. Voyages are taken, investigations made, treasure islands discovered, animals subdued, robbers put to flight, the plans of sly Indians frustrated, and fierce battles waged by the child whose parent-teacher is versatile and imaginative. The dull, uninteresting parent, whose chief virtue is that of routine, long-faced fidelity, narrows his children’s world and correspondingly limits the range of their moral development. What faith is to the adult the dramatic instinct is to the child: it is the substance, the substantial realization of things hoped for. It is the power to make things happen. It is the victory that overcomes the prosaic, saw-dust affairs of life. If this pamphlet, carefully studied, helps parents to see and properly awaken the sleeping dramatic powers of their children and give them a new motive in guiding its various expressions, the purpose of the writers will have been realized. NORMAN E. RICHARDSON. THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT IN CHILDREN[1] [1] The material included in this pamphlet, together with other practical studies of the subject of play, is included in “A Manual of Play,” by Forbush, and published by Jacobs and Company. “And sometimes for an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes through the hills, “And sometimes sent my ships in fleets, All up and down among the sheets; Or brought my trees and houses out And planted cities all about.” --_Robert Louis Stevenson._ I. THE NATURE OF THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT--1. ITS EXPRESSION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD. 2. ITS EXPRESSION IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD. 3. ITS EXPRESSION IN LATER CHILDHOOD. II. EDUCATIONAL VALUE--1. THE MORAL VALUE OF THIS INSTINCT. 2. ITS INSPIRATIONAL VALUE. III. SUMMARY--REFERENCES. I. THE NATURE OF THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT