Children's Ways

TH FEARS: (a)

and gladness, may not, it is said, be in themselves so intense as they look. In order to get more data for settling the question we must try to reach their less demonstrative feelings, those which t

evening into the darkness with his mother, asked her: "Would you like to take hold of my hand, mammy?" His father took this to mean the beginning of boyish determination not t

I entertain the gravest doubts as to the existence of a perfectly fearless child. Children differ enormously, and the same child differs enormously at different times in the intensity of his fear, but they all have the chara

that every time a child starts it is feeling afraid of something, but as we shall presently see, being startled and really frightened are two experiences, which, though closely related, must be carefully distinguished. A child may, further, show a sort of ?sthetic repugnance to certa

own as terror, it leads to trembling and to wild shrieking. Changes of colour also occur, the child's face turning white, or possibly in some cases red. When frightened by anything an older child will commonly run from the objec

tery of

unting to fear is its progenitor. A clearer manifestation occurs when a new and unfamiliar sound calls forth the grave look, the trembling lip, and possi

earing the sound of a baby rattle; and she did the same two months later on accidentally ringing a hand bell. Children often show curious caprices in their objections to sounds. Thus a little girl when taken i

irst. The first hearing of the tones of a piano has upset the comfort of many a child. A child of five a

not loudly on the piano. It got up, moved uneasily from side to side, then bolted to a corner of the room and seemed to try to

t also to the mystery of their origin. We should remember too that sounds are, for the child still more than for the adult, expressive of feeling and intention. Hence religious ideas readily

sounds of music with a joyous greeting. Even the awful thunder-storm may gladly excite and not frighten. Childr

he feeling of uneasiness at what is unexpected and disturbing, and so may be said to be the beginning of true childish fears. This element of anxiety becomes

hen carried to hold on to the nurse's dress as if for safety. And it has been noticed by more than one observer that on dandling a baby up and down in one's arms, it will on descending, that is when the support of the arms is being withdrawn, show signs of discontent in struggling movements. This is sometimes regarded as an inherited fear; y

ng that seems altogether so likable as fur. Whether the common dislike of children to water has anything to do with its soft yieldingness to touch I cannot say. This whole class of early repugnances to certain sensations seems

rmed Se

ual sense, the sentinel that guards the body, keeping a look-out for what is afar as for what is anear. The uneasiness which a child experiences at

nts. Although we are wont to think of children as loving and delighting in what is new, we must not forget that it may also trouble and alarm. This feeling of uneasines

sense of strangeness in places sometimes appears very early. A little girl on being taken at the age of four months into a new nursery, "looked all round and then burst out crying". Some children retain this feeling of uneasiness up to the age of three years and

of the dog to persons with that of the cat to localities. Any sudden change of the customary h

ar, that the approach of a stranger, especially if accompanied by a proposal to take the child, calls forth clear signs of displeasure and the shr

hospitable than others. It would be curious to compare the ages at which children begin to take kindly t

rse returned home after a fortnight's holiday. Another boy of about ten months is said to have shown a marked shrinking from an uncle who strongly resembled his father. Such facts, taken with the

place. Much of the acuter fear of children probably has in it something of this dizzy sickening sense of being lost. A little girl between the ages of seven and ten used to wake up in a fright crying loudly because she could not think where she was. Many a child when exploring a new and dark room, or still more venturesomely wandering alone out of doors, h

clothes. An infant has been known to break out into tears at the sight of a new dress on its mother, though the colour and pattern had, one would have s

tagonist in the love of new clothes, which is often supported in children of a "subjective" turn by a feeling of something like disgrace at having to go on wearing the same clothes so long. Sometimes the love of

ing faces, which is said to disturb a child within the first three months, illustrates the effect of shock at the spoiling of what is getting familiar and liked. The donning of a pair of dark spectacles, by extinguis

of the sea. Some children clearly show signs of alarm, nestling towards their nurses when they are carried near the edge of the water. Yet here, again, the behaviour of the childish mind varies grea

sisters, of whom one, an imaginative child, had not even at the age of six got over her fear of going into the sea, whereas the sister, who was comparatively unimaginative, was perfectly fearless. Th

know what it really is. It may be conjectured too that a child's fear of clouds, when they take on uncanny forms, is supported by their inaccessibility; for he cannot get near them and touch them. It seems, however, according to some recent researches in America, that children's fear of celestial bodies,

the floor or lifts itself into the air. A girl of three, who happened to pull a feather out of her mother's eider-down quilt, was so alarmed at seeing it float in the air that she would not come near the bed for days afterwards. Shrewd nurses know of this weakness, and have been able effectually to keep a child in a room by putting a feather in th

he appearance of life may excite fear, as, for example, a toy cow which "moved realistically when it reared its head," a combination which completely

tly from their blackness and eerie forms, partly from their uncanny movements and changes of form.

e candle the cro

hing along

uing, horribly close at every movement, undergo