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Show Love Proclaimed As the Most Essential Element In the Small Child's Home Life By MRS. L. H. SMITH The Nursery School parents' group 'met Nov. .3, at 4:00 p.m. The topic for discussion was handled by Mrs. Eleanor Jane Gibbons. The most essential element which the home should provide for the small child is love. A warm, spontaneous spon-taneous affection that insures the child's security. It's astonishing to find how often this basic need is denied the child and by women who believe they are being good mothers. Some mothers use the same detached, objective manner toward their children that you would use in speaking to an agreeable agree-able clerk in a department store. At home, some mothers put their childre to bed at night like little automatons. A psuedo-kiss, a glance at the clock to see that the schedule is being observed, and lights out. No bed-time story; no getting up in the morning with a re-assuring run-jump-hug that small children of a less self-conscious era found natural and satisfying. sat-isfying. No piggy-back rides with daddy; no stories before breakfast break-fast on Sunday morning or bedtime bed-time songs on special evenings. , Denied Need for Love This sterile, disciplined kind of home denies to the children rais-) ed in it their basic need for love. Their beautifully scheduled unemotional un-emotional days' will doubtless be excellent preparation for the life of efficient business men and women. But how will they adjust to the emotional demands life is apt to make upon them? Since they did not grow, up in an atmosphere at-mosphere of shared intimacy, of effectionate surprises, of imaginative imagin-ative expressions of love and sentimental sen-timental companionship, it is hard to see how they can succeed in marriage. They will probably attempt at-tempt to run their own families in a correctly decorated shell and adhere to the daily routines which build inexorable habits. Already there has been a great deal of discussion of emotional factors affecting conception, pregnancy preg-nancy and nursing; and we are beginning be-ginning to learn that a mother must want and know how to enjoy en-joy her experience as a mother every step of the way if she is to give her baby a secure and stable start in life. We predict, we are going to hear more about satisfying satis-fying motherhood. We shall hear that to be a mother means, first of all, to love a child and to love him so that he knows it. This does not mean that all' families should bubble with sentimentality. It means that each family needs to find its own level of affection, its own spontaneous ways of growing grow-ing together, of achieving intimacy. inti-macy. The specific means of affection af-fection will vary with each one. We know that most mothers if encouraged, will easily get over the idea that rocking a baby now and then is bad for it, because that is what they instinctively want to do. Spontaneous mother-baby mother-baby play comes most easily before be-fore the age of two, but mothers of nursery school age children recover re-cover their demonstrativeness if they feel it is good for the child and not bad for him. Some very serious nervous disorders in adult life may be traced to the first ten days of life in the hospital. Mature love Mature love means its happiest expression when it is maternal, playful, friendly, affectionate, sexual sex-ual and biological. Keeping the balance in these qualities, outgrowing out-growing what we should outgrow, progressing as we should progress, retaining a proportion of the flavor fla-vor of each kind of childhood's affection rather than attachment to the person who inspired it this will insure the kind of love relationship eventually in marriage which will hold out the surest promise of happiness. (Some of the above are excerpts ex-cerpts from Parents' Magazine, Oct. 1939.) |