Page:First steps in mental growth (1906).djvu/51

 It is perhaps unnecessary to relate, or describe, minutely the tedious and inartistic details of the period of practice in learning to use the spoon. It will be sufficient to refer to a few of the adjustments which must be made before the child can use the spoon skilfully. How delicate these adjustments and muscular coördinations must be can be made clear by reference to two defects of the beginner's struggles. In the first place, the handle of the spoon is grasped awkwardly. Palm down the hand seizes the spoon-handle as if it were a cheese knife, or a meat ax, a good position for striking or jabbing but not for dipping. (See Fig. 5, Plate III.) In the second place, the handle of the spoon is not raised high enough and the bowl of the spoon strikes the mouth in an almost vertical plane, preventing the spoon's entrance to the mouth and allowing the food to fall out. These two obvious defects of the child's first ventures with the spoon will serve to illustrate the nature of some of the defects which must be overcome in practice, by a process of trial and success. This period of preliminary practice in the case of R. extended over a period of more than five months. That is, it was not until his twentieth month that the child had acquired sufficient control over the unruly spoon to get a fair share of the food which was allotted to him into his mouth and not on his bib, chair, and the surrounding territory.

In the meantime the child had acquired good control of the table-fork as an instrument for carrying food to the mouth. It is clear that the fork can be used much earlier than the spoon as a feeding implement, provided the food is in particles solid enough to hang together when pierced by the fork-tines. For example, R. could pick up strawberries with a fork three months before he had the skill to pick them up and carry them to the mouth with a spoon.

Learning to throw a ball.—Learning to throw a ball,