Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/824

800 parents. Wishing our children to have vigorous, robust bodies, we endeavored to have them live the kind of free life lived by boys, and gave them no dolls, but the instinct of the girl turned to dolls like a needle to the pole. There is nothing so fascinating to them as dolls. The doll life during this period is not complex. Such simple plays as "patty-cake" come soon after three, dissecting maps and such things a little later, "drop the handkerchief" later yet. The child is immensely inquisitive, and wishes to find things out. Its play is much influenced apparently by this feeling. I do not think that the destructive play of boys at this period is merely destructive; it is related to the acquisition of knowledge and the construction of other things. Children are interested in but not sympathetic with animals and bugs by Nature. They will play with flies, pulling the wings off to make them tame, and many other things, indicating a total lack of appreciation of the suffering of animals. Children before seven rarely play games spontaneously. They do so sometimes under the stimulus of older children or of adults. The same fact may be stated in regard to competition. The plays before seven are almost exclusively noncompetitive. Comparing the plays of this period with those of babyhood, I would say that they were far more constructive, far greater in range; that the muscular movements involved were larger, more powerful, more sustained, but still of much the same character. Unless influenced by adults, there is but little fine work with the fingers and wrists, not very much of delicate co-ordination. The movements are the larger movements of the trunk, shoulders, and elbows. It is a time of great activity. There is but little sitting still, or keeping still, when awake.

During what I have called later childhood—from seven to twelve in girls—we have the height of the doll plays, elaborate housekeeping arrangements. Two of our children are now in this stage. They have secured all of the broken dishes, bits of tin, and other things that can be used for housekeeping, and in old boxes, in imaginary houses, or whatever is available, are going through with these elementary housekeeping arrangements. At about ten the interest in dolls seems to wane, but taking its place there is an interest in babies. It is a common thing to see girls at this age asking to borrow neighbors' babies to wheel them round in baby-carriages, to play with them, to swing them. Every one of our babies has been borrowed by neighbors' children of about this age. Boys do not borrow our babies; it is distinctly a feminine instinct to play with babies. Boys want knives, to whittle, all sorts of plays with strings, flying kites. The ball games are played, "one old cat," an elementary baseball game, swimming and rowing. Boys delight in the use of tools during this period, and in building all sorts of things; making little streams