Book
The Nursery Years: The Mind of the Child from Birth to Six Years
The Nursery Years (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1929) is Susan Isaacs's short book for parents on the mental life of children from birth to six. Isaacs observes that the physical care of infants had passed from custom to science, while the care of their minds was still left to mood, habit and moral principle. Since the most important events of a child's mental life happen before school, it is parents who need to understand why a child behaves as it does, and to bring intelligence as well as affection to the task. Drawing on psychoanalysis and on the developmental research of Gesell, Binet, Burt and Terman, she presents play as the child's work and the means by which it grows, and holds that the infant has a rich emotional life from birth, with wants, fears, anger, love and hate. She traces the early centrality of the mouth, the meaning of feeding as love, the biting phase and the feeling invested in the bowel and in toilet training, and asks for patience, gradual weaning and calm prevention rather than punishment. Developmental norms, built from the observation of many children, help parents neither baby the child nor demand too much of it. Chapters on the child from two to six, in relation to the world and to its parents, are followed by answers to common problems, advice on playthings and a short list of don'ts for parents. Enlarged in 1932, the book was reprinted many times until 1971 and became Isaacs's most widely read work for parents.
Main ideas
- The care of a child's mind should rest on understanding, as the care of the body had come to rest on science, rather than on mood, habit or moral principle.
- The years before school are decisive: the most important events of a child's mental life are over by the time a teacher meets the child, so parents carry the task.
- Play is the child's work: through it the child gains skill and knowledge, and through make-believe finds a way into the adult world and a refuge from its demands.
- The infant has an emotional life from birth: wants and wishes, fears and anger, love and hate are there from the beginning.
- In infancy the mouth is the centre of mental life; feeding is experienced as love, and weaning should be gradual.
- Toilet training carries strong feeling and should be patient and free of fear; harshness and constant criticism keep children in infantile ways.
- Thumb-sucking and similar habits are better read as symptoms, to be met with satisfaction and companionship rather than restraint.
- Developmental norms, drawn from the observation of many children, let parents neither baby a child nor demand too much of it.
- Adults misjudge children in two opposite ways, treating infants as if they had no mind and young children as responsible moral beings, an error Isaacs traces to the illusion created by speech.
- Isaacs offers guiding principles rather than rules, to be applied flexibly, since parents, children and circumstances all differ.