Volume 1

Notes on the development of a child / by Milicent Washburn Shinn.

  • Milicent Shinn
Date:
[1908-1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Notes on the development of a child / by Milicent Washburn Shinn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    436/446 page 420
    OTHER RECORDS OF THE INSTINCTIVE MOVEMENTS. From Mrs. Beatty’s MS. Record (see p. 22). In the eighth month the baby was trying to creep, rising on hands and toes, but in his first efforts he pushed himself involuntarily backward. This always made him angry, as he kept getting farther and farther away from the object he was trying to reach. This continued till late in the eighth or early in the ninth month. During the ninth month, he was in camp, and had no opportunity to creep except on the bed; but I saw him one day creeping forward across the bed; and after this he could steer in the direction he wished to go. After returning home he crept quite rapidly, turning out his toes. In the eleventh month he sometimes crept on hands and knees, and sometimes on hands and toes. By this time (eleventh month) he was pulling himself to his feet, but only by rather low objects, as a cracker-box [so that his weight was partly propped by his hands, as in the case of my niece at the same stage: see p. 342. M. IV. .S’.]; but by the middle of the month he would get to his feet by almost any object, his mother’s skirt, e. g. He could now stand by a chair, and keep- ing hold with one hand could lean over and take things from the floor. He rarely lost balance, and daily gained more ease and confidence in standing. In the forty-seventh week, however, as he stood by a light kitchen chair, which moved a little over the uncarpeted floor as he pushed against it, he became alarmed, drew back, stood alone for a second, then sat down suddenly, crying with fright. About this same time, the'middle of the eleventh month (forty-sixth week), he made an important advance toward walking. He was standing by his mother’s knee, and desired to investigate the contents of a basket on a chair near by. Reaching out with one hand, he steadied himself by the chair; then letting go his mother’s dress with the other hand, he tried to find a hold for it on the chair. He had some difficulty in doing so, bent over to take hold of the rung, and finding that would compel him to stoop, at last placed both hands on the seat of the chair, and stepped over to it. In the forty-eighth week, as he stood by the lounge, he reached out his hand and caught his mother by the dress, then by the hand, and by pulling managed to step over to her. In the next few days he became able, by taking my hand, and pressing his other hand against a wall, to step along slowly; and he would edge all about large, heavy chairs, holding to them. The last day of the month he was shown how to push a light chair before him over a matting-covered floor : he was highly delighted with this mode of locomotion, and moved rapidly about the room with the chair, although less than a fortnight earlier he had been so frightened at the slight moving of a chair under his hands. In the latter part of this same active month, the eleventh, he began to let
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