When Will Your Child Walk? And When... Will He Talk?

A woman psychologist recently faced fathers' and mothers' questions about their children's behavior: when does a child walk? When does he talk?.. and become able to enjoy life outside the home?.. Her answers were simple and frank; we give some of them here... She said:

When you watch your child laughing and playing, or struggling to walk, dragging pieces of wood toward him or clutching at a chair, and lingering over his first words... you ask yourself: Is my son behind in all this?..

And suppose he is... how do you compare him with ordinary children?..

Take little Sami, twelve months old, who has begun his first steps: he babbles without stopping, and sometimes utters unintelligible words — while the neighbors' daughter Salwa, who is his age, has not yet tried to stand or to speak... All she can utter is: Mama... Papa... “bis”... So which of the two is the cleverer and brighter?..

The fact is that there is a great difference between children's capacity for a task and their manner of performing it... These differences appear from the very beginning of life... It is not easy to judge of a child of six weeks or a month that he is intelligent or lacking in intelligence... Individual differences are inseparable from personality; even the children of one family differ in their capacities — a thing many parents may not know... Close resemblance exists only between twins...

During recent years a number of tests have been carried out

on students, to ascertain the degree of their intelligence... And it is a very interesting thing for the educator to discover the measure of intelligence in a child, just as it is essential to know the causes of his backwardness...

The child is extremely sensitive, and so is affected by the smallest things; likewise, understanding him in childhood is quite essential, and brings him happiness later on.

Nor is the idea of testing at all new. Thirty years ago the psychologist “Arnold Gesell,” at Yale University, carried out a number of tests which became a yardstick for the child's progress through several stages... and many others besides have worked in the same field... Today new tests are being made, based on the observation and study of a great number of children... In this way it becomes possible to fix the age for walking, talking, sitting, standing, jumping, and climbing; and the observer marvels at the speed and ease with which children learn... The first thing the little one learns is speech: the affection with which his parents and the members of the family surround him in a natural home helps him to utter his first sound...

The language he will later master has comical and charming beginnings... It may lack polish and firmness: he drops a letter here and a word there without noticing... This is called the “pre-speech” period. In the sixth month the child begins to murmur sounds that he alone understands, and he may pronounce an intelligible word in the tenth month... Hardly does he reach his first year before he possesses a stock of words and phrases more or less intelligible... In his second year he tries with all his might to express the ideas crowded into his head — and this is what makes little ones at this age restless and nervous, satisfied with nothing whatever... Parents lose all patience with the little one in this particular period, and to them the psychologist says: Imagine yourselves in a strange country, not knowing a letter of its people's language — such, exactly, is the child's condition... At that point he needs someone who will understand him, be tender with him, and care for him — not someone who mocks him and his speech... Nor should it be forgotten that this is the most delightful of the stages of growth... and educators can make of it a pleasure from which they and the little one alike may profit...