Growing and Changing
THIS new volume carries on the great tradition of Gesell's work. It considers the child from five to ten with the same humanity of understanding and objectivity of method as all his earlier studies of children's development. Gesell and his co-workers have always seen children as subjects not only to be photographed, measured and experimented upon, but also as human beings living their own lives, feeling as well as behaving. In Part I of this book they introduce the reader to the concept of growth gradients and the life cycle. In Part II they show the progressive stages in growth by Gesell's characteristic method of considering " cross-sectional characteristics " at successive ages ; and in Part III they consider ten main aspects of growth in gerieral so as to give a " panoramic view of the flowing slopes of develolnient, with trends which date back to infancy." These are : motor characteristics, personal hygiene, emotional expres- sion, fears and dreams, self and sex, interpersonal relations, play and pastimes, school life, ethical sense and philosophic outlook. (This latter covers such points as the child's attitude to time, space, language and thought, war, death and deity.)
Two major points are constantly brought out : one, the fact that growth is motion, the characteristic of any given age having always a backward and a forward reference, and being understood only by its place in the whole cycle. (Gesell would be the last to approve of the tendency which seems strong in official quarters in this country just now to make a sharp separation between the nursery, infant, junior and senior school periods.) And the second, the fact of individual characteristics. The authors emphasise again that the concept of growth is an empty abstraction unless it is seen as a concrete individual process. The so-called " norms of development " are never to be taken as " static yardsticks " but as mere indications of the directions of change ; change which allows for an endless diversity of personal pattern.
The terms used and quoted above may sound dull and technical. The book is far from being so. It is full of vivid detail which evokes living pictures of particular children and of typical sayings and doings between five and ten years. These are recorded with com- plete simplicity and frankness. It is of special interest to the reviewer to see how many of the interests and attitudes of children with regard to sex and physiological processes, which when recorded and pub- lished here in 1933 in The Social Development of Young Children were regarded by some people as untypical or even untrue, are given by Gesell in the most matter-of-fact way. The one thing missing is a psychological linking hypothesis. Descriptively, the account given of children at these various ages is unequivocal ; but there is not enough linking-up of the various data. For Gesell the only linking hypothesis is maturation. There is too little understanding of the interplay of psychic experiences. Fears and dreams and social behaviour are described: their psychic relationships, the unconscious fantasies lying behind them, the defences against anxiety and other feelings which go into the building of character and of neurosis are scarcely shown us. For these, we have to turn to Freud, to Melanie Klein and other psycho-analysts.
Nevertheless, it must be said of this volume, as of How a Baby Grows, that it offers parent, teacher and social worker a wealth of invaluable knowledge. The help to the parent, for instance, of understanding the normality of particular problems at given ages is delightfully expressed by the authors themselves : "'He is a changed child! ' Many a mother has said this ruefully, when her former five-year-old begins to lose his angelic five-year-oldness. 'He is a changed child, and I do not-know what has gotten into him! ' . . . Perhaps nothing more or less than six-year-oldness! " What a help to see this, and to know that such changes, however uncomfort- able to the adult, are bound to occur. " We cannot do justice to the
seven-year-old unless we recognise the importance of his private mental activities. They account for his occasional brooding, his heedlessness, the minor strains of sadness and complainingness, his sulks, his mutterings, his shynesses and a certain pensiveness which is not without charm."
The authors refer to the discovery which the child, too, has to make—and how surprised he often is by it—that he has a historical as well as a present self. "He was once a baby! . . . A seven-year- old, observing his newborn brother taking a first meal at the breast, asked with astonishment, Did I do that? And, Mummy, did you do that too : and you too, Daddy? ' He was in the throes of assimi- lating a tremendous fact. His questions reveal how closely the development of the self is intermeshed with the phenomenon Of sex." The book teems with quotable material. A few further instances must suffice. Apropos of the interest of the five-year-old in the process of birth—it is an age when both boys and girls wish to have babies of their own : " One five-year-old was heard to ask another five-year-old, 'Are you old enough to have a baby? ' Goodness, no,' was the reply, ' I can't even tell time yet.'" The seven-year-old may appear-to be -actually deaf when he is merely turning a deaf eat ! Again, " Seven may himself become involved in an elementary love affair. . . One seven-year-old who did not have a boy-friend wailed to her parents, What is the matter with me? I'm not in love." And as to how much human nature there may be in an eight-year-old, the following instance will show: " Girls of this age often make paper dolls and use them to symbolise agents and situations. My husband would not be unfaithful to me! ' said one dramatic eight-year-old girl as she was creating a paper doll scene. But he has been already! ' replied her resourceful
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