The Child at Play : Part 2

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 4 of 13)

When the last of the boxes had been opened and my other less juvenile "things" surveyed, the child turned to her own treasures. "There are the two puzzles," she said, "and there is the big doll that can say 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, with lovely patterns and pieces to make more clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa just loved. Perhaps you'd like to play that best, too, 'cause you are sick, too?" she said tentatively.

I assented, and the little girl arranged the game on the table beside my bed, and explained its "rules" to me. We played at it most happily until my nurse, coming in, told my new-made friend that she must "say 'Good- bye' now."

My visitor at once collected her toys and prepared to go. At the door she turned. "Good-bye," she said, again dropping her prim courtesy. "I have had a very pleasant time."

"So have I!" I exclaimed.

And I had had. "She was so entertaining," I said to my nurse, "and her game was so interesting!"

"It is not an uncommon game," my nurse remarked, with a smile; "and she is just an ordinary, nice child!"

America is full of ordinary, nice children who beguile their elders into playing with them games that are not uncommon. How much "pleasant time" is thereby spent!

"Where do American children learn to expect grown people to play with them?" an Englishwoman once asked me. "In the kindergarten?"

Undoubtedly they do. In no country except Germany is the kindergarten so integral a part of the national life as it is in America. In our cities, rich and poor alike send their children to kindergartens. Not only in the public and the private schools, but also in the social settlements, and even in the Sunday-schools, we have kindergarten departments. In the rural schools the teachers train the little "beginners" in accordance with kindergarten principles. Even to places far away from any schools at all the kindergarten penetrates. Only yesterday I saw a book, written by a kindergartner, dedicated to "mothers on the rolling prairie, the far-off rancho, the rocky island, in the lonely light-house, the frontier settlement, the high-perched mining-camp," who, distant indeed from school kindergartens and their equipment, might wish help in making out of what materials they have well-equipped home kindergartens.

"Come, let us play with the children," the apostles of Froebel teach us. And, "Come, let us ask the grown-ups to play with us," they would seem unconsciously to instruct the children.

One autumn a friend of mine, the mother of a three-year-old boy and of a daughter aged sixteen, said to me: "This is my daughter's first term in the high school; she will need my help. My boy is just at the age when it takes all the spare time I have to keep him out of mischief; how shall I manage?"

"Send the boy to kindergarten," I advised. "He is ready to go; and it will be good for him. He will bring some of the 'occupations' home with him; and they will keep him out of mischief for you."

She sent the boy to a little kindergarten in the neighborhood.

About two months later, I said to her, "I suppose the kindergarten has solved the problem of more spare time for your daughter's new demands upon you?"

"Well - in a way," she replied, dubiously. "It gives me the morning free; but - "

"Doesn't the boy bring home any 'occupations'?" I interposed.

My friend laughed. "Yes," she said; "he certainly does! But he doesn't want to 'occupy' himself alone with them; he wants all of us to do it with him! We have become quite expert at 'weaving,' and 'folding,' and 'sewing'! But, on the other hand," she went on, "he isn't so much trouble as he was. He wants us to play with him more, but he plays more intelligently. We take real pleasure in joining in his games, and - actually - in letting him share ours."

This little boy, now five years old, came to see me the other day.

"What would you like to do?" I asked, when we had partaken of tea. "Shall we put the jig-saw puzzle together; or should you prefer to have me tell you a story?"

"Tell me a story," he said at once; "and then I'll tell you one. And then you tell another - and then I'll tell another - " He broke off, to draw a long breath. "It's a game," he continued, after a moment. "We play it in kindergarten."

"Do you enjoy telling stories more than hearing them told?" I inquired, when we had played this game to the extent of three stories on either side.

"No," my little boy friend replied. "I like hearing stories told more than anything. But that isn't a game; that's just being-told-stories. The game is taking-turns-telling-stories." He enunciated each phrase as though it were a single word.