Children's Ways Part 7

One strange variety of the fear of strangers is the uneasiness shown in presence of some one who is only partially recognisable. One little boy of eight months moaned in a curious way when his nurse returned home after a fortnight's holiday. Another boy of about ten months is said to have shown a marked shrinking from an uncle who strongly resembled his father. Such facts, taken with the familiar one that children are apt to be frightened at the sight of a parent partially disguised, suggest that half-stranger half-friend may be for a child's mind worse than altogether a stranger.

The uneasiness which comes from a sense of being in a new room or face to face with a stranger may perhaps be described as a feeling of what the Germans call the "unhomely". The little traveller has lost his bearings, and he begins to feel that he himself is lost. This effect of homelessness is, of course, most marked when a child finds himself in a strange place. Much of the acuter fear of children probably has in it something of this dizzy sickening sense of being lost. A little girl between the ages of seven and ten used to wake up in a fright crying loudly because she could not think where she was. Many a child when exploring a new and dark room, or still more venturesomely wandering alone out of doors, has suddenly woke up to the strange homeless look of things. I once saw a wee girl at a children's party who appeared to enjoy herself well enough up to a certain point, but was then suddenly seized by this sense of being lost in a new room among new faces, so that all her older sister's attempts to rea.s.sure her failed to stay the paroxysm of grief and terror.

We may see a measure of this same distrust of the new, this same clinging to the homely, in many of children's lesser fears, as, for example, that of new clothes. An infant has been known to break out into tears at the sight of a new dress on its mother, though the colour and pattern had, one would have supposed, nothing alarming. The fear of black clothes, of which there are many known examples, probably includes further a special dislike for this colour.

Here, again, we may see two opposed impulses at work, of which either one or the other may be uppermost in different children, or at different times in the same child. The dread of new clothes has its natural antagonist in the love of new clothes, which is often supported in children of a "subjective" turn by a feeling of something like disgrace at having to go on wearing the same clothes so long. Sometimes the love of novelty becomes a pa.s.sion. The boy Alfred de Musset at the age of four, watching his mother fitting on his feet a pair of pretty red shoes, exclaimed: "Depeche-toi, maman, mes souliers neufs vont devenir vieux".

Some other fears closely resemble that of new clothes insomuch as they involve an unpleasant transformation of a familiar object, the human figure, the mainstay of a child's trust. Possibly the alarming effect of making faces, which is said to disturb a child within the first three months, ill.u.s.trates the effect of shock at the spoiling of what is getting familiar and liked. The donning of a pair of dark spectacles, by extinguishing the focus of childish interest, the eye, will produce a like effect of the uncanny. Children show a similar dislike and fear at the sight of an ugly doll with features greatly distorted from the familiar pattern.

The fear of certain big objects contains, I think, the germ of this feeling of uneasiness in the presence of strange surroundings. One of the best ill.u.s.trations of this is produced by a first sight of the sea.

Some children clearly show signs of alarm, nestling towards their nurses when they are carried near the edge of the water. Yet here, again, the behaviour of the childish mind varies greatly. A little boy who first saw the sea at the age of thirteen months exhibited signs not of fear but of wondering delight, prettily stretching out his tiny hands towards it as if wanting to go to it.

I am disposed to think that imaginative children, whose minds take in something of the bigness of the sea, are more susceptible of this variety of fear. This conjecture is borne out by the case of two sisters, of whom one, an imaginative child, had not even at the age of six got over her fear of going into the sea, whereas the sister, who was comparatively unimaginative, was perfectly fearless. The supposition finds a further confirmation in the descriptions given by imaginative writers of their early impressions of the sea, for example, that of M.

Pierre Loti in his volume _Le Roman d'un Enfant_.

The fear of an eclipse of the moon and other celestial phenomena, owes something of its force and persistence to their unknown and inaccessible character. A child is easily annoyed at that great white thing, which seems like a human face to look down on him, and which never comes a step nearer to let him know what it really is. It may be conjectured too that a child's fear of clouds, when they take on uncanny forms, is supported by their inaccessibility; for he cannot get near them and touch them. It seems, however, according to some recent researches in America, that children's fear of celestial bodies, especially the moon and clouds, is connected with the thought that they may fall on them. The idea of these strange-looking objects above the head, having no visible support, and often taking on a threatening mien, may well give rise to fear in a child's breast akin to the superst.i.tious fear of the savage.

Self-moving objects, which are not manifestly living things, are apt to excite a feeling of alarm in children, as indeed to some extent in the more intelligent animals. Just as a dog will run away from a leaf whirled about by the wind, so children are apt to be terrified by the strange and quite irregular behaviour of a feather as it glides along the floor or lifts itself into the air. A girl of three, who happened to pull a feather out of her mother's eider-down quilt, was so alarmed at seeing it float in the air that she would not come near the bed for days afterwards. Shrewd nurses know of this weakness, and have been able effectually to keep a child in a room by putting a feather in the keyhole. The fear here seems to be of something which simulates life and yet is not recognisable as a familiar living form. It was, I suppose, the same uncanny suggestion of life which made a child of four afraid at the sight of a leaf floating on the water of the bath-tub. Fear of feathers is, I believe, known among the superst.i.tions of adults.

This simulation of life by what is perceived to be not alive probably takes part in other forms of childish dread. Toys which take on too impudently the appearance of life may excite fear, as, for example, a toy cow which "moved realistically when it reared its head," a combination which completely scared its possessor, a boy about the age of one and a half years. A child can itself _make_ its toy alive, and so does not want the toy-maker to do so.

The fear of shadows, which appears among children as among superst.i.tious adults, seems to arise partly from their blackness and eerie forms, partly from their uncanny movements and changes of form. Some of us can recall with R. L. Stevenson the childish horror of going up a staircase to bed when,

... all round the candle the crooked shadows come, And go marching along up the stair.

One's own shadow is worst of all, doggedly pursuing, horribly close at every movement, undergoing all manner of ugly and weird transformations.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BATTLE WITH FEARS (_Continued_).

_The a.s.sault of the Beasts._

There are two varieties of children's fears so prominent and so important that it seems worth while to deal with them separately. These are the dread of animals and of the dark.

It may well seem strange that the creatures which are to become the companions and playmates of children, and one of the chief sources of their happiness, should cause so much alarm when they first come on the scene. Yet so it is. Many children, at least, are at first terribly put out by quite harmless members of the animal family.

In some cases, no doubt, as when a child takes a strong dislike to a dog after having been alarmed at its barking, we have to do with the disturbing effect of sound merely. Fear here takes its rise in the experience of shock. In other cases we have to do rather with a sort of aesthetic dislike to what is disagreeable and ugly than with a true fear.

Children sometimes appear to feel a repugnance to a black sheep or other animal just because they dislike black objects, though the feeling may not amount to fear properly so called.

Yet allowing for these sources of repugnance, it seems probable that many children from about two or three onwards manifest something indistinguishable from fear at the first sight of certain animals. The directions of this childish fear vary greatly. Darwin's boy when taken to the Zoological Gardens at the age of two years three months showed a fear of the big caged animals whose forms were strange to him, such, _e.g._, as the lion and the tiger. Some children have shown fear on seeing a tame bear, others have selected the cow as their pet dread, others the b.u.t.ting ram, and so forth. Nor do they confine their aversions to the bigger animals. Snakes, caterpillars, worms, small birds such as sparrows, spiders and even moths have looked alarming enough to throw a child into a state of terror.

It is sometimes thought that these early fears of animals are inherited from remote ancestors to whom many wild animals were really dangerous.

But I do not think that this has been proven. The variety of these childish recoilings, and the fact that they seem to be just as often from small harmless creatures as from big and mighty ones, suggest that other causes are at work here. We may indeed suppose that a child's nervous system has been so put together and poised that it very readily responds to the impression of strange animal forms by a tremor. Special aspects of the unfamiliar animal, aided by special characteristics of its sounds, probably determine the directions of this tremor.

In many cases, I think, the mere bigness of an animal, aided by the uncanny look which often comes from an apparent distortion of the familiar human face, may account for some of these early fears. In other cases we can see that it is the suggestion of attack which alarms. This applies pretty certainly to the b.u.t.ting ram, and may apply to pigeons and other birds whose pecking movements readily appear to a child's mind a kind of attack. And this supplies an explanation of the fear of one boy of two years three months at the sight of pigs when sucking; for, as the child let out afterwards, he thought they were biting their mother.

The unexpectedness of the animal's movements too, especially when, as in the case of birds, mice, spiders, they are rapid, might excite uneasiness. In other cases it is something uncanny in the movement which excites fear, as when one child was frightened at seeing a cat's tail move when the animal was asleep. The apparent fear of worms and caterpillars in some children may be explained in this way, though a.s.sociations of disagreeable touch probably a.s.sist here. In the case of many of the smaller animals, _e.g._, small birds, mice, and even insects when they come too near, the fear may not improbably have its source in a vague apprehension of invasion.

These shrinkings from animals are among the most capricious-looking of all childish fears. Many robust children with hardy nerves know little or nothing of them. Here, too, as in the case of new things generally, the painfulness of fear is opposed and may be overcome by the pleasure of watching and by the deeper pleasure of "making friends". Quite tiny children, on first seeing ducks and other animals, so far from being alarmed, will run after the pretty creatures to make pets of them.

Nothing perhaps is prettier in child-life than the pose and look of one of these defenceless youngsters when he is making a brave effort to get the better of his fear at the approach of a strange big dog and to proffer friendship to the s.h.a.ggy monster. The perfect love which lies at the bottom of children's hearts towards their animal kinsfolk soon casts out fear. And when once the reconciliation has been effected it will take a good deal of harsh experience to make the child ever again entertain the thought of danger.

_The Night Attack._

Fear of the dark, and especially of _being alone_ in the dark, which includes not only the nocturnal dread of the dark bedroom, but that of closets, caves, woods, and other gloomy places, is no doubt very common among children. It does not show itself in the early months. A baby of three or four months if accustomed to a light may no doubt be upset at being deprived of it; but this is some way from a dread of the dark.

This presupposes a certain development of the mind, and more particularly what we call imagination. It is said by Dr. Stanley Hall to attain its greatest strength about the age of five to seven, when images of things are known to be vivid.

So far as we can understand it the fear of the dark is rarely of the darkness as such. The blackness present to the eye in a dark room does no doubt encompa.s.s us and seem to close in upon and threaten to stifle us. We know, too, that children sometimes show fear of mists, and that many are haunted by the idea of the stifling grave. Hence, it is not improbable that children seized by the common terror and dizziness on suddenly waking may feel the darkness as something oppressive. This is borne out by the fact that a little boy on surmounting his dread told his father that he used to think the dark "a great large live thing the colour of black". A child can easily make a substantial thing out of the dark, as he can out of a shadow.

Yet in most, if not all, cases imagination is active here. The darkness itself offers points for the play of imagination. Owing to the activity of the retina, which goes on even when no light excites it, brighter spots are apt to stand out from the black background, to take form and to move; and all this supplies food to a child's fancy. I suspect that the alarming eyes of people and animals which children are apt to see in the dark receive their explanation in this way. Of course these sources of uneasiness grow more p.r.o.nounced when a child is out of health and his nervous tone falls low. Even older people who have this fear describe the experience as seeing shadowy flitting forms, and this suggests that the activity of that wonderful little structure the retina is at the bottom of it. The same thing seems to be borne out by the common dread in the dark of _black_ forms, _e.g._, a black coach with headless coachman dressed in black. A girl of nineteen remembers that when a child she seemed on going to bed to see little black figures jumping about between the ceiling and the bed.

The more familiar forms of a dread of the dark are sustained by images of threatening creatures which lie hidden in the blackness or half betray their presence in the way just indicated. These images are in many cases the revival of those acquired from the experiences of the day, and from storyland. The fears of the day live on undisturbed in the dark hours of night. The dog that has frightened a child will, when he goes to bed, be projected into the surrounding blackness. Any shock in the waking hours may in this way give rise to a more or less permanent fear of being alone in a dark place. In not a few instances the alarming images are the product of fairy-stories, or of ghost and other alarming stories told by nurses and others thoughtlessly. In this way the dark room becomes for a timid child haunted by a "bogie" or other horror.

Alarming animals, generally black, as that significant expression _bete noire_ shows, are frequently the dread of these solitary hours in the dark room. Lions and wolves, monsters not describable except by saying that they have claws, which they can stretch out, these seem to fill the blackness for some children. The vague horrors of big black shapeless things are by no means the lightest to bear.

In addition to this overflow of the day's fears into the unlit hours, sleep and the transitional states between sleeping and waking also furnish much alarming material. Probably the worst moment of this trouble of the night is when the child wakes suddenly from a sleep or half-sleep with some powerful dream-image still holding him in its clutches, and when the awful struggle to wake and to be at home with the surroundings issues in the cry, "Where am I?" It is in these moments of absolute hopeless confusion that the impenetrable blackness, refusing to divulge its secret, grows insufferable. The dream-images, but slightly slackening their hold, people the blackness with nameless terrors. The little sufferer has to lie and battle with these as best he may, perhaps till the slow-moving day brings rea.s.suring light and the familiar look of things.

How terrible beyond all description, all measurement with other things, these nightmare fears may be in the case of nervous children, the reminiscences of Charles Lamb and others have told us. It is not too much, I think, to say that to many a child this dread of the black night has been the worst of his sufferings. At no time is he really so brave as when he lies still in a cold damp terror and trusts to the coming of the morning light.

I do not believe that fear of the dark is universal among young children. I know a child that did not show any trace of it till some rather too gruesome stories of Grimm set his brain horror-spinning when he ought to have been going to sleep. A lady whom I know tells me that she never had the fear as a child though she acquired it later, towards the age of thirty. How common it is among children under ten or twelve, we have as yet no means of judging. Some inquiries of Dr. Stanley Hall show that out of about 300 young people under thirty only two appear to have been wholly exempt from it, but the ages at which the fear first appeared are not given.

Here, again, we have a counterbalancing side. An imaginative child can fill the dark vacancy of the bedroom with bright pleasing images. On going to bed and saying good-night to the world of daylight, he can see his beloved fairies, talk to them and hear them talk. We know how R. L.

Stevenson must, when a child, have gladdened many of his solitary dark hours by bright fancies. Even when there is a little trepidation a hardy child may manage to play with his fears, and so in a sense to enjoy his black phantasmagoria, just as grown-ups may enjoy the horrors of fiction.

It will perhaps turn out that imaginative children have both suffered and enjoyed the most in these ways, the effect varying with nervous tone and mental condition. Yet it seems probable that the fearful suffering mood has here been uppermost.

Why these nocturnal images tend to be gloomy and alarming may, I think, be explained by a number of circ.u.mstances. The absence of light and the oncoming of night have, as we know, a lowering effect on the functions of the body; and it is not unlikely that this might so modify the action of the brain as to favour the rise of gloomy thoughts. The very blackness of night, too, which we must remember is actually seen by the child, would probably tend to darken the young thoughts. We know how commonly we make black and dark shades of colour symbols of melancholy and sorrow. If to this we add that in the night a child is apt to feel lost through a loss of all his customary landmarks, and that, worst of all, he is, in the midst of this blackness which blots out his daily home, left to himself, robbed of that human companionship which is his necessary stay and comfort, we need not, I think, wonder at his so often encountering "the terror by night".

(_b_) _Damage of the Onslaught._

I have now, perhaps, ill.u.s.trated sufficiently some of the more common and characteristic fears of children. The facts seem to show that they are exposed on different sides to the attacks of fear, and that the attacking force is large and consists of a variety of alarming shapes.

If now we glance back at these several childish fears, one feature in them which at once arrests our attention is the small part which remembered experiences of evil play in their production. The child is inexperienced, and if humanely treated knows little of the acuter forms of human suffering. It would seem at least as if he feared not so much because his experience had made him aware of a real danger in this and that direction, as because he was const.i.tutionally and instinctively nervous, and possessed with a feeling of insecurity. More particularly children are apt to feel uneasy when face to face with the new, the strange, the unknown, and this uneasiness grows into a more definite feeling of fear as soon as the least suggestion of harmfulness is added; as when a child recoils with dread from a stranger who has a big projecting eye that looks a menace, or a squint which suggests a sly way of looking at you, or an ugly and advancing tooth that threatens to bite. How much the fear of the dark is due to inability to see and so to know is shown by the familiar fact that children and adults who can enter a strange gloomy-looking room and keep brave as long as things are before their eyes are wont to feel a creepy sense of "something" behind them when they turn their backs to retire and can no longer see. It is shown too in the common practice of children and their elders to look into the cupboard, under the bed, and so forth, before putting out the light; for that which has not been inspected retains dire possibilities of danger.

Where a child does not know he is apt to fancy something. It is the activity of children's imagination which creates and sustains the larger number of their fears. Do we not indeed in saying that they are for the greater part groundless say also that they are "fanciful"?

Children's fears are often compared with those of animals. No doubt there are points of contact. The misery of a dog when street music is going on is very suggestive of a state of uneasiness if not of fully developed fear. Dogs, cats, and other animals will "shy" at the sight of "uncanny" moving objects, such as leaves, feathers, and shadows. Yet the great point of difference remains that animals not having imagination are exempt from many of the fearful foes which menace childhood, including that arch-foe, the black night.

A much more instructive comparison of children's fears may be made with those of savages. Both have a like feeling of insecurity in presence of the big unknown, especially the mysterious mighty things, such as the storm-wind, and the rare and startling things, _e.g._, the eclipse and the thunder. The ignorance and simplicity of mind, moreover, aided by a fertile fancy, which lead to this and that form of childish fear are at work also in the case of uncivilised adults. Hence the familiar observation that children's superst.i.tious fears often reflect those of savage tribes.

While children have this organic predisposition to fear, the sufferings introduced by what we call human experience begin at an early date to give definite direction to their fears. How much it does this in the first months of life it is difficult to say. In the aversion of a baby to its medicine gla.s.s, or its cold bath, one sees, perhaps, more of the rude germ of pa.s.sion or anger than of fear. Some children, at least, have a surprising way of going through a good deal of physical suffering from falls, cuts and so forth, without acquiring a genuine fear of what hurts them. It is a noteworthy fact that a child will be more terrified during a first experience of pain, especially if there be a visible hurt and bleeding, than by any subsequent prospect of a renewal of the suffering.

Even where fear can be clearly traced to experience it is doubtful whether in all cases it springs out of a definite expectation of some particular kind of harm. When, for example, a child who has been frightened by a dog betrays signs of fear at the sight of a kennel, and even of a picture of a dog, may we not say that he dreads the sight and the idea of the dog rather than any harmful act of the animal?