Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — Infant Precocity—Its Dangers. [ARTICLE]

Infant Precocity—Its Dangers.

We just now assume to be fond of science, and talk wisely concerning nature’s laws, especially such as are at a convenient distance and don’t infringe upon ourselves; but we fight shy of many a physiological truth of nature, among which is that embodied in the old aphorism: “ Boon ripe, soon rotten.” Far be it from me to growl at the little ones, the bright little ones. I have no cynical dislike of them—l even sympathize in a parent’s pride; but in the interest of these infants I say to parental pride, and fain would say it forcibly: “Forbear! you are ruining, destroying the object on which you build such high hopes.” Humanity is not a legitimate subject for hot-house forcing; it arrives at its best strength and most desirable development only in its natural element and by natural stages of a rather slow growth. It much more frequently happens that a somewhat dull child, or one that has shown merely a kind of quiet common sense, comes by and by to the front on the great stage of human affairs, than otherwise. The vivacious, sparkling, meteoric style qf infancy seems usually to burn itself out; and its ashes fill either an early grave, the drooping form of an'invalid, or that of some fitfullyflashing, but on the whole incompetent, sample of mediocrity. There are exceptions to all rules, but this is the rule with regard to the growth of intellect, not to say genius, and both these are more likely to be developed by the exigencies and hard knocks of actual lite, as nature prepares the way, than by the pampering and forcing of early stimulation. Just observe a little one whose parents glory in its precocity, how the lights and shades of color and expression chase each other ever the mobile features; how the eyes glow and the nervous system of the excitable, miniature candidate for public applause is upon the strain when or wherever it feels itself to be on exhibition. Almost superhuman must such a child be if its self-consciousness do not soon make it an object of censure, if not of dislike, to everybody except its doting friends, some who would win favor with these, or perchance a passing stranger attracted for a moment. But this is not the worst of it: that eagerness for notice, for admiration, is a fever hurrying on the life currents with an unwholesome, an exhausting impulse. In past times people used to push and ply their promising infants with -book-lore; this is not now the fashion; it is not schoolbooks nor schoolmasters that nowadays sap the life of the little Dombeys; it is excitement, not work, that, especially among us, does the mischief Science of Health. —, Dr. Loring says that nature never made a scholar and an acrobat in one piece; therefore the gymnasiums which are killing off the students of the land are evils. * : A-