Be by baby

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Be by baby

This remarkable little book contains some of the most sensitive observations of a baby's first year that I have ever read.

Toward the end of the story we see Ruth, then a year old, playing with her aunt, the observer. Auntie asks, "Where are my

eyes?" and closes them. Ruth tries to find them and, unable to see them behind their closed lids, looks to the floor to see

where they might have gone. What a beautiful documentation of what we now call "awareness of object permanence," written

fifty years before Piaget!

Mrs. Shinn (for this is how women scholars were addressed in the nineteenth century) made her observations throughout her

cherished niece's first year, documenting each new behavior in great, glowing detail. In her exuberant, warm-hearted

descriptions one can see the emergence of affective, motor, and cognitive learning. Few observers are able to catch all three

of these levels. Description of a single child was the method of study in that era and reminds me of the same detailed

observations later made

so famous by Jean Piaget.

Be by baby

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