DEVELOPMENT OF HAND AND ARM MOVEMENTS
31
The child's mother took hold of the hand which held the spoon and put it through the motion of dipping food and carrying it to the mouth. The child grasped the essential features of the movement at once, and without guidance began to rub the bowl of the spoon in the saucer, then carried the spoon to his mouth. At first the movement was very awkward and yielded slight food results. But when the child rubbed the bowl of the spoon across and around his mouth he got a taste of food, enough, perhaps, to strengthen the desire to use the spoon in the new way. On the following day, he picked up the spoon and went through the same motion of rubbing the bowl of the spoon in the dish containing his food, then carrying the spoon to his mouth. Three days later it was noted that he was eager to feed himself, and refused to eat from a spoon held by another person, kicking, throwing his arms, turning his head, and crying in protest, all this notwithstanding the perfectly evident fact that he would have starved on the small quantity of food he was able to get into his mouth in the time usually set apart for eating.[1] He had, however, made the necessary first step, and it was only a matter of practice until he would be able to handle the spoon with ease in feeding himself.
- ↑ The child J. also, very soon after his first lessons with the spoon, developed an unwillingness to eat from a spoon held by another person. Accidentally, it was found that if the child was allowed to hold a spoon which he could rub in an empty dish while he was being fed he was willing to take food from a spoon held by another person. So during a period of three weeks two plates or saucers were required in feeding the child: an empty one placed so he could punch and rub in it, and a second containing his food held so as to conceal the empty one. This arrangement proved satisfactory to all concerned. The performance reminded me of a chance observation I once made of the energetic, but wholly useless and ludicrous, scratching the bare floor by an old hen as she picked grains of corn from the cob. Scratching had become a fixed part of the process of taking a meal. In the case of the child, rubbing a spoon in a dish became in a few days an integral part of the food taking process.
