At the age, then, of two or three the first quality of the child which
may arrest our attention is his extreme imitativeness. Not that the
imitation on his part is in any way conscious; but like a mirror he
reflects in every action and in every word all that he sees and hears
going on around him. We must recognise that in these early days his
words and actions are not an independent growth, with roots in his own
consciousness, but are often only the reflection of the words and
actions of others. How completely speech is imitative is shown by the
readiness with which a child contracts the local accent of his
birthplace. The London parents awake with horror to find their baby an
indubitable Cockney; the speech of the child bred beyond the Tweed
proclaims him a veritable Scot. Again, some people are apt to adopt a
somewhat peremptory tone in addressing little children. Often they do
not trouble to give to their voices that polite or deferential
inflection which they habitually use when speaking to older people.
Listen to a party of nurses in the Park addressing their charges. As
if they knew that their commands have small chance of being obeyed,
they shout them with incisive force. "Come along at once when I tell
you," they say. And the child faithfully reflects it all back, and is
heard ordering his little sister about like a drill sergeant, or
curtly bidding his grandmother change her seat to suit his pleasure.
If we are to have pretty phrases and tones of voice, mothers must see
to it that the child habitually hears no other. Again, mothers will
complain that their child is deaf, or, at any rate, that he has the
bad habit of responding to all remarks addressed to him by saying,
"What?" or, worse still, "Eh?" Often enough the reason that he does so
is not that the child is deaf, nor that he is particularly slow to
understand, but simply that he himself speaks so indistinctly that no
matter what he says to the grown-up people around him, they bend over