ABSTRACT
Several times in the course of this book we have had occasion to emphasize that at 4 we are dealing with a child whose ability to talk and to respond to talk is enjoying its first flowering. At the height of his fantasy life, no longer held back by an inadequate grasp of words and syntax, and not yet inhibited by preoccupations with realism or considerations of propriety, his restless mind urges him to continual inquiry and comment; and this flood of communication will, because she is the most available audience, be directed chiefly towards his mother. Most mothers seem to appreciate their role of conversationalist, even if they sometimes find it wearing; and for many, the child offers a quid pro quo in his readiness to listen to them, which for the housebound woman can answer a real need: ‘I forget she’s only 4, and I go rambling on, you know, as if she’s a grown-up, sometimes.’ ‘I couldn’t do without him — I love him talking to me,’ said a clerk’s wife; a teacher’s wife said ‘She’s such good company and chatters away — she’s good at conversation’; and a miner’s wife, who was going through a period of ill health and finding the children a physical strain, said: ‘Well, me and Tom get on well together, you know: he’s an attractive little fellow, you know, he’ll jabber to you; he’ll come and say something -something to make you laugh and give you courage — or something loving, so that you could squeeze him.’
