ABSTRACT
The newborn human baby is the most helpless of newborn mammals. The two earliest bits of learning, recognition of the mother as a bringer of food and comfort, and deliberate carrying of the hand to the mouth, are certainly outstandingly charged with positive feeling for the child. In the process of sorting out and linking the stimuli which comes from the adult in the feeding situation, the baby is also reacting to a total situation in which he finds himself. It is quite clear to anyone who carefully watches his expression that the baby reacts positively with satisfaction when his hand accidentally falls into his mouth and negatively when it accidentally falls out again. ‘Demand feeding and sleeping’ is the name given to this type of routine as opposed to the strictly-fixed routine of the ‘baby manuals’. From the beginning the child has had a wider field of the familiar to respond to.
