THE
DRAMATIC INSTINCT
IN CHILDREN
AMERICAN HOME SERIES
NORMAN E. RICHARDSON, Editor
THE
DRAMATIC INSTINCT
IN CHILDREN
Prepared originally by
THE LITERARY STAFF
of the
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHILD LIFE
FOURTH EDITION
(Revised)
THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI
Copyright 1914, by
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHILD LIFE
INTRODUCTION
The development of the dramatic instinct in children is thespecial responsibility of parents. The public school and church schoolprograms are gradually including dramatics and the teachers in many ofthese schools can go far in sharing this responsibility. But it is inthe home where room and time, equipment and motive, suggestions andcooperating friends are found. Parental skill is revealed in helpinga child to try on a new character or virtue as well as a new blouseor pair of shoes. Social and moral imagination in the child can berealized under the direct guidance of father or mother. Voyages aretaken, investigations made, treasure islands discovered, animalssubdued, robbers put to flight, the plans of sly Indians frustrated,and fierce battles waged by the child whose parent-teacher is versatileand imaginative. The dull, uninteresting parent, whose chief virtue isthat of routine, long-faced fidelity, narrows his children’s world andcorrespondingly limits the range of their moral development.
What faith is to the adult the dramatic instinct is to the child: it isthe substance, the substantial realization of things hoped for. It isthe power to make things happen. It is the victory that overcomes theprosaic, saw-dust affairs of life.
If this pamphlet, carefully studied, helps parents to see and properlyawaken the sleeping dramatic powers of their children and give thema new motive in guiding its various expressions, the purpose of thewriters will have been realized.
Norman E. Richardson.
[1]The material included in this pamphlet, together withother practical studies of the subject of play, is included in “AManual of Play,” by Forbush, and published by Jacobs and Company.