Children's Ways / Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter

Selections present observational essays on early mental life, tracing how imagination and play animate perception, transform objects, and scaffold language and thought. Chapters examine playful fiction, pretend roles, and the serious side of make-believe; the emergence of naming, sentence-building, and inquisitive, reflective thought; first ideas about nature, self, birth, dreams, and the supernatural; the onset of fears, nighttime terrors, and recovery; moral tendencies including lying, truthfulness, obedience and rebellion; and first aesthetic responses and drawing. Emphasis is on careful case examples and temperamental differences to show gradual development of perception, emotion, social understanding, and creative expression in childhood.