The Theatre: Orange Juice

Among the departments in Cornell University’s College of Home Economics, one is concerned exclusively with family life. A professor in this department is tiny, motherly Mrs. Ethel B. Waring. Last week Professor Waring gave U. S. mothers a formula, in nine neat points, to solve a baffling problem: how to get Junior to drink his orange juice (or eat his spinach). It took Mrs. Waring 15 years to develop her formula. In the college’s laboratory nursery school, she one day decided to take sound movies (unobserved) of her tots’ behavior. She found the movies illuminating. Eventually she made a reel showing the right and the wrong way to approach her central problem—orange juice. First scene, picturing a young mother’s desperate attempt, ends with her youngster screaming, the orange juice untouched. Second scene shows a teacher whose timing is expert, ends with smiling Junior drinking it all up. In the third scene the mother, now better informed, also succeeds.

Mrs. Waring’s nine stages (the plan does not work if their order is changed):

1) Watch and wait; Junior may drink by himself. (This one did not.)

2) Ignore undesirable behavior. (Junior pointed to pictures on the wall.)

3) Put yourself on his level. (Mother sat at table with Junior.)

4) Approve what he does well. (Junior grasped cup; mother nodded, smiled.)

5) On a particularly difficult or disliked undertaking, give more help than is needed. (Mother helped Junior lift cup.)

6) Prepare for success and direct the child confidently. (Junior seemed about to drink.)

7) Let him alone if he needs no more help. (Junior pondered, put cup down again, appeared to forget it.)

8) Give increasing help, more specific directions. (Mother firmly showed Junior how to pick up cup, put it to his lips.)

9) Withdraw aid gradually, let child realize he is doing it himself. (Mother soft-pedaled her urgings, beamed confidently. At length, in his own good time, Junior laughed, seized the cup, drained it.)