HOW CHINA RAISES ITS WELL BEHAVED CHILDREN (Published 1981) (2024)

Picture this nursery school scene: 10 1-year-olds are squeezed next to one another on a bench, their backs against a wall. They sit motionless. None cry, push or shove.

A woman attendant takes a small windup toy chicken out of a box, turns the key and lets it strut across the floor past the infants' feet. Again, none of the children move or try to grab the toy, as their American counterparts surely would. They simply follow it with their eyes.

Finally, one boy cannot resist. He toddles over and pounces on the chicken. The attendant gently picks him up and deposits him back on the bench.

The episode took place one recent morning in the neat gray brick nursery school and kindergarten run by the Peking Printing and Dyeing factory for 270 children of its workers. But it is similar to scenes acted out in tens of thousands of preschool classes all across China. Visitors Are Impressed

American visitors to China are continually impressed, indeed often amazed, by the almost universal good behavior of Chinese children. They are quiet, obedient, quick to follow their teachers' instructions, and they seldom exhibit the boisterous aggressiveness or selfishness of American children.

Nor do visitors often find the typical signs of anxiety and tension that many American children show. The Chinese children do not cry, whine, throw tantrums or suck their thumbs.

An American woman who is a resident of Peking and who enrolled her 5-year-old son in the Peking No. 1 kindergarten this fall was crestfallen when she was told that her child was the only one in his class who misbehaved.

''The teacher said that when they had visitors, my son refused to stop playing with a toy and return to his seat like the others,'' the woman said. ''The teacher was disturbed that he lay down on the floor and had a fit.''

How the Chinese get their children to be so well poised is one of those mysteries about China that Americans have not quite solved. There is some suggestive evidence, however. And there is also a hint that the careful docility that Chinese inculcate in their young may result in less individuality and a greater tendency toward conformity and acceptance of authority when they become adults.

From birth, the Chinese seem to strive to create a sense of closeness with their offspring (Americans might call it smothering or dependency). Also, many Chinese mothers still swaddle their babies, binding their legs and sometimes their arms in cloth so that they cannot move.

Chinese infants sleep in the same room and often on the same bed with their parents, or grandparents, until they are at least 2 or 3 years old. The Chinese are invariably surprised to find that American infants can go to sleep in a room by themselves, without their mother or father to nurse and change them during the night. For Chinese, who must live in small apartments, this closeness is due partly to economic necessity, but it produces an intimacy that most American children do not get.

The Chinese also do not let their babies crawl on the floor, as homes often are poorly heated. When parents take their infants out, many carry them rather than push them in a stroller, giving them a somewhat less independent view of the world than their American counterparts.

At the nursery school run by the Peking Printing and Dyeing factory, parents start bringing their children when they are as young as 56 days, which is when their mothers' maternity leave ends. Through much of the first year, these infants are kept in what is called a ''feeding station'' where they lie on their backs all day in a large common crib, alternately sleeping and being fed. During the winter these tiny infants are bundled up in so many layers of warm clothing that they have difficulty even rolling over.

Every activity in the nursery school, it seems, is highly structured. When the children are 1 year old, the attendants begin to toilet-train them, placing them on enamel spittoons, used for this purpose, after they wake up from their naps and keeping them there until they defecate.

When an American newsman with a 1-year-old of his own expressed incredulity that children so young could be toilet-trained, by coincidence, a 14-month-old girl in a red smock and green pants wandered off the communal bench where she had been sitting passively with her playmates and picked up one of the spittoons. Then she sat down and accomplished her mission.

Part of the explanation for Chinese children's good behavior, some American psychologists who have visited China feel, is that Chinese parents and the teachers in nurseries and kindergartens tend to be warm, kind and attentive. During a day in the factory nursery school, this correspondent did not witness a single incident of physical punishment or harsh verbal rebuke by a teacher.

''We never a spank a child that is naughty,'' insisted the school's director, Li Jianzhi, a 39-year-old woman with short cropped hair and a radiant smile. ''Instead, we try to persuade them to behave properly.''

''If one boy pushes another, I ask him to help the other child up and then to apologize,'' Miss Li said. ''Usually that is all that is necessary.'' And her serene confidence that her method would work may indeed be infectious.

As Chinese children move from nursery school to kindergarten, their activities remain highly organized. Most teaching involves rote memory and copying tasks set by the teacher. No Thumb Suckers

In a day of searching, a visitor was unable to find a single one of the 270 students who sucked his thumb or was left-handed. ''We do have a few who suck their thumbs,'' said Miss Li, the director, ''but we correct them. It is a bad habit. We wrap their thumbs with tape and caution their parents about it. They stop it.''

Some Chinese parents worry that the tough regimentation of nursery school and kindergarten tends to make their children too placid and uncreative. A professor at Peking University said he was concerned that his 5-year-old son, whom he boards in kindergarten, just sits quietly and doesn't speak when he comes home. About one-third of the children are boarders, sleeping over at their schools from Monday morning until Saturday afternoon.

Those Chinese children who are raised at home often tend to be more spoiled and livelier than those sent to nursery school. An American was amused to watch a 4-year-old girl of his acquaintance, Niannian, when she went to a park to play. She lives at home and is cared for by her grandmother.

Niannian wanted to ride down the slide. But there was a long line of patient children behind the ladder, all standing quietly waiting their turn, even without parental supervision. Niannian didn't want to wait, however. So she took the most direct way, climbing up the chute in front.