After the age of seven, children only slept with siblings of the same sex, a dog or two on cold nights, and not just a few bugs. Even the aristocrat's children shared their bedrooms with their siblings and their servants. Sleeping alone was considered odd, lonely, and sad. Privacy was not cultivated as it is now.
Children, especially those under the age of seven, would play outdoors completely nude without raising an eyebrow. Older boys would go swimming or play in the rain naked, girls would wear only a lightweight underdress. Boys would strip to do strenuous labor or athletic events. Boys also thought nothing of relieving themselves in the streets or defecating off a bridge.
Girls were much more discrete, using a chamber pot or a privy. They used a handful of hay or dry leaves for wiping. The wealthy could afford to cut up old blankets or rags for bumwisps , but there is no record of washing hands afterward, even though handwashing was encouraged upon waking, before eating, and before bed. After school and chores, children were sent outside to play, unsupervised or in the company of older children. Their main activities were running, jumping, skipping, singing, dancing, hunting, fishing, catching birds, casting stones, climbing trees, wall-walking and other balancing games.
Children also played group games like hide-and-seek, blind man's bluff, leapfrog, horses, piggy-back riding, vaulting, acrobatics, and wrestling. They played with toys like hoops, windmills, balls, throwing sticks, hobby-horses, skip-ropes, jacks, marbles, tops, stilts, tree swings, seesaws, shuttlecock badminton , quoits croquet , skittles a bowling game , closh kind of like golf , football, and tennis.
Children and adults alike played cards, dice, and board games that included chess, draughts checkers , tables backgammon , fox and geese, nine-men-morris, and many chase based board games like Snakes and Ladders and cribbage. These could be drawn on the ground and played with counters made of pebbles, cherry pits, or whatever was handy.
Knucklebones of sheep were used like dice to play a wide variety of games. Detail of a funeral processesion from the Children by Pieter Brugel. For the older children there were dexterity games played with bones, coins, and knives. In mumbly-peg a wooden peg was hammered into the ground with the butt of a knife then the two contestants perform a series of knife tricks. The first one to fail had to pull the peg out of the ground with his teeth.
Wealthy children also spent time hunting, hawking, and riding horses for sport. Foot races and other forms of athletic competition were encouraged. Foot races for girls and boys were held at local fairs and religious events and prizes were given.
In fall and winter children made conkers by attaching threads to chestnuts to make pendulums. Then they would challenge each other to see whose conker was strongest.
While trying to smash their opponents concker, they often missed and "concked" someone on the head or knuckles. Snow and cold weather provided a whole new set of playtime activities. They built snow forts and had snowball battles. They went skating on the ponds and creeks with skates made of bone and sledding on hills and on the ice. However, there is no evidence that children went skiing until the mid 19th century. Spring brought a change of weather and a chance to play with baby animals.
Summer was a time to catch birds and insects, swim and play in the water, make flower chains, and wander the countryside.
Children made up games and stories and acted out daily events. One of the girl's favorites was a mock funeral where a doll was dressed in a shroud and carried down the street while the "mourners" placed blankets over their heads and wept and wailed.
Christmas, May Day, and saint feast days were causes for celebration that often included games, sports, and other forms of entertainment. Children need the opportunity to play and despite the limited means of production, there were a number of types of toys to choose from. It is apparent that the toys below are relatively simple, produced either at home or within the village. There was not often an excess of materials expressly for making toys, so children had to be content with the spare and discarded pieces used to create their toys.
Spinning Tops: Surviving examples of tops are primarily made in wood. Some are smooth and round while others are multi-sided. Hobby Horses: Images survive of young children, primarily boys, playing on hobby horses.
Dolls: Children throughout history have played with dolls. Due to being made from fabrics and other elements that do not withstand centuries of aging, there are few examples of the types of dolls produced. It can be presumed that peasant children would have rough and simple dolls whereas wealthier children might have more refined and better-dressed dolls.
Ceramic Animals and Figures: Figurines made of ceramics have survived indicating that children created stories or reenacted events with the human and animal forms. Miniature Ceramic Crockery: An excavation near a Carmelite friary found miniature versions of contemporaneous crockery.
It can be imagined that these, like modern tea sets, would be used by children playing simulation domestic games, quite probably with the figurines and dolls mentioned above. Some historians have estimated that up to a quarter of infants born in Medieval times died before they even lived for a full year. Generally, most infant deaths occurred as a result of accidents or disease. Of course, children who came from poorer families experienced a higher rate of infant mortality because it was harder for poorer families to obtain medical help or health care.
Healthy infants were usually seen as a special gift from God. Saintly and biblical names were popular for children in the Middle Ages. Babies were sometimes swaddled. Swaddling also helped keep the baby out of trouble as he was unable to move.
Infants were not swaddled for long periods of time, so it did not harm them. They were let free of their swaddle restrictions often and set down to crawl. Of course, as with any cultural practice, swaddling was not necessarily prevalent among all Medieval cultures. For instance, it is supposed that Irish children in the Middle Ages were never swaddled.
This was even more prevalent in poorer families. Sometimes she was helped by other members of the family, but almost always the mother fed her baby since she was naturally built to do so. Even in richer families, where a nurse could easily be afforded to provide milk, mothers still sometimes provided milk for their babies. Most notably this included giving affection to the baby who she was hired to take care of.
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