The Hearth: Ages 0 to 2

The Law of the Hearth

The rite that opens a Zevist life takes its name from the hearth. In ancient Athens, on the 5th day after birth, the newborn was carried running around the household hearth, the fire at the center of the house that was never allowed to go out; the Temple's Amphidromia keeps the name.¹ The hearth was the house's center of warmth, light and safety, and Hestia, its Goddess, received the first offering at every feast of the house. The first 2 years of life are the hearth of the soul.

The law of this stage is simple and absolute: the inner emotional foundations are set here. Before the child can speak, the child learns whether the world answers or stays silent, whether the body is safe or in danger, whether the face that bends over the cradle brings warmth or fear. These lessons go deeper than any lesson taught later, because they are learned before there is anything to compare them with. The intellect that wakes between 4 and 9 grows on this ground; the freedom given between 9 and 13 stands on it; the training of the adult between 13 and 18 builds on it. A house can be repainted many times. Its foundation is poured once.

Zevism reads this stage through Theoteknia. The relationship of the Gods to human beings is that of parent and child: kinship, love, guidance and growth. The infant's first image of that bond is the human parent. A parent who answers the cry, holds the body and calms the fear teaches the soul, before any word, that the bond between child and parent is safe and that growth is welcome. A parent who frightens, neglects or strikes plants in the infant the very habits the Temple names as the marks of the slave: the flinch, the guilt, the fear and the sense of not belonging. The Zevist parent raises the infant so that, when the time comes, the child will approach the Gods as a child returning to a father, never as a servant trembling before a master.

Plato named the condition to aim for. For the first 3 years, his Athenian Stranger argues, the nursling should meet as little grief, fear and pain as possible, yet should not be drowned in pleasures either: the goal is the middle state, gracious and cheerful (ἵλεως), which he calls the very condition of God.²

Plato, Laws VII, 792c-d

ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐμὸς δὴ λόγος οὔθ’ ἡδονάς φησι δεῖν διώκειν τὸν ὀρθὸν βίον οὔτ’ αὖ τὸ παράπαν φεύγειν τὰς λύπας, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸ ἀσπάζεσθαι τὸ μέσον, ὃ νυνδὴ προσεῖπον ὡς ἵλεων ὀνομάσας, ἣν δὴ διάθεσιν καὶ θεοῦ κατά τινα μαντείας φήμην εὐστόχως πάντες προσαγορεύομεν.

"The right life ought neither to pursue pleasures nor to shun pains entirely; but it ought to embrace that middle state of cheerfulness (as I termed it a moment ago), which, as we all rightly suppose on the strength of an inspired utterance, is the very condition of God himself." (tr. R. G. Bury)

He gives the reason in a single line: at that age the whole character is most decisively implanted in everyone through habit (κυριώτατον γὰρ οὖν ἐμφύεται πᾶσι τότε τὸ πᾶν ἦθος διὰ ἔθος).² A calm, cheerful, answered infant is the first likeness of the Gods a family can raise.

What the Ancients Taught

The Ancients wrote little about infants and said much in what they wrote. Their counsel falls under 5 heads: motion, nourishment, the softness of the young soul, fearlessness, and the tenderness of those who raise.

Motion and Song

Plato observed what every mother knows: a restless infant is calmed by rocking and singing rather than by stillness and silence. He made it a principle of education for body and soul alike.³

Plato, Laws VII, 790c-d

λάβωμεν τοίνυν τοῦτο οἷον στοιχεῖον ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα, σώματός τε καὶ ψυχῆς τῶν πάνυ νέων τὴν τιθήνησιν καὶ κίνησιν γιγνομένην ὅτι μάλιστα διὰ πάσης τε νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας, ὡς ἔστι σύμφορος ἅπασι μέν, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ τοῖς ὅτι νεωτάτοισι, καὶ οἰκεῖν, εἰ δυνατὸν ἦν, οἷον ἀεὶ πλέοντας.

"Let us take this as a fundamental assumption in both cases, that for both body and soul of the very young a process of nursing and moving, as continuous as possible both by day and by night, is in all cases salutary, and especially in the case of the youngest: it is like having them always rocked, if that were possible, on the sea." (tr. R. G. Bury, adapted)

The mothers who lull a sleepless child, he adds, give it "not quiet, but motion", rocking it constantly in their arms, and "instead of silence, a kind of crooning", using the movements of dance and song as a remedy.³ Aristotle agreed that infants should have as much movement as their age allows.⁴

The Greeks sang to their infants. Theocritus gives the lullaby of Alcmene over the infant Heracles, son of Zeus, and his twin brother, laid to sleep in a bronze shield: εὕδετ’, ἐμὰ βρέφεα, γλυκερὸν καὶ ἐγέρσιμον ὕπνον, "Sleep, my babes, a sweet sleep from which you will wake." That same night, at 10 months old, Heracles strangled the serpents sent against him: the son of Zeus showed his nature from the cradle.⁵

Nourishment and the Bond

The author of On the Education of Children asks mothers to nurse their own children, and gives a reason that modern science would endorse: the bond grows in the nursing.⁶

Plutarch (or his circle), On the Education of Children 5, 3C-D

δεῖ δέ, ὡς ἐγὼ ἂν φαίην, αὐτὰς τὰς μητέρας τὰ τέκνα τρέφειν καὶ τούτοις τοὺς μαστοὺς ὑπέχειν· συμπαθέστερόν τε γὰρ θρέψουσι καὶ διὰ πλείονος ἐπιμελείας … ἡ συντροφία γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐπιτόνιόν ἐστι τῆς εὐνοίας.

"Mothers ought, as I would say, to feed their children themselves and give them the breast; for they will nurse them with more sympathy and greater care … for living and being nourished together is like the tightening-cord of goodwill." (lit.)

Where the mother cannot nurse, the same author does not condemn her: he asks only that those who nurse the child be chosen with the greatest care and be of good character.⁶ The Egyptian sage Any, teaching his son gratitude, reminds him that his mother carried him at her breast for 3 years.⁷

The Instruction of Any (New Kingdom), tr. Miriam Lichtheim

"Double the food your mother gave you, / Support her as she supported you; / She had a heavy load in you, / But she did not abandon you. / When you were born after your months, / She was yet yoked to you, / Her breast in your mouth for three years."

The Softness of the Young Soul

All the Ancients agree that the soul is most impressionable at the beginning. On the Education of Children compares the infant's soul to soft wax.⁸

Plutarch (or his circle), On the Education of Children 5, 3E-F

εὔπλαστον γὰρ καὶ ὑγρὸν ἡ νεότης, καὶ ταῖς τούτων ψυχαῖς ἁπαλαῖς ἔτι τὰ μαθήματα ἐντήκεται· πᾶν δὲ τὸ σκληρὸν χαλεπῶς μαλάττεται. καθάπερ γὰρ σφραγῖδες τοῖς ἁπαλοῖς ἐναπομάττονται κηροῖς, οὕτως αἱ μαθήσεις ταῖς τῶν ἔτι παιδίων ψυχαῖς ἐναποτυποῦνται.

"Youth is easily moulded and pliable, and while their souls are still tender, lessons sink into them; but everything hard is softened only with difficulty. For just as seals are impressed upon soft wax, so learning is stamped upon the souls of those who are still children." (lit.)

Quintilian, the great Roman teacher, draws the practical consequence for the very first months: the first voices the child hears must be good ones, because human beings cling most tenaciously to what they took in when their minds were new, as new vessels keep the flavor of what first filled them and wool keeps the first dye it was steeped in.⁹

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.1.5

Has primum audiet puer, harum verba effingere imitando conabitur, et natura tenacissimi sumus eorum quae rudibus animis percepimus.

"It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate. And we are by nature most tenacious of childish impressions." (tr. H. E. Butler)

Fearlessness Without Harshness

Plutarch records that the nurses of Sparta were so famous that foreigners bought Spartan nurses for their own children: they raised infants without swaddling-bands, contented with plain food, not afraid of the dark or of being left alone, and free of peevishness and whimpering.¹⁰

Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 16.3

ἦν δὲ περὶ τὰς τροφοὺς ἐπιμέλειά τις μετὰ τέχνης, ὥστ’ ἄνευ σπαργάνων ἐκτρεφούσας τὰ βρέφη τοῖς μέλεσι καὶ τοῖς εἴδεσιν ἐλευθέρια ποιεῖν, ἔτι δὲ εὔκολα ταῖς διαίταις καὶ ἄσικχα καὶ ἀθαμβῆ σκότου καὶ πρὸς ἐρημίαν ἄφοβα καὶ ἄπειρα δυσκολίας ἀγεννοῦς καὶ κλαυθμυρισμῶν.

"Their nurses exercised great care and skill; they reared infants without swaddling-bands, and thus left their limbs and figures free to develop; besides, they taught them to be contented and happy, not dainty about their food, nor fearful of the dark, nor afraid to be left alone, nor given to contemptible peevishness and whimpering." (tr. B. Perrin)

Zevism takes the aim and refines the method. A fearless, contented infant is the right goal. Modern science shows how it is reached: fearlessness grows out of security and withers under abandonment. The infant who knows the parent will come is the infant who can bear the dark.

Aristotle adds a counsel against those who would forbid infants to cry: the straining and crying of children, he says, are a kind of exercise that helps their growth.⁴ The Zevist reading is plain. Crying is the infant's only speech; it is never to be silenced by force or by fear. It is to be answered.

The Tenderness of Those Who Raise

The greatest warrior of the Iliad was raised by a tender man. Phoenix reminds Achilles how he cared for him as a baby.¹¹

Homer, Iliad 9.485-491

καί σε τοσοῦτον ἔθηκα θεοῖς ἐπιείκελ’ Ἀχιλλεῦ,
ἐκ θυμοῦ φιλέων, ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἐθέλεσκες ἅμ’ ἄλλῳ
οὔτ’ ἐς δαῖτ’ ἰέναι οὔτ’ ἐν μεγάροισι πάσασθαι,
πρίν γ’ ὅτε δή σ’ ἐπ’ ἐμοῖσιν ἐγὼ γούνεσσι καθίσσας
ὄψου τ’ ἄσαιμι προταμὼν καὶ οἶνον ἐπισχών.
πολλάκι μοι κατέδευσας ἐπὶ στήθεσσι χιτῶνα
οἴνου ἀποβλύζων ἐν νηπιέῃ ἀλεγεινῇ.

"And I made you what you are, godlike Achilles, loving you from my heart, since you would not go with anyone else to a feast or eat in the halls until I set you on my knees and gave you your fill of meat, cutting it first, and held the wine to you. Many times you soaked the tunic on my chest, spluttering out wine in your troublesome infancy." (lit.)

The hero who would choose glory over a long life was first a baby on his tutor's knees. Strength is built on tenderness.

What the Science Shows

Modern developmental science confirms the law of the hearth with a precision the Ancients could only intuit.

Attachment: The Secure Base

John Bowlby founded attachment theory on the observation that the infant is born to seek closeness to a protective caregiver, and that the quality of that first bond shapes the child's expectations of the world.¹² Mary Ainsworth turned the theory into a measurement: in the "Strange Situation", a brief laboratory sequence of separations and reunions, most infants in low-risk samples, roughly 60 to 65 percent, show a secure pattern: they use the parent as a secure base from which to explore and as a safe haven to which to return.^{13, 14} The remaining infants show avoidant, resistant or, in a later category described by Mary Main and Judith Solomon, disorganized patterns, the last most often linked to frightening care.¹⁵

Harry Harlow's experiments with infant monkeys showed that comfort of contact outweighs food in forming the bond: the infants clung to a soft cloth figure even when a bare wire figure gave the milk.¹⁶ Edward Tronick's "Still Face" studies showed how early the infant expects an answer: when a mother's face goes suddenly still and unresponsive, the infant first tries to re-engage her, then grows distressed and withdraws.¹⁷

Serve and Return

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University summarizes the neuroscience: more than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second in the first few years of life, and responsive, back-and-forth exchanges between a young child and a caring adult, which the Center calls "serve and return", play a key role in shaping brain architecture.^{18, 19} The infant babbles, points or cries; the adult answers with words, a look, a gesture; the circuit is built by the exchange.

The Center also defines "toxic stress": strong, frequent or prolonged adversity, such as abuse, chronic neglect or exposure to violence, without supportive relationships to buffer it.²⁰ The Adverse Childhood Experiences study of 1998, which surveyed more than 9,000 adults, found a graded relationship between the number of adversities suffered in childhood and the risk of heart disease, cancer, lung disease, depression and addiction in adult life.²¹ The foundation poured in childhood carries the house for a lifetime.

Answering the Cry

In 1972 Silvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth reported that infants whose mothers answered their crying promptly cried less by the end of the first year.²² The finding was criticized on methodological grounds and was not confirmed in a later longitudinal study.^{23, 24} A 2020 study found no harm to attachment or behavior at 18 months in infants whose parents sometimes let them cry for short periods.²⁵ The evidence therefore says this: answering an infant doesn't spoil the infant, and a calm parent who sometimes waits a few minutes doesn't wound one. What harms is chronic unresponsiveness, harshness and fear. Donald Winnicott's phrase still serves: the infant needs a "good-enough" mother, one who actively adapts to the infant's needs; no perfect one is required.²⁶

Language Begins Before Words

Infants tune their hearing to the sounds of their own language in the first year: by 6 months their perception of vowels is already shaped by what they hear, and by about 10 to 12 months they lose much of their early ability to distinguish foreign consonant contrasts.^{27, 28} The voice of the parent is the first school. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises reading aloud to children from infancy.²⁹

Body, Sleep and Screens

• Nourishment. The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months and continued breastfeeding, alongside other foods, up to 2 years of age or beyond; the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months and continuation for 2 years or beyond as mutually desired.^{30, 31} Any's 3 years and Plutarch's counsel stand within the same horizon.
• Safe sleep. The Academy recommends placing infants on their backs for every sleep, on a firm, flat surface of their own, in the parents' room for at least the first 6 months, and strongly discourages bed-sharing.³²
• Hours of sleep. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours, naps included, from 4 to 12 months, and 11 to 14 hours from 1 to 2 years.³³
• Screens. The WHO recommends no screen time for infants and no sedentary screen time for 1-year-olds; the Academy advises avoiding screen media other than video-chatting before 18 months, and from 18 to 24 months only high-quality programs watched with a parent.^{34, 35}
• Never shake an infant. Abusive head trauma from shaking can cause brain injury, blindness and death.³⁶

Milestones

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list milestones that most children (75 percent or more) reach by each age. By 18 months most children walk without holding on to anyone or anything and try to say 3 or more words besides "mama" or "dada"; by 2 years most say at least 2 words together, like "More milk".³⁷ A child who loses skills once held, or who does not respond to their name, should be seen by a pediatrician without delay.

The Practice

The Body

• Feed the child with the bond. Nurse where possible, following the guidance above. Where nursing is impossible, feed the child held close, eye to eye: the bond lives in the holding as much as in the milk.
• Keep sleep safe and regular. Back to sleep, a firm flat surface of the child's own, the parents' room for the first months. Build a short evening ritual: the same song, the same words, the same light.
• Move the child. Rock, carry and walk with the infant. Give floor time every day, on the belly and the back, so the infant can push, roll, crawl and finally stand. Plato's motion and Aristotle's exercise are the infant's first gymnastics.
• Keep the pediatric visits. Growth, hearing, sight and milestones are checked there; the scheduled immunizations are given there.

The Emotions

• Answer the cry. Go to the child. Find the need: hunger, cold, pain, tiredness, fear or the wish to be held. An answered infant learns that the world can be trusted.
• Hold, carry and touch. Skin to skin in the first weeks, arms and lap ever after. Contact is the infant's first comfort and, as Harlow showed, a stronger one than food.
• Keep the house calm. No shouting, no quarrels and no violence near the child. The infant takes in the mood of the house through the body before any word. Parents who are calm lend their calm to the child; a frightened parent passes the fear on.
• Look, smile and answer. Serve and return all day: answer the coo with a word, the smile with a smile, the pointing finger with the name of the thing.
• Keep fear far from the cradle. Never threaten, never frighten for amusement, never strike, never shake. The infant who meets terror at the hearth learns the slave's flinch before learning to speak.

Speech and Mind

• Speak all day. Name everything: the cup, the bird, the light, the Gods. Speak in full, warm sentences. The quality of the first voices, Quintilian warns, stays with the child for life.
• Sing. Lullabies, hymns and the Names of the Gods sung softly. Song joins motion and voice, the 2 remedies Plato names.
• Read aloud. Picture books with faces, animals and the natural world, held close and read slowly, from the first months.
• Keep screens away. The infant learns from faces, hands and voices that answer; a screen answers nothing.

Before the Gods

• Perform the Amphidromia. Between the 5th day and the 3rd year, the parents give the child the secret spiritual name, the Ren, speak it once to the Gods, seal it in writing and keep it in silence until the child turns 18 (The Amphidromia).
• Perform the Infant Baptism. With water, olive oil, a white candle and frankincense, the child is purified, anointed and received into the family of Zeus and the Ancient Gods; feasting follows, because every Zevist birth is a blessing to be celebrated with joy (The Zevist Baptism).
• Make the candle and the prayer part of the day. A candle lit at evening, a short prayer to Zeus spoken over the cradle, the Names of the Gods sung as a lullaby. The child won't understand the words. The child will understand the peace.
• Pray for the child. The parents' prayer is the infant's protection; the Prayer of the Zevist Parent may be said at the cradle.

Signs the Foundation Holds

• The child seeks the parent when distressed and is calmed by them. The secure base works.
• The child explores when calm. Curiosity grows from security: the secure infant leaves the parent's side to look at the world and comes back to share it.
• The child smiles, babbles, points and answers. Serve and return has begun.
• The child sleeps, eats and grows. The body is held in a steady rhythm.

Errors to Avoid

• Leaving the infant to fear. Chronic unresponsiveness, frightening games, threats and harsh handling.
• Treating the cry as manipulation. The infant has no other speech.
• A screen as a nurse. Every hour before a screen is an hour without a face.
• A house at war. Quarrels and violence near the child are taken in by the child.
• Smothering. Answering is not hovering; the secure infant also needs room to try, to fall and to rise.
• Putting off the rites through neglect. The Amphidromia window closes at the 3rd year.

Books for This Stage

For the Parents

• Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper and Bert Powell, Raising a Secure Child (Guilford, 2017). The Circle of Security approach in plain language: the parent as secure base and safe haven, with practical ways to read the infant's needs.
• Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib (William Morrow, 1999). How infants learn, by 3 leading researchers: the infant as an active explorer of the world.
• Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). What the minds of infants reveal about truth, love and meaning.
• Robert Karen, Becoming Attached (1994; Oxford University Press, 1998). The story of attachment research from Bowlby and Ainsworth onward, told for parents.
• John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby (Pear Press, 2010). The science of the infant brain from 0 to 5, from a molecular biologist.
• T. Berry Brazelton, Touchpoints (Addison-Wesley, 1992). The predictable leaps and regressions of the early years, from a great pediatrician.
• D. W. Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Penguin, 1964). The "good-enough" parent: adaptation, holding and the slow handing over of the world.
• Harvey Karp, The Happiest Baby on the Block (Bantam, 2002). Practical methods for calming a crying newborn.

For the Child

At this age the parent's voice is the library. Sing the lullabies and hymns of the house; recite the Names of the Gods; read sturdy picture books of faces, animals and the natural world, held close and read slowly.

From the Ancients

• Plato, Laws VII, 788a-795d. The first systematic Greek treatment of infancy: motion, song, the middle state, and the games of the years from 3 to 6.
• Plutarch (or his circle), On the Education of Children 1-5. Birth, nursing, the soft wax of the young soul and the choice of those who raise the child.
• The Instruction of Any, in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II (University of California Press, 1976).
• Theocritus, Idyll 24. Alcmene's lullaby and the infant Heracles, son of Zeus.