[1][3] Child attended the common schools and entered the University of Vermont at the age of fourteen.
[3] Child studied law with his father, was admitted to the bar in September 1839, and commenced practice in Berkshire, Vermont.
[3] He was a partner of Homer E. Royce, who had also studied with Timothy Child Sr., and served as a justice of the peace beginning in 1840.
[3][6] Child was elected as a Whig to the 34th United States Congress, for the term beginning on March 4, 1855, but never took his seat due to illness.
[3] After the demise of the Whigs, Child became a Democrat,[7] but his pro-Union position during the American Civil War[8] caused him to identify with the Republican Party.