RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33062, 1 November 1972, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

VETO

Parents rearing a young family often find there are only a few hours a day which they can rightfully call their own. For them, rest and relaxation are elusive, and so far as many young mothers are concerned, a seemingly unattainable goal. They seem to follow a strict and uncompromising nutritional regimen of being on call every four hours on the hour and devoting many of the remaining eight in endless sorties to the clothes line and back.

It is perhaps only when their cherished offspring learn to talk and walk that the domestic situation regains its original aura of orderliness and nonurgency. Sut many a mother claWhs that it heralds a programme involving a distinctly closer amount of surveillance than ever.

But, on occasions, they must despair and wonder just where they fell down

on the job. And to whom they should rifi-n for advice. It is interesting therefore, to observe ttiat an increasing number of young medical graduates are turning their attention to Child Psychiatry,. It should be a profitable .field of endeavour, with in-built advantages such as, for instance, longer vacation: periods than those normally prevailing in the* profession. From a young Auckland parent comes the harrowing tale of his five-year-old daughter. It seems that her one besetting sin is being over forthright, particularly when in the presence of strangers. He declares that he will have to get something done about it. Soon. He cites tb“ w"* i"'-'-dent of a wedding his wife and he attenueu, accompanied by their child. She was initially a model of good behaviour, eyed the congregation with

appraising eyes but concentrated her attention with fixed expression on the bridegroom nervously awaiting the arrival of his bride. To the familiar tune of Lohengrin’s “Wedding March” the radiant young woman made her majestic entrance and took up her position alongside the groom who happened to be a head and shoulders shorter. The situation did not go entirely unnoticed. During a silent passage in the ceremony the little tot shattered the still air by inquiring from her father (with emphasis on the pronoun): “Daddy, is she going to marry HIM?” His reply was inaudible. Hers was not. In a voice which carried ,to the far corners of the church and with an a mazing economy of words sfte made a comment which temporarily upset the solemnity of the occasion. ‘jOoouuchhhhhh!!’’