OVER-HARDENED CHILDREN,

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 275, 13 August 1908, Page 5

OVER-HARDENED CHILDREN,

i .A doctor in. Sydney has been giving vent to'his opinions on the rearing of babies and young children generally (writes " Cristina " in the "Australasian"). ' It is an_erroneous idea to imagine that making children go about in all "weathers with bare legs and feet-will make them hardy. Regular moonshine," he calls it, " for children who can survive such treatment are already hardy." Childron should never be dumped on cold oilcloth or allowed' to crawl thereon. Eronchitis_ and catarrh aro thus contracted. Clothing should allow of free movement, but thero should, at the same time bo sufficient clothing to: protect the child. Grown-up peoplo always see to it that they themselves aro well and warmly clad in winter, but children are often allowed to become bluo with cold. Especially is this 'the case when tho parents are . afflicted ; with so-called "poetic ideas." This is not so much the case now as formerly.. In the . days of our grandmothers were not bare arms and necks the universal' fashion for children? All the photographs and quaint daguerreotypes, one. has in old albums show our dead and gone great-aunts, and even our aunts of a later generation,, as children,- weird specimens, with short sleeves and low-cut dresses. Poor mites, how they must have suffered in the English bittercold winters, when! houses were not, as pretty generally -now, artificially. warmed. Another abomination the doctor objects to is the "everlasting bath, in which baby is immersed morning, noon, and nkht nowadays. Infant children run the..risTc, "he says, of being J'washed away into Heaven." Remember in Montoney Jephson's charming book, "Tho Girl Ho Left Behind Him." the kindly old landlady, who wa3,'afraid sho would loso her best lodger on account or his queer hankering after a bath oyery day and night. "He's alius a-washin' of i'imsclf," 'said she to her neighbour, "and if he goes on like this he'll Boon be washed off the face of this blessed earth!" .. i