NERVOUS CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 3, 3 July 1926, Page 19

NERVOUS CHILDREN

ADDEESS BY DR. P. CHISHOLM.

In an. address to the Plunket Society at Christchurch, Dr. P. Chisholm, superintendent of the Queen Mary Hospital, Haniner, an institution for the treatment of nervous ailments, said that suggestion had sometimes to do with nervous condition. The suggestions that children received perhaps tended to make them nervous. Heredity played a certain part, because it might provide a fruitful field. It wag extraordinary to find sometimes mothers and nurses —he did not meau Plunket nurses —who had nothing to learn in regard to diet, exercise and sleep, yet who took no interest in the child's mind. They did not appreciate that with the growth of the foody the mmd' was growing steadily all the time. The astounding rapidity "with which the child's mind, grew was the most marked thing in human infancy.' In the life which a clyld led it was not easy to pick where overstrain might be. As a matter of fact, it was not there that they would look. They would look for the strain in thp personality of the mother or nurse." The conduct of the child, especially one of nervous temperament, was determined to a very large extent by the suggestions of those around. A child's conception of itself grew very gradually. Because an infant had little or no acquired experience, there was in the child an extreme sensitiveness to suggestion. He had known of cases where parents had made a great deal of fuss, had Bcoldcd, entreated, or attempted force with a child because of refusal to take food, and all this caused the child to take notice. A child was never afraid to be alone, or should not be, but for the influence of those who sapped the confidence of the child be-

cause they were afraid of what migfyt happen to it it it were out of totir sight. Nervous, apprehensive parents had nervous children, not by heredity, but by example. Possibly heredity had a little to do with it, in that the child was a suitable subject for suggestion. The nervous child was often a problem, b,ut the real seriousness of the condition was not in the child, but in the foundation which was being laid for after-life. It was I far better to prevent the nervous element than to breed nerotic men and women. The society had done so much for children that the word Plunket was almost synonymous with "skilled feeding.^' It was just as important to skilfully feed the mind of the child as to feed the body. No one could possibly deny they were cf equal importance. Tjie child's mind was fed largely by suggestion. The training and teaching, of nurses so that they could instruct the mother was one of the preventivemeasures which could be taken. By doing that they would prevent a lot of neurosis in after-life, and it was far better than hospitals for treating nervous people. . .">