LICKING STAMPS

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 11

LICKING STAMPS

“A DISGUSTING HABIT" The health education of parents by their children was the subject of an address by Dr Claude Lillingston, of the League of Red Cross Societies, at the health education conference recently at the London School of Hygiene (reports the ‘ Manchester Guardian’). Biologists told them, he said, that throughout the animal kingdom parents taught their offspring. Man had been no exception to the rule, and the deplorable results so obvious to the child! had been accepted with stoicism. “ I think,” said Dr Lillingston, " that if we could reverse that we should have a better order of things. If the League of Nations could have _ been organised by a committee of kindergarten children instead _ of by elder statesmen, don’t you think the results would have been a great deal better than they are to-day?” Many, he said, were familiar with the story of an occasion when Queen Victoria invited a lady and her daughter to lunch. “There were times when little children were supposed to be seen and not heard, and the child was silent and well behaved till she saw the Queen take a chicken bone between her finger and thumb and gnaw it and suck it. The child said, ‘ Fie,’ and her mother blushed. The Queen said, ‘ My dear, you are quite right, [only I wasn’t as well brought up as you have evidently been.’ CAUGHT IN THE ACT. “ Another example was the disgusting habit of licking stamps and envelopes. Which of us has not been caught red-handed —I might say wettongued—in the act of licking a stamp by a child who has looked more in sorrow than anger at tho exhibition of dirtiness?” . Deliberately to organise a movement for the express purpose of health education of parents oy their children would be to court disaster, buried in ridicule. Every parent would be up in arms, mothers exclaiming “ Hoitytoity ” or its modern equivalent, whatever that might he, and fathers saving “Tut-tut” or something -a trifle forcible and less Parliamentary. “ But may it not be possible for some youth movement to develop in such a way that the health lessons the child learns get passed on to his , parents without offence being given or taken? What the young learn as children they apply to their lives when they grow un and themselves become parents,: bul this is a comparatively slow process. Why not learn from your own children here and now?” . ■ Dr J. Paterson, a delegate from East Berkshire, said that one thing to bo hoped for was an attitude of tolerance, and that the child would not have ita ears boxed' for criticising bid-estab-lished home methods. Children could be made messengers of health. Dr James Fenton, of the Society of Medical Ofiicers of Health, said people over 45 were not receptive to new ideas. “ But I don’t think the young adult is hopeless. We have never tried to teach the young man. He has been, missed out- in the whole of our campaign.”