OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4475, 16 February 1917, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

SLEEP AND REST.

Everyone knows that bad feeding ruins many babies, but few people realise the damage done by not ensuring a full and regular allowance of uninterrupted sleep and rest throuout infancy and early childhood. During sleep Nature repairs the worn-out parts and attends to the growth of the whole organism; hence it is that, when rapid growth lias to take place. Nature demands the maximum amount of sleep. Sleep, gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse. r

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, ... Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Our foster nurse of Nature is repose. (Shakespeare: Lines from King Henry IV., Macbeth and King Lear.) In the first six months a baby doubles its weight—at 20 years, growth has almost ceased. In the first month of life a baby should sleep nine-tenths of, his time, whereas an adult needs to sleep only a third or a fourth of his time,' being awake from 16 to IS hours out of the 24. To make the imperative need of sleep in early years quite clear, J. will show the proper allowance in the form of a table.

TABLE OF SLEEPING AND WAKING. Time needed Hours Age. for sleep Awake Hours Hours

At first all the time not needed for feeding, bathing, etc., is devoted to sleep. But, after the first month or so, a baby wants mo.re and more waking hours, for crowing and kicking, ami, indeed, for practising and enjoying the use of all .the growing senses, faculties and powers of body and mind. At six months of ago a healthy baby can enjoy himself for six or eight hours a day! By the time he is a year old (allowing a night of 12 hours’ sound sleep) a baby should still have as much as three hours a day sleep—say, two hours in the morning and one in the afternoon given at the same time every day. How many modern babies aye sure of their rights in these most important matters—the “night-sleep” and the “day-sleeps” ? Many town babies accompany their mothers to the “pictures” from the time they are a year old, and there are very few infants indeed whose periods for daysleep are kept sacred and inviolate. Of course, T fully recognise that the modern mother is beset with difficulties arising out of the fact of her not being able, in most cases, to get any helper or understudy to look after the home while she takes necessary outings, does her shopping, etc. However, the first thing is to recognise what the babv ought to bnic and, indeed, must have—if the most perfect development of manhood or womanhood is to lie attained piojiei growth of body, mind and cliaiactei, all inseparably bound up and dependant on one another. I have referred to the great uilhcuities the mother has to contend against nowadays owing to the lack of domestic help; but one notices that even where there is no excuse of ibis kind, babies are of ten no better off, simply because, people have no idea that it does a small child any serious harm to be traipsed about aD over the country, on Sundays or holidays. or, indeed, on any occasion wlier'e the parents may have tile opportunity of getting off the chain themselves. Again, one sees weary, fretful or precociously lively babies, or small urchins, kept up every eveninn for an hour or so, “because lathei films having them about after bo comes home.’’’ . Some vears ago a friend of mine told me'how he had remonstrated with the father of a nervous, highlystrung little child, who was always kept up till late in the evening, in spite of the mother’s feeling that an hour or so earlier to bed would have made all the difference m the child s health. It was not merely a question of losing sleep—the time could have 'been made up next morning, though natural darkness is the best bed-time —a more serious objection was tin? improper stimulation and excitement before going to bed. My friend pleaded with the father, but 'without avail—the man s reply, being strangely fatalistic, pathetic, illogical and quite unjust to the child: “It makes no difference ; he won t grow up in any case; all my lormei children died in early youth. Ihe father in this case, though affectionate, regarded his child merely irom his owii point of view, and lie could not deny himself the joy of the littlei one’s company on returning home or an evening. . ; I have since come across similar cases myself—the first child in a fain-: ily being specially liable to spoiling in = this way. With each successive child common sense and justice tend more, and more to take the place of parent ul caprice and .self-indulgence, lhisj is undoubtedly one of the factors that* cause the children in large families to, be, in general, healthier, happier, and! more normal than where there is only one child.

INSUFFICIENCY OF SLEEP AND OYER-STIMUL ATT ON. Mv main purpose to-dav is to draw attention to the stunting of growth and proper development of the body, and the production of nervousness and all-round instability and precocity that tend to result from robbing a child of 'its proper sleep and from stimulating it when it ought to be at rest and growing. Any kind of over-stimulation or over-exertion is injurious to children. I have seen a small child made nervous, high-strung, irritable and capricious by being habitually dragged about of an evening long after bedtime to the point of weariness and fatigue—this being done by parents devoted to their offspring, hut without any ideq. as to what a child needs in the way of regularity, early hours and broken sleen and rest. One could better understand this kind of thing as a feature of town life, hut I find little children in the country kept up long after they ought to ho asleep. Their parents' recognise that they are nervous, spindly little shrimps, but they put this down to Providence rather than to iaulty rearing. School teachers are drawing attention to the number of weedy specimens they come across; indeed, no observant person can fail to, bp struck bv the fact that the majority of our children are below the standard that we have a right to expect. EDUCATION IN PARENTHOOD. When are parents going to realise that in an ideally healthy country like-New Zealand, almost every, child should he a fine specimen of humanity powerfully built, well-made, broadchested, and provided with sturdy legs instead of the spindles, one so often sees. These matters will never he righted until parents learn to ask themselves -the* question where there is any short-coming m the child: “Wherein are we failing in our duty?” • “When sons and daughters grow up sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard tlic . event as a- misfor-tiiiie—-as a visitation of Providence. . . thev assume .that these, evils came -without causes .... Nothing of tne Find .... very generally parents themselves are' 'responsible .... in utter ignorance of the simnlest laws of life and growth, they have been year after year undermining the const! tuitions of their children.” hood.” in Herbert Spencer’s Essay on “Education.”

1 month. .... 21 to 22 2 to 3 6 months ... 16 to 18 6 to 8 1 year 15 9 4 years 13 11 7 years 12 12 9 years 11 13 14 years 10 14 25 years 8 16 50 years 7 17