OUR BABIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 12 November 1928, Page 10

OUR BABIES

SLEEP AND REST

By Hygeia,

Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Pluukct Society).

"it is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom."

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 every day throughout 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 is taking place Nature demands a maximum amount of sleep.

HOW MUCH SLEEP JS NEEDED?

[n 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 18 hours out of the 24. To make the imperative need of sleep in early years ((trite clear we will show the proper allowance in the form of a fable: AVERAGES FOR SLEEPING AND WAKING

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 more and more waking hours for "crowing and kicking, and, indeed, for practising and enjoying the use of all the growing senses, faculties, and powers of body and mind. At six months of age a healthy baby can enjoy himself for six or eight hours a day! By the time ho is a year old (allowing a night of 12 hours' sound sleep) a baby should still have as much as" three hours of day sleep— S ay, two hours in the morning and one in the afternoon, given at the same time every day. BABY'S BIGHTS WITH REGARD TO SLEEP

How many modern babies are sure ol their rights" in these most important matters—the "'night sleep" and the "day sleep'" 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 day sleep are kept sacred and inviolate. Of course, one fully recognises 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 baby ought to have—and, indeed, must have—if the most perfect development of manhood or womanhood is to be attained—proper growth of body, mind, and character, all inseparably bound up and dependent on one another. One notices too. that, even where there is no excuse of overwork or lack of help for the mother, babies are often no better off, simply because people have no idea that :t does a small child any serious harm to be traipsed about all over the country on Sundays or holidays, or, indeed, on any occasion where the parents may have the opportunity of getting off the chain themselves. Again, one sees weary, fretful, or precociously lively babies, or small urchins, kept up every evening for an hour or so, "because father likes having them about after ho comes home."

INSUFFICIENCY OF SLEEP AND OVER-STIMULATION

Our main purpose to-day is to draw attention to the fact that stunting of growth and development, nervousness, and all-round instability and precocity 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 overexertion is injurious to children. One frequently sees small children 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, but without any idea as to what a child needs in the way of regularity, early hours, and unbroken sleep and rest. One could better understand this kind of thing as a feature of town life, but one finds little children in the country kept uu long after they ought to be asleep. Their parents recognise that they are nervous, spindly little shrimps; but they put this down to Providence rather than to faulty rearing. Our school doctors are drawing attention to the number of weedy specimens they come across; indeed, no observant "person can fail to

bo struck by the fact that the majority of our children are below tho standard that we have a. right to expect. EDUCATION IN PARENTHOOD It. will be realised sooner or later that Herbert Spencer was quite right when he insisted that 'Education in Parenthood" was the foremost of all duties to the race. When are parents going to realise that in an ideally healthy country like New Zealand, almost every child should bo a line specimen of humanity—powerfully built, well-made, broad-chested, and provided with sturdy legs, instead of the spindles one so often sees. These matters ;.vill never be righted until parents learn to ask themselves this question, when there are. any shortcomings in their children: "Wherein are we failing in our duty?" As Herbert Spencer says:—

"When sons and daughters grow up sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard the event as a misfortune —as a visitation of Providence .... they assume that these evils came without causes. . . . Nothing of the kind . . .

very generally parents themselves are responsible. . . In utter ignorance of tho simplest, laws of life and growth, they have been year after year undermining the constitutions of their children."

Time Needed Hours Age for Sleep. Awake. Hours. Hours. 1 month .. 21 .... 3 6 months .. 18 .... 6 1 year 15 .... 9 4 years 15 ...... 11 6 years 12 .... 12 9 years 11 .... 13 15 years 9 .... 14 25 years 50 veais 8 7 ..... 16 .... 17