HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 8 January 1944, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

DON’T BREED NERVES (By the Department of Health) Serious damage is often done to the nervous system of a child by the influences which surround it in the early ypars of life. The brain develops more quickly during the first two years of life than at any other time. Normal, healthy development of the nervous system demands quiet, regularity, and the maximum of sleep, together* with freedom from undue stimulation and excitement. If these rules aren’t observed by parents the child may grow up to be a “nervous subject.” The fact that so many children are highly strung should cause every mother to ask herself whether the child is getting sufficient rest and sleep. What happens when the young child is talked to and played with by every interested person? Often with their first baby parents have unwittingly made a playtoy of th’eir child, and then they wonder why it is such a light sleeper and is startled at the slightest sound. In their first few weeks of life babies need 20 hours* sleep out of the 24; children from six months to 18 months need 16 hours, which should include 13 hours at night; up to the age of four or five years 12 hours’ sleep at night, and a rest in the daytime, say from noon to one o’clock; and up to 10 and 11 years of age children should get their 11 hours’ sleep at night. (Cut this out; you may need it.)