NERVES IN THE NURSERY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1611, 14 January 1903, Page 27

NERVES IN THE NURSERY.

The child of the nervous mother inherits the temperament, intensified by unfavourable prenatal influences, in many cases. One doctor has remarked that every baby is a chronic invalid foi the first three months of its life. _ Without taking so extreme a view, it is easy to believe that many a baby begins life with every circumstance favourable for the speedy development of nerve disease. What does the nervous mother ask herself in moments when nerves are strained by pain or over-excitement of any k/nd ?' “Rest!” she chiefly demands. “Leave mo! Let me have quiet, daikness, freedom from all effort.” We accord the nervous baby exactly opposite treatment. We answer as :f entreated, “Rock me ! Toss me ! Shake rattles a,t me! Sing to me, shout, jump at mo! Show me a light, anything to keep me awake and excited!” tradition takes a strong hold in the nursery. It is voted cruel indifference “to iet a baby cry.” The very mother who best recognises the value of “a good cry in calming her own overwrought feelings can least make up her mind to allow the same relaxation for the baby for whose nervous condition she is probably entirely to blame.

The tiny baby's fretfulness is. as a rule, purely physical and especially dependent on overexcited nerves. Any mother who will allow her baby to grow for at least six months of its life in a restful atmosphere, absolutely unstimulated beyond its natural pace of development, will have food for thought in comparing her results with those of the more common, training.