OUR BABIES

Otago Witness, Issue 3097, 23 July 1913, Page 62

OUR BABIES

Bi Hygbia. Published under the auspices of Sit* Societjr for the Health of Women •**“ Children. “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.”

MASTICATION. CORRESPONDENCE. The following letters show the keen interest which parents take in the fundamental problems we have been discussing, and also the difficulties which confront them: — Letter I. As a parent I, like .hundreds of others, am much indebted and grateful to “Hygeia” for the useful information contained in “Our Babies” Column. The articles on mastication are particularly instructive. Might I ask 'Tlygcia to supplement the instruction by giving next Thursday a list of articles of diet which will provide mastication? With adults ■who concentrate their minds and are determined to masticate it is less difficult to find materials for mastication, but what is there that can be given to children that will force them to masticate whether they wish or no? I have been puzzling ovoi the problem, with little success so fur. Letter 11. I should be extremely obliged if you will post to the above address any of your literature on the feeding of children. My child is throe years old, and has so far boon fed on “slops,” as the doctors call soft foods and milk. We want to know your opinion upon the feeding of children of this age, and I will gladly pay lor literature, etc., upon receipt of same. Letjer 111. I have read with much interest the article on mastication in Saturday night s Post. For some time I have had the same ideas about so much soft food be ng given to children, but I find it hard to think of a diet for my boy of 20 months—that is, a diet that demands a fair amount of mastication. REPLY. The problem how to provide the modern human being with food that will ensure full mastication is a very d fficult one. The crux of the difficulty lies,, as one of our correspondents says, in bringing a child to masticate properly who hag not been trained to do so from the beginning, and who has not reached the ago when the will can be involved to bring about the chewing of food when it is not of a character which necessitates mastication prior to swallowing. Don’t Miss the Golden Otportenitt, If we fail to satisfy a baby’s natural desire for something hard to masticate at the time when this instinct first asserts itself—say, at about six or seven months of age. when a. bone may bo given to munch at. followed by bard food a few months later —the instinct tends to die out, and there is great difficulty in reestablishing it; but it MUST be re-estab-lished if we wish our children to have strong, serviceable jaws and teeth, and if wo wish them to Escape the modern tendency to adenoids, swollen tonsils, and the chain of other evils which follow on “pap" feeding. If the habit of merely swallowing food has been formed, not only is the instinct to chew lost, hut i 7 an effort is made to masticate properly the jaws soon become weary, and refuse to do their work completely. In adults the habit of proper mastication can be developed by gradually and persistently using the jaws and teeth. If this is -lone the task becomes less irksome day by day, and soon passes into a natural, unconscious, routine habit, no longer needing to be actuated by the will. However, foi a long time vigilance must not he relaxed, because of the tendency to fall back again into laz ness and the swallowing of half-chewed food. Take Food That Needs Work. * The great aid in this matter is to take at oach meal a fair proportion of food that can scarcely lie swallowed without a considerable amount of chewing and insa'.ivation. It is true that by tho ? exercise of a strong wjl one can force one’s self to chow a meal of soft, mushy food, hut the task is much easier and the results are much better in regard to the proper pouring out of digestive juices if a fair proportion of the food is more or less dry, and of such a texture as to offer sufficient resistance to the jaws ami teeth. This is specially the case in early childhood. If all the food given is more- or less soft and moist a baby cannot be trained to chew thorough!v. and the glands cannot lx* induced to fully insalivate such food. On the other hand, if the jaws are properly exorcised from the start by giving bones to gnaw or munch at piror to the eruption of teeth, and if the first solid food allowed is such as requires munching—crusts, dry toast, rusks etc. —the masticating reflex or instinct will bo developed. Then even when some soft food is given in addition this also will bo more or less chewed instead of being merely gulped down as a bolus.