OUR BABIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3994, 30 September 1930, Page 62

OUR BABIES.

By

Hygeia.

Published under the auspice* of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society). “ It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." *

PLUNKET NURSES, ETC.. DUNEDIN BRANCH. NURSES’ SERVICES FREE. Nurses O’Shea (telephone 23-348), Isbister (telephone 10-866), Thomson, Scott,_ and Ewart (telephone 10-216). and Mathieson (telephone 23-020). Society's Rooms: Jamieson's Buildings, 6 Lower Stuart street (telephone 10-216) Office hours: Daily from 2 to 4 p.m. (except Saturday and Sunday) and 10 a.tn. to noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays; 315 King Edward street. South Dunedin. 2 to 4 pjn. daily (except Saturday and Sunday), and 10 a.m to noon on Fridays; also 125 Highgate. Roslyn— Monday and Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m.: Gospel Hall, Mailer street. Mornington— Monday and Wednesday, 2 to 4 p.m.; Kelsey - Yaralla Kindergarten — Monday and Friday from 2 to 4 p.m.; Baptist Sunday School. Sunshine—Monday and Wednesday from 2 to 4 p.m.; 211 Mam North road, North-East Valley—Tuesdays, 2 to 4 p.m.; Kindergarten. Caversham—Thursdays, 2 to 4 p.m.

Out-stations: Baptist Church. Gordon road. Mosgiel—Tuesday afternoons from 3 to 4 o’clock; Presbyterian Church Hall. Outram—alternate Fridays. 2 to 4 p.m.; Municipal Buildings Port Chalmers — Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 4 o’clock; also Hall. Macandrew’a Bay—Fridays. 2 to 4 p.m.

Administrative Secretary, Miss G. Hoddinott, Jamieson’s Buildings, Stuart street (telephone 10-216). Karitane-Harris Baby Hospital, Anderson’s Bay (telephone 22-985). Matron. Miss Hilditch. Demonstrations given on request every Wednesday afternoon from 2.30 by Plunket Nurses and Karitane Baby Nurses. Visiting hours: 2to 4 p.m., Wednesday. Friday and Sunday. MENTAL HYGIENE. The following is a continuation of the quotations from Dr Arnold Gesell’s article, which we commenced last week:— Early Behaviour Problems.

The behaviour problems with which we have to deal in young children “ very frequently concern personal habits of eating, of sleep, of elimination. Eneuresis (bed-wetting) is a very common difficulty. Early, consistent, 'judicious training, beginning not later than the

sixth month, would prevent not all but very many of these cases of faulty bladder control. Such training would also tend to stabilise the child’s nervous system and increase his general selfcontrol. To be sure, there are varieties of eneuresis which are attributable to physiological conditions, but we are speaking of the common instances in which it is due to faulty training in early infancy. Bowel control calls for the

same care in training. Regularity and control are to be recommended, not for reasons of physical health alone, but because of their importance in the whole economy of mental development. “ The whole process of nutrition, likewise, is bound up with mental factors. Not only does complete nutrition in the dietetic sense tend to increase the child’s vitality and stability, but proper habits of eating are essential to his normal mental growth. Extreme fastidiousness and fussing with regard to food become ■ the nucleus for faulty relations between the child and the parent. The child | utilises the feeding situation to assert I his will; he becomes ‘ a gastric tyrant ’ ; he may even force his will by screaming, by tantrums, by threat of vomiting. What should be a simple, almost instinctive situation becomes a focus for breeding abnormal traits. Sometimes the situation reflects all too clearly the shortcomings of the parent. “One vivid instance comes to mind. A kindergarten child was brought to our clinic. The mother’s complaint was that Sarah sucked her thumb and would not eat. We found that the child had average intelligence and was in no way neurotic. The mother, however, proved to be highly emotional. She freely confessed that she whipped her child daily and slapped her at meals. ‘ We promise her toys and money, scold, but it does no good. She will not take milk.’ The child was placed in a nursery school. The new environment worked with magic promptness. She ate her~sop and milk, and even took a nap after luncheon. The child’s abnormal behaviour at home was a reflex of faulty methods of management. The Parent-Child Relation. “ These extremes of mismanagement are glaring, but they are instructive, because they suggest so forcibly the mechanisms which underlie personality development. The parent-child relation appears to be the most constant influence in this development. It acts like a regulator. Only the wisest parents can restrain themselves enough, emotionally and otherwise, to give the child, the fullest chance to exercise and achieve his full powers as he grows. It is extremely difficult to regard the mind in an impersonal, naturalistic manner, with calm faith in the laws of growth. The constant temptation is to be over-solicitous, over-meddling, and to exact perfection out of time and out of place. v “ Zealous parents frequently try to do too much. They make a fetish of obedience or of neatness or unselfishness, or even of honesty, and in this pursuit of the higher perfections they neglect the fundamentals of mealtime, playtime,, bed-

time, dressing, and toilet. The kernel of the child’s iqake-up is penetrated and influenced by everyday essentials of life, but it will be years before he is ready for rational, ethical approach to the business of living.

“ Premature and excessive zeal on the part of the parent leads to scenes, to rebelliousnes, and to domination. If the mother herself is nervous, her tenseness and injudiciousness aggravate the very traits which she is trying to manage. She becomes over-sensitive in regard to her child's behaviour. She injects herself into the situation, and fails to look at her little one's behaviour problem in an objective, philosophic way. In her restless perplexity she does not think out a sound policy, and unfortunately she often does the wrong thing. So matters grow, worse. for her nerves and for the child 9. It is better to do nothing at all to correct the faults in the child’s personahty than to attempt the wrong thing. Children have an insidious yet powerful knack of drawing attention to themselves for punishment as well as protection. The simplest, but (one should never forget) almost the hardest rule to applv at times is ‘learn to let the child alone.

“A child, even in infancy, must achieve his own, health and strength of personality. Nobody can provide them for him directly. We can only furnish the best conditions for natural mental growth. Ihe basis of that growth, we repeat, lies in the everyday habits of living. If these are wholesome, and, if the child is stimulated by influences of encouragement and good cheer, he steadily acquires a trust in life and confidence in himself, and escapes those corroding feelings of inferiority which lie at the basis of so many personality difficulties

The- greatest secret of success in personality training, then, is to achieve a balance in which one gives the child neither too much nor too little attention. If he gets too much attention he may exploit the household and become a spoiled monarch; or he may become overdependent and over-compliant. The great art is to put him on his own resources, even in infancy, and to keep him there as he grows up. There is always th* danger of spoiling him either through over-indulgence or through misplaced zeal. Intelligent neglect is much to be preferred to over-solicitous interference. The patents should give the child an opportunity to acquire his own .‘morale.’

“At every age within the limits of his capacity a child should be taught to be sc.f-reliant. He should learn to go to sleep by himself. Is due course he should learn to take off his shoes, put them on, to dress, wash, and feed himself. It is a good sign if he wants to eat with a spoon at the age of one. and if by the age of two he usese it independently. It x- S a .^°k en if he is still being spoonfed by his mother when he is four years old.

“He must learn to play by himself and to remain alone in a room while his mother goes out to the yard. In countless ways in the everyday situations of life he must lay the foundations for that fortitude which some day will make him a truly independent person, with nhat Emerson called self-reliance, and what we nowadays are accustomed to call morale. Health of personality is chiefly a. matter of morale. And the wise parent gives her child progressive opportunities to acquire it, even as early as in the nursery.”