What Shall I Do With My Child?

Southland Times, Issue 23306, 16 September 1937, Page 14

What Shall I Do With My Child?

Defects In Eyesight

QHORT-SIGHTEDNESS, or myopia, common in children now-a-days, is due to a deformity of the eyeball, which becomes so long that the image is focussed in front of the retina instead of exactly upon it. Few, if any, children are born with short sight, but the softness of the eye, which permits the eyeball to lengthen, is often an inherited family peculiarity. The home nurse should be on the look-out for the defect. The trouble usually comes soon after the child begins school work, and, once started, is likely to increase with each year of school life until the inconvenience or the actual distress becomes very noticeable. It is then reported by the school nurse or doctor and the child is obliged to use glasses to correct it. If not attended to. eye-strain frequently results in bilious, liver and other troubles. If a child keeps normal vision until the age of fifteen or sixteen, he may be regarded as no longer liable to shortsightedness. The progressive increase in the defect usually ceases soon after the twentieth year. Only the oculist physician can make an exact diagnosis of myopia. Other diagnosis are not always trustworthy, because the spasmodic contraction of one of the eye muscles may cause an apparent myopia. A physician uses atropine temporarily to paralyse the muscle, and so eliminates spasmodic contraction. It is easy to guess, however, that a child is short-sighted when he has prominent eyes and dilated pupils and, though bright and quick at play, seems dull and perhaps mischievous at schooldull because he cannot see the blackboard properly, and mischievous because, not being able to take full part in the school work, he must find some other outlet for energy.

“Safety Valves.’’ When a child is boisterous and a grown-up is loud and noisy, it is possible that their manners are due to some repression which is seeking to adjust itself in this rather tiresome way. The modern psychologist is of the opinion that repressions of one kind or other are responsible for a great many different complexes and, for that reason, teaches that we should give as much freedom as possible to the expression of natural instincts and emotions. But this point of view was not prevalent some years ago, so we have to deal with individuals who had not the privilege of being brought up under the more enlightened conditions. How, then, to cope with people who are over-exuberant in their ways, and evidently find a safety-valve for their feelings by underlining all they say and, perhaps, by gushing on all possible occasions? If we look deep enough, and if we know their stories intimately enough, we shall probably discover that they are but making up now for what they lacked in youth. The lack may have been «.f affection, freedom of speech, personal lib-

erty, or of half a hundred other things for which they had real longing. Safetyvalves and “letting off steam” represent methods by which Nature seems to right itself in persons both young and old. The “bottling-up” of aspirations and hopes, ambitions and desires, may go on so long and so persistently as to become . positive danger to the individual. Different characters adopt different means of easing the situation.

So when we meet women who embarrass us by their habit of paying compliments, expressing exaggerated interest in our doings, and generally over-doing the friendship stunt, we need not necessarily attribute their behaviour to insincerity. It may only be their way of achieving a safety valve for pent-up feelings, and may afford them relief from pressions of which we have only the slightest idea. A good deal of innocent vulgarity is but a safety-valve in disguise. Men and women who have met with extreme harshness in their youth are often tempted to adopt loud manners as a way of asserting themselves in later life. We do not make allowances for this, but judge and condemn indiscriminately. Safety-valves often taken an unsympathetic form. “Disrespectful” Generation. One of the most difficult things the older generation has to learp to tolerate from the younger is lack of respect There is no solemn silence when uncles and aunts tell tales of the exploits and prowess of their youth. No show of deference, no breathless waiting on words, none of the tongue-in-the-cheek politer ness common in Victorian and Edwardian times.

To those who, in their young days, were accustomed to prefix the titles

Auntie, Unde, Sir and Mother (even

Cousin, too, on occasions) when addressing relatives, it comes as something t of a shock to have mere Christian names » employed’ with no “with your leave.” - It means that grown-ups must pull them- - selves together, behave as man to man, f and see that in conversaton there is no ? insistence upon the sanctity of age or i position, but a sensible determination to - meet the young folk on an equal footing. It is useless to talk about the decline .of s “proper respect.” The Kotowing atti--1 tude has gone to the wall, with a number 5 of. outworn ideas. The present generation • has no use for it, and the older one may f as well make up its mind to the fact. s On the other hand, modem youth is t very ready to give good, sound liking • to older folk who know how to behave ■ nicely and do without the over-respectful nonsense. And the real affection of the young for the elderly is well worth having. But, to earn the affection, not-so-j young people have to keep their brains i dusted and their sympathies fluid. They . must not Allow themselves to atrophy s in mind, heart or soul. 1 Humble respect is a sadly over-rated f attitude. Appreciation and affection are ;, far better worth having, so we can te- ■ sign ourselves with equanimity to living - with a generation that will give us comradeship without tears.