OUR BABIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 96, 18 December 1912, Page 2

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia.) Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. 1 “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” A NOTABLE ADDRESS. At the request of Dr. CTossley, Bishop of Auckland, Airs. Parkes recently gave the following admirable address on “Home Influence” to a mass meeting of women in Auckland. Dr. and Airs. Parkes have throughout taken the keenest’ influence in the work of the Society for the Health of Women and Children; and to the /.eal and untiring energy and devotion of Airs Parkes, as Honorary Secretary and chief organiser for the province, working in conjunction with an excellent committee, the Auckland branch mainly owes its great and important success and progressive expansion and development. “HOAIE INFLUENCE.” (By Airs. Parkes.) I am quite at a loss to understand why 1 have been invited to address you to-day, for I certainly feel it is somewhat presumptuous on my part to offer advice on home training to many who, by reason of wider experience, are more competent to speak than myself. . . , ~ •. At the same time, I feel it is a great honour to be allowed the opportunity of expressing a few ideas on the subject of Homo Influence, and if you will bear with me I wall promise not to occupy too much of your time. . At the outset, I would like to point out the very regrettable fact that of late years home influence has been on the wane, and as a result evils are creeping in which seriously threaten the happiness and stability of family life. One of the greatest factors in preventing this sad state of affairs is to teach from the earliest years the habit of self-control. "Without self-con-trol in either boy or girl there will be a lack of that grit or stamina which stands for individuality and whichlifts one out of the common ruck. This teaching of the habit of self-conti ol cannot'begin too early, for do we not see, even in the infant, the necessity Noth by “Hygeia”. The following extract from the Society’s Book, “Feeding and Care of Baby,” shows the power which regular habits and obedience, firmly established in infancy, have in facilitating self-con-trol and the building character later “Obedience in infancy is the foundation of all later powers of self-con-trol, and yet it is the one thing that the ’ young mother nowadays is most inclined to neglect. Instead of gently, wisely, and firmly regulating her baby’s habits, and conduct, she tends to allow him to have his own way and to rule her and the whole household. Not so the wiser so-called “lower animals.” The dog and the cat carefully train their progeny in necessary habits of regularity, cleanliness, etc., from the start, and, as has been pointed out by Long, SetonThompson, and others,-_ they chide, cuff, and punish them, if necessary, rather than allow the formation of bad and irregular habits which would exact far greater penalties later on. All this is done by instinct; and the human mother, with the stronger love greater wisdom which should be hers, would have no difficulty in guiding her child aright by firmness and consistency alone, without resorting to punishment, if she would but start at the beginning. “The formation of proper healthy habits initiated by ‘Feeding and Sleeping by the Clock,’ and the establishment of perfect regularity and system as to outing, exercise, motions, etc., md the absence of weak indulgence and ‘spoiling,’ xorxn Ann atiu strong foundations. Given these foundations, the loving care and attention of the mother will readily build truth, honour, helpfulness, and unselfishness into the organism as the child

grows. “Building the teeth and forming { character are parts of construction oi the same edifice— standing in the relationship of the underground foundations of a building to the superstruc-

ture. “Our dentists tell us that when they insist on the eating of crusts and other hard food the .mother says our children simply won’t! —simply won’t comply with the laws which have a higher sanction and greater antiquity than the authority of man himself. Such children merely exemplify the ineptitude of their parents—parents too sentimental, weakly emotional, careless, or indifferent to fulfil the primary laws of Nature. The ‘can’t-he-so-cruel’ mother whose baby cries half the night and frets all day, on account of the mother’s failure to fulfil one of the first of maternal duties, should not blame Providence or Hendity because her progeny has turned out a ‘simply won’t’ in infancy, and will become " a selfish ‘simply . can’t’ in childhood and adolescence. Power to obey the Ton Commandments, or to conform to the temporal laws and usages of society, is not to he expected of spoiled babies when they reach adult life. The plain meaning of the word ‘spoiled’ is worth some reflection. Everyone grasps the full significance of spoiling a dress or spoiling a dinner, but the spoiling of a child is regarded more lightly.

“Unselfishness and altruism are not the natural outcome of habitual selfindulgence. Damaged health and absence of discipline and control in early life are the natural foundations of failure later on—failure through the lack of control which underlies all weakness of character, vice and criminality.”

(Extract from Feeding and Care of Baby, page 135.)