OUR BABIES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16895, 17 November 1920, Page 4

OUR BABIES.

(By “Hygeia.”) Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for 'the Health of Women and Children. “It in wiser to put a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottfim.” STAMMERING OF OLDER: CHILDREN. As explained last week, this generally commences at about six or seven years of age—about the time when the second teeth are beginning to come through. It should be dealt with promptly, and should never be neglected and allowed to become a fixed and confirmed habit. It is three times, more common in boys than girls. It occurs usually in boys of excitable, nervous temperament, and is, generally speaking, a manifestation cf defective nervous control. This may be partly a hereditary manifestation; but, oven so. the exciting cause is usually some serious illness or marked lowering of health—such as scarlet fever, diphtheria, influenza, whooping cough, or indigestion and malnutrition; or it may bo brought on by shock. Occasionally stuttering arises through imitation. t Dr. Still says:— ' In some children the stuttering is only noticeable when the general health is poor; -'n most the difficulty is aggravated whenever the child is tired—for instance, at the end of long school hours. In most cases the child is rather above the average in intelligence; the child who stutters is usually the quick-witted, thoughtful, sensitive

child. Charles Lamb was writ down “an inveterate stutterer”; hut, as ho says of himself, “his conceptions rose kindlier than his utterances;” • and it Was Charles Kingsley who wrote of his own difficulty in speech, “that fearful curse of stammering, which has been my misery since my childhood.” Stuttering most often takes the form of repetition of the first letters or the first syllable of certain words; for example, “I’m gug, gug, gug, gug, going; or there may be spasmodic drawing in of the breath, or a spasm which makes the patient unable for a time to form words—he is speechless from inability to articulate. Stutterers can generally sing and whisper all right, and may have po difficulty in reading aloud—especially poetry. TREATMENT. , The following excellent summary of treatment is adapted from Sir Frederick Still:— \ Treatment of Stuttering.—The presence of stuttering as a transient phenomjnon in early childhood during the normal development of speech shows that the co-ordination necessary to perfect articulation is only gradually acquired ; it has, in fact, to be learnt. And one may assume that what is possible in tho earliest years of life is possible ajso for tho stutterer in later years: he can with perseverance acquire the necessary co-ordination. But in order to do this ho must learn to accustom not only the muscles of articulation hut also those of breathing to orderly action. For this purpose Tegular breathing exercises are of value, but they must ha done daily, and preferably twice a day, to be of real help. Next the child should practise daily reading aloud and singing: the latter particularly may be useful as an introduction to tho more difficult exercise of reading aloud; and for the reading or reciting nursery rhymes or simple poems should come first, as the rhyme assists co-ordination; and so gradually the child may read ordinary prose. But whatever exercises are used, care must.be taken that, faulty speech is not allowed to go unheeded. If the child stutters ho should he asked to say thi word or read the sentence again. Often it will he found that by taking a deep inspiration before beginning a sentence a child can avoid stuttering altogether. Before all else there are two rules to which the stutterer must pay attention if he is to he cured: I.—SPEAK SLOWLY. ‘ lI.—SPEAK QUIETLY. This subject will be continued next week.