OUR BABIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 16 (Supplement)

OUR BABIES.

(BY HYGEIA).

•INFANTILE COMPLAINTS. Anyone who has had experience with children knows how distressing, how persistent, and how difficult to manage an inveterate habit of bed-wetting may be. Essentially the habit is a persistence of the infantile habit of emptying the bladder involuntarily whenever it is full. The cause of the trouble may be some definite physical abnormality, poor general health, or nervous instability; or it may be indefinite and obscure, associated with impressions and suggestions—the mind rather than the body. Its origin may occasionally lie far back and forgotten in the child’s experience, connected with that realm of unconscious desires and impressions of which we know so little as yet, but which we realise to be such an important influence in child life.

The New-born Baby. The baby at birth exercises no conscious control of any kind. Certain vital processes are stimulated and set in motion immediately he begins his independent existence, but they are at first quite involuntary in nature. However, he straight away starts to enlarge his field of experience, and within a very short time he begins to exercise control over certain acts and bodily functions. By the time he is a year old he should but rarely “have an accident” in the daytime, and during the second year he should acquire control of the bladder at night also, although some quite normal children occasionally wet the bed at night even into the third year.

Early Habit Training. Early training and associations have a tremendous influence in determining whether habits formed are good or bad. If, from the early weeks, the baby is “held out” for a few minutes at regular intervals, with a little vessel placed under him on his mother’s knee, he quickly learns to associate the posture and the “feeling” with the act of emptying the bladder and bowel, and it naturally follows in time that he will demand the posture and the vessel before he will perform the act.

Pleasure, or the opposite sensations—discomfort or pain—have much influence on the baby’s reactions. If he is kept clean and dry, and is “held out” when changed, the sensation of comfort from dryness is also associated with control of the bladder. A baby habitually left wet for hours becomes used to the condition, and the sensation of discomfort is no deterrent to lack of control.

Nervous Control. Control of all functions is presided over by the nervous system—a most marvellous, delicate, and complex mechanism, profoundly influenced by emotional stress, excitement, fatigue, and many less definite states. We see examples of this in the diarrhoea brought on by nervous dread, and in fainting or vomiting from shock. There is an uncontrolled discharge of nervous energy in one particular direction, which results in a derangement of normal functions. Bed-wetting in nervous, exciteable children may be similar in nature.

Suggestion. Young children are pre-eminently open to suggestion of every kind, including that which comes from conscious or unconscious expectation of certain lines of action. Ordinary treatment designed to break a child of this habit is likely to be quite fruitless if, at the same time, he knows that the bed is protected by a mackintosh and he is done up in napkins. ' The idea unc®nsciously conveyed to his mind is one of anticipation that he will wet the bed, and unconsciously he responds to the stimulus of that powerful suggestion.

“Limelight” Some children early develop a very strong liking for the “limelight,” and all unknown to themselves or to those around them, they discover means of attracting attention. A trick quite accidentally acquired, but producing the desired effect, may very quickly become a habit, and persist most obstinately, in spite of the fact that the attention thus secured mjay eventually be anything but pleasant in nature. Threats and punishments should never be resorted to. They are usually worse than useless whatever tte cause of the trouble, and in the cases we have just indicated bribery and persuasion are equally bad, because all tend to focus attention on the child and his trouble. These remarks perhaps convey some idea of the complexity of the trouble, and give the clue to the most hopeful line of treatment for children in whom the habit has resisted the usual measures.

They may also explain in this, as in other difficulties due to faulty nervous control, the child is so often more easily managed by outsiders than by

the mother herself, and why the best and most attentive mother may have the most difficulty of this kind with her children. Her very devotion tends to make her overanxious and pre-oc-cupied with her children’s behaviour as well as their bodily health, thus creating an unfavourable atmosphere for all-round stability. There is no doubt that an attitude of what has been called “observant neglect” is best —the more children are left alone to develop naturally the better. Next week we will refer in more detail to the best treatment to adopt in these cases.