OUR BABIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXX, Issue 20165, 20 July 1935, Page 10

OUR BABIES

BY HYGEIA Published under the auspices 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." THE NORMAL CHILD This article, again gleaned from the pages of the Women’s Pictorial and written by Sister M‘Kay, appealed to me as such an excellent one on the subject of the normal child that I felt it was well worth repeating. It is headed “Just Look at Him”:— “The really healthy child bubbles over with fun and high spirits nearly every moment of the day. ‘You have only to look at him!” exclaims the proud parent, ‘and you can see for yourself there is nothing wrong there.” Now, indeed, a tremendous lot can be learnt about the health and well-being of the nursery folk by quiet observation, but it is well to be quite sure what we are actually to look for. “To be tall for his age is not necessarily to be ‘a fine child.’ To be heavy does not necessarily indicate fitness. To have rosy cheeks may not be a sign of health af all!

“Growth, of course, is essential; it is a law of life. A stunted flower or tree or animal has something amiss. But height seems very largely a ‘family’ matter. A tall father is likely to have tall sons. Unfortunately, however, many a child ‘outgrows its strength’ because weight does not keep pace with height, and it is on the relationship of these two that a true criterion of normality can be established. Your tall child may have very poor posture, poor muscular strength, very little ‘meat to cover his bones,’ he may tire easily and have a poor chest development. So growth upwards as a factor taken by itself, important as it is in its place, is not necessarily a sign of good health. Weight is of great importance, and there seems little need to remind mothers of this in our pages, except to stress that over-weight may be as much a symptom of ill-health as underweight, and that to read its message aright the size of the bony framework of the body must be considered. “It is found that there is a very definite rhythm about growth, but that different structures of organs develop at different rates. For instance, the growth of the brain is phenomenal in the early days, the greatest increase being between birth and 18 months; after the age of five the increase is very slow, and after the age of 10 hardly perceptible. “The lymphoid structures (tonsils and so on) grow very rapidly in childhood;

reach a peak about the time of pub .4 s*. and then decrease in size.

“From birth to maturity the height increases 3.5-fold, the surface area about sevenfold, and the body weight about twentyfold. These are, of course only rough guides. Height is put on by fits and starts—very rapidly in the first two years of life and during puberty; very much more slowly in between these two periods and during later adolescence.

“But to return to the look-and-see method of diagnosing health: Why cannot we gauge this by roses in the cheeks? The thickness of the skin and the distribution of pigment vary so considerably that colouring is often deceptive. Your pale child may not be a martyr to anaemia, while your rosy child may have had the capillaries of the skin over-dilated by unwise exposure to artificial heat, or may even be showing the flush of indigestion. There is, however, a warmth of colour, a sort of glow, about the skin of the healthy child that we all recognise. The skin is often mottled, especially on the legs; it is firmly attached to the underlying muscles and sags nowhere; it is free from blotches and deliciously smooth and satiny.

“The mucous membranes lining mouth and eyes should be a bright pink, and the mouth itself kept habitually shut when not in active use. The teeth will be even, strong, and white; the hair glossy and smooth; the eyes bright and shining. “Though up to the age of about 36

months the child has a primitive type of foot, the whole flat and fat surface coming into contact with the ground, after this time the foot arches should be increasingly developed, so that the feet have the qualities of excellent springs, and the blood and nerve supplies which pass under the main arch of each foot will not be affected by pressure or shock. The foot will be almost as dexterous as the hand if given ample opportunity for exercise, and to encourage using the toes to pick up small objects is splendid for this purpose. . The ankles should need no form of support, and there should, of course, be no sign of bow-leg or knock-knee.

“The general behaviour and appearance will be characteristic of someone bubbling over with the zest of living. Your healthy child is a happy child, and this is shown in the expression of the little face. Though he will need to be doing something all day long, this activity will be purposeful and contented, very different from the hyperactivity of the nervous, restless child, who is never satisfied.

“Because the circulation is so good the child is naturally outdoor-minded. There is something wrong with a child to whom it is a penance to go out of doors and whose preference is for overwarm rooms.

‘Your very healthy child, too,’ is

usually a fairly self-confident little person. The nerves are well nourished, and life seems good. Excessive timidity, temper storms, fear phobias, irritability, and so on would mean that quite a number of marks would have to be reduced from the health maximum. The bonny child finds walking rather a dull affair. He prefers to hop, jump, skip, run on tiptoe, and dance his way about. The child who has no ‘go’ about him is not in the A 1 class.

"Undisturbed sleep is a further sign of health. Calm, peaceful, unbroken, it both promotes and reveals a thoroughly healthy little constitution. Sleep that is broken by nightmares, that is hard to woo, and that comes to an end too soon points to some faults of hygiene or happiness incompatible with perfect well-being. So, mothers, look again for the signs of health in your bairns, and, without being too fussy and anxious, keep before you an ideal towards which to work.”