OUR BABIES.

Waipa Post, Volume IV, Issue 186, 7 February 1913, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

By Hygeia.

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children.

A DOCTOR'S MISLEADING ADVICE. Some remarks on the Hygiene of childhood, by Dr Woods Hutchison, which have appeared . in several newspapers throughout the Dominion during the past month are so specious and at the same time so wrong-headed and misleading, that they ought not to be allowed to pass unchallenged. Dr Woods Hutchinson is not, as described' one of America's foremost authorities on Hygiene. I should rather say he is an attractive paradoxical quasi-scientific popular American writer, who knows the effectiveness of boldly and dogmatically assailing commonly-ac-cepted views and proclaiming the converse to be true. When an author confines himself to mere literary juggling and paradox, in the vein of Oscar Wilde and other decadents, he does not necessarily do much harm, bur morals and judgment are not seriously warped by reading that Dishonesty is the best policy or that A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand; but parents are apt to be led astray when a facile, lucid writer sets- to work, in the name of science, to discredit and overthrow sound, well-established rules of life and conduct which date back behind the time of Solomon and Socrates.

Some of the things that Dr Hutchinson proclaims need no comment —indeed, scarcely need proclaiming. All will agree with him that a child ought to have plenty of sleep and that healthy outdoor play tends to build up the child's body, mind, and judgment. Indeed, I would go so far as to assent to the spirit of what the author conveyed some years ago in more arresting terms, when denouncing the wrong of founding schools without proper playgrounds. "If it comes to be a question of a school without a playground, or a playground without a school, gtve me the playground!" Here the emphasis justifies the exaggeration. But what is to be said of a doctor who ignores the fact that even the progeny of the higher animals are not left to the guidance of blind instinct alone, but are subjected to proper discipline and training by their mothers in such matters as obedience, cleanliness, etc. What is to be said of the doctor who proclaims appetite and desire to be the all sufficing and' only safe guides for childhood ?

With Dr Hutchinson's mere assertion sometimes takes the place of reason and argument, thus: — The child knows what it wants better than its parents. Let a child make its own moral code. Do not preach. . . . We think we are older than our children, when, as a matter of fact, they are older than we, at least racially speaking. Their instincts have been growing for eight or nine million years, and they must mean something. Let a child develop in accord with his instincts.

As we all know, children tend at times to be wilful, disobedient, untruthful, etc. Are such tendencies to be allowed to develop unchecked, or should the little one be guided and helped by its elders ? Under the temptations of modern concentrated foods, fancy cooking, and candy shops children tend to overeat, and to cat in season and out of season. But Dr Hutchinson scouts building up self-restraint and discipline, saying that the child's instincts and desires should be the sole guides, even as to eating and drinking. Whatever it wants to do and whatever and whenever it wants to eat the child is sure to be right! He writes: — There is an old saying that one should rise from the table wanting just a little bit more. This is an exploded theory. Be it a large meal or a small tit-bit that a child craves for, in nine times out of ten it ought to have it. The rigid rule that three meals a day are enough for anyone, young or old, active or inactive, is all nonsense. A healthy child can enjoy and assimilate, and very often needs, six meals a day. In fact, the human stomach is geared for continuous performance." •. \ If there is one thing that the physiological research of the last 10 years has proved more conclusively than another regarding the dietetic_Jiabits of civilised man, it is that, young or old, we all tend to eat too much —that we all eat and I drink too much and that three meals a day with no food between suffice for anyone.