THE HEALTH OF CHILDREN DURING SCHOOL LIFE
Children begin school life at an age which is, unfortunately, one of the greatest importance in their physical development. It is a truism that no mechanism, whether animate or inanimate, can do two things at once and get as good results as when all its efforts are being directed toward one object. So it is obvious that any vital energy used in developing a young child’s brain must be taken away from the amount that had hitherto been entirely devoted to physical growth. Too often this fact is lost sight of both by energetic teachers and ambitious parents.
Instead of being delighted with the rapid development of the child’s mind, parents should receive any evidences of abnormal advancement with some suspicion of its true worth.
WHEN THE CHILD FIRST
GOES TO SCHOOL
At the age of six, when the average child first goes to school, practically everything he sees is new and interesting, and worthy of deep consideration. His brain gets no rest from the time he wakes until he goes to sleep at night.
To do its work, the brain needs a full and active blood supply, and this it will take often at the expense of leaving an inadequate amount for the demands of the rest of the body.
Curiously enough, excessive mental activity seems to have no stunting effect on the growth in the way of height. It is in breadth and thickness that the body suffers. Everyone is familiar with the tall, lanky boy or girl in the early teens who is said not to care much for games and exercise, and is, unfortunately, “rather delicate.” This youngster is almost certain to be pointed out by the proud parents as being extremely well up in his studies.
Short of encouraging laziness or indolence at school, it really makes very little difference to the ordinary man or woman, so far as their adult mental attainments go, whether they were ranked as fairly good scholars or fairly poor ones when they were young children. On the other hand, the effort necessary to be made by a sensitive, not over-brilliant child to keep a good place among its fellows may have a serious physical effect that will hamper him or her throughout life.
WHAT NATURE’S DOCTORS PRESCRIBE FOR CHILDREN
| DR SUNLIGHT | DR FRESH-AIR | DR WALK | DR PLAY |
| DR REST | DR OPEN-WINDOW | DR WORK | DR SLEEP |
| DR STAND-UP | DR BREATHE-THROUGH-THE-NOSE | DR BATHE | DR MASTICATE |
| DR SUNLIGHT | DR FRESH-AIR | DR WALK |
| DR PLAY | DR REST | DR OPEN-WINDOW |
| DR WORK | DR SLEEP | DR STAND-UP |
| DR BREATHE-THROUGH-THE-NOSE | DR BATHE | DR MASTICATE |
The effort should be made when a child is first sent to school to determine just how much work he can do comfortably and happily. If an attempt is made to force him to do more than this, he will become depressed and worried. With children, any mental worry will shortly produce unmistakable signs on the physique. It is a bad plan to attempt to get as much as possible out of a child; there should always be a certain amount of vital energy left for emergencies.
IMPORTANT CONDITIONS AFFECTING
THE CHILD’S LESSONS
With young children, no lesson should last for more than half an hour, and if possible, a short interval between each lesson should be spent in the open air. If the young scholar is notably in advance with his school work, discourage this; or, at any rate, carefully consider whether his health will allow such active development. If backward and seemingly lazy, the cause of the indolence should be sought first in the physical condition before the character is assailed.
Above all, no child under fifteen should have to do any routine night study to keep up in his lessons. Young eyes are easily strained, and young bodies are easily tired. Watch a tired child who has to study at night; he will get his body in the most comfortable position he can manage, and will take no thought of the direction from which the light falls on his page. Nor has he the energy to hold his book so that the plane of the lines is always parallel to that of his eyes.
His mind may accumulate a little extra book knowledge by such work, but only at the risk of strained eyes and possible spinal defects. Lateral curvature of the spine, in a great majority of cases, may be traced back to habitual faulty postures used by children when at school work. A fair rule to make about night work is to allow a child to study at home only so long as he will comfortably sit upright and hold his book at a correct angle.
In children, the physical state is a very good guide to the mental condition. If the body is tired, the mind is in no fit state to absorb knowledge. The thin, narrow-chested, delicate youth, perhaps with strained eyes and nearly always with a good school record, is nine times out of ten a preventable mistake.
If, when first he showed signs of more than average scholarship, his parents had noted that this superiority was due principally to work done when physically tired, and to neglect of outdoor games and general “play,” a little sense of the comparative worth of health and youthful scholarship would have given him a greater chance of developing into a valuable citizen.
THE PROPER TIME
FOR WORK
A child’s brain, and its body as well, are in the prime of their vigor during the morning hours. From nine till noon, therefore, should be the period of the hardest mental or physical work he undergoes. Evening preparation of lessons is harmful, not only because it tends to bring into a state of high activity the brain, which shortly should be quiet and ready to sink into slumber, but also because it throws hard work on an already fatigued organ. Much of the nervousness, debility, and insomnia so common among school children can be traced to evening preparation.
NECESSITY OF ABUNDANT
FOOD
The more actively growing the tissues, the greater the need for abundant nourishment. The growing child, therefore, requires more food in relation to his size and weight than does the grown person who has passed the stage of rapid development.
No fixed rule can be laid down as to how much a child should eat. Generally speaking, the country-bred child, living an outdoor life, may rely on his own appetite as a guide. On the other hand, the city child, living a more indoor artificial life, may have little appetite, and as a result, if not watched, may lapse into a condition of malnutrition simply through underfeeding. The best guide, perhaps, is the child’s weight. If he is continually below weight, this fact may in all cases be taken as proof either that the child’s food is unsuitable to its age and digestive powers, or else deficient in amount.
EFFECT OF THE SEASONS ON
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
The effect of the change in seasons is much more marked in children than in grown people. In the Spring in particular the watchful mother should keep a careful eye on the health of her little ones. “There come with the Spring in many children,” writes a noted physician, “a restlessness and excitability, a perversity and irascibility of temper, or a listlessness, and indisposition for exertion that are not displayed at other times; and there come then, also, more plentifully than at other seasons, physical indications of debility and the scrofulous habit, such as enlarged glands and tonsils, dyspepsia and loss of appetite, strumous ophthalmia, discharges from the ear, and enlargements of joints.”
The moral is that since the body is growing fastest (and therefore has the greatest need of husbanding its vitality) in the Spring time, any extra pressure on the nervous system as from prolonged school hours, or any undue exertion, should be strenuously avoided. Unfortunately with the “final” examinations in the early summer, our school systems demand that the hardest and most strenuous work of preparation falls in the Spring time, the season at which the body is least fitted to withstand abnormal stress.
When a child or growing boy or girl becomes more nervous in the Spring time than is his usual habit, or becomes depressed in mind, or constantly complains of being tired, the only common-sense treatment is to put an end at once to all schooling for the time being, and to turn the child out-of-doors every day for all the hours of sunlight.
THE PERIOD OF
PUBERTY AND ITS SPECIAL PROBLEMS
Parents should ever be watchful regarding the education of their young children when they approach the age of puberty, that is, the period when the child begins to develop into the man or woman.
Profound and rapid changes take place at this period in mind, brain, the nervous system, the glandular system, and, one may indeed say, in the body generally. The nerve centers temporarily lose some of their normal stability, and such conditions as insanity, hysteria, and epilepsy, rare in childhood, now become common. Even though no actual nervous disease develop, there is quite commonly during this change from childhood to adult life a period of nervous excitability and exhaustion accompanied by physical weakness, which to a great extent unfits the young person for close pursuit of his or her studies. Particularly in young girls is there the greatest necessity for curtailing any tendency to overwork at school during this period.
CONDITIONS OF BONES AND MUSCLES
AT THE PERIOD OF PUBERTY
At this time there is also rapid growth and development of the bones which lengthen rapidly, and are still soft and cartilaginous in places. It is all-important at this period, therefore, that the muscles on the two sides of the body receive roughly the same amount of use, otherwise there is grave danger of some deformity, such as lateral curvature of the spine, developing.
While the bones are in this condition of rapid development, all muscle-straining attitudes, such as sitting upright at a desk, practicing at the piano, writing, painting, etc., should be kept within such limits as never to entail real fatigue. Young girls at this period, even more than boys, require all their strength and vitality to support them in their rapid growth. This does not mean, however, that all muscular exercises must be forbidden during the period of puberty, which may be reckoned as from twelve to sixteen in girls, and from thirteen to sixteen in boys. The point is that violent, really fatiguing exercise, such as hockey, hunting, cycling tours, mountain climbing, etc., as well as all occupations which entail the holding of the muscles tense and fixed in one position for a long period, should be indulged in very sparingly, if at all. The young girl can obtain all the exercise necessary for health in less strenuous outdoor pursuits such as golf, croquet, a little not too strenuous tennis, walking, etc.
GENEROUS HOURS OF SLEEP SHOULD
BE ALLOWED
While moderate mental work does not in the healthy grown person necessitate an increase in the amount of sleep, the child at school, constantly using his brain in the accumulation of new ideas, needs an even more generous proportion of sleep than if his brain were not so occupied. Again, if the child shows any signs of nervousness, he ought to be allowed to sleep a little longer than the more stolid non-temperamental child. The following is the average duration of sleep required at different ages:
| 4 | years of age | 12 | hours | |
| 7 | years of age | 11 | hours | |
| 9 | years of age | 10 | 1⁄2 | hours |
| 14 | years of age | 10 | hours | |
| 17 | years of age | 9 | hours |
Up to the approach of puberty (the change from childhood to adult life) a child may well be allowed to sleep a little later in the morning in the winter than in summer. Again, if as is frequently the case, he should suddenly commence to grow in height very rapidly an extra hour or half-hour in bed may be of the greatest service in weathering the strain of the rapid growth.
PRECAUTIONS TO PREVENT
SLEEPLESSNESS
Insomnia is sometimes very troublesome in young children, demanding most painstaking treatment. Most important in encouraging the habit of going to sleep immediately on being put to bed is regularity in the hour of bedtime. Unless the child is put into bed at a certain fixed hour with clock-like regularity, the habit of getting sleepy (which is such an important factor in going to sleep) cannot be normally developed.
Sometimes a subdued, shaded light will sooth a nervous child’s excited brain and so induce sleep. A child who wakes in terror in a pitchdark room may for years be nervous about going to bed in the dark. Any attempt to stamp out this tendency to nervousness by refusing a comforting glimmer of light in the room may bring on a habit of sleeplessness on first going to bed which may be difficult to eradicate. Sometimes a softly-ticking clock, by affording a sense of companionship, encourages the child to drop off to sleep.
MENTAL QUIETUDE AND
GOOD VENTILATION
Another factor in encouraging sleep is a quiet mental state, which is best brought about by the strict avoidance of all exciting games or other mental activities for at least an hour before bedtime. School lessons prepared in the evening are a fertile source of insomnia in children. The brain, keyed up to working at full pitch, cannot quiet down at its owner’s wish, and its unwonted activity may banish sleep for an hour or more.
While free ventilation is essential in the child’s sleeping-room, it should never be forgotten that the young are more susceptible to cold than are grown people, and have not the same power of generating extra body heat to replace any undue loss of warmth from exposure to outside cold. The temperature of the child’s bedroom, therefore, should be kept between 55° and 60° F. If below this, a general feeling of chilliness, and in particular of cold feet, may be the cause of sleeplessness.
Apart from the discomfort and misery caused by the feelings of chilliness, cold feet lead to the adoption of postures in bed which are anything but conducive to health.
BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF
THE BATH
In nervous children who sleep badly, a hot bath or a hot mustard foot bath often acts like a charm, the child falling into deep sleep almost as soon as it has been tucked in bed. The warmth, by dilating the blood-vessels, on the surface of the body in the case of the full bath, or of the feet in the case of the mustard foot-bath, draws blood away from the brain and so, reducing its activity, allows it to quiet down into sleep.
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the Everywhere into here.
Where did you get those eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.
What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?
Some of the starry twinkle left in.
Where did you get that little tear?
I found it waiting when I got here.
What makes your forehead so smooth and high?
A soft hand stroked it as I went by.
What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
I saw something better than anyone knows.
Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss?
Three angels gave me at once a kiss.
Where did you get this pearly ear?
God spoke, and it came out to hear.
Where did you get those arms and hands?
Love made itself into bonds and bands.
Feet, whence did you come, you darling things?
From the same box as the cherubs’ wings.
How did they all just come to be you?
God thought about me, and so I grew.
But how did you come to us, you dear?
God thought about you, and so I am here.
(The above poem was written by George MacDonald, Scottish novelist and poet; born 1824, died 1905. He wrote a long list of novels, stories and poems. His children’s poems and stories are deservedly popular, and contain numerous passages of singular beauty, lighted up with fine fancy and descriptive power.)
HOW THE DUTCH DOLLS PLAY THE GAME “ALPHABET”
