Neuropathic children often have night terrors within an hour or two of going to bed. Piercing screams cause a hasty rush upstairs, where the child is found sitting up in bed, crouching in a corner, or trying to get out of door or window. His face is distorted with fear and he stares wildly at the part of the room in which he sees the terrifying apparition. He clings to his mother but does not know her. After some time he recovers, but is in a pitiful state and has to have his hand held while he dozes fitfully off. He often wets the bed or passes a large amount of colourless urine. Medical treatment is imperative.
Corporal punishment is unsuitable for neuropathic children, for the mere suggestion of its application usually causes such excessive dread, mental upset and terror as make it really dangerous. Such children are often said to be "naughty" when in reality they are
unable to exercise self-control, owing to defective inhibitory power. Try patiently to inculcate obedience from the desire to do right, and make chastisement efficacious from its very exceptional character.
"The young child is too unconscious to have a deliberately perverse intention; to ascribe to him the fixed determination to do evil, is to judge him unjustly and often to develop in him an evil instinct. It is better in such a case to tell him he has made a mistake, that he did not foresee the consequences to which his action might lead, etc." Many parents fall into a habit of shaking, ear-boxing, and such-like harmful minor punishments for equally minor offences, which should be overlooked.
In all little troubles, keep quite calm. The child's nerve and association centres have not yet got "hooked up", and you cannot expect it to act reasonably instead of impulsively. This excuse does not apply to you. One excitable person is more than enough, for if both get angry, sensible measures will certainly not result.
The necessity for calmness cannot too strongly be urged. The treatment for a fit of temper, is to give the unfortunate child a warm bath, and put it to bed, with a few toys, when it will soon fall asleep, and awake refreshed and calm.
Proceed gently but with absolute firmness, start early, and remember that example is better than precept.
Religion. Offering advice on this subject is skating on very thin ice, and we do so but to give grave warning against neuropathic youth being allowed to contract religious "mania", "ecstasy", or "exaltation".
Neuropaths are given naturally to "see visions and dream dreams", and if this tendency be exaggerated an unbalanced moral type results. Jones says:
"The epileptic is apt to be greatly influenced by the mystical or awe-inspiring, and is disposed to morbid piety. He has an outer religiousness without corresponding strictness of morals; indeed the sentiment of religious exaltation may be in great contrast to his habitual conduct, which is a mixture of irritability, vice and perverted instincts."