Let a child's home he the happiest house to him in the world; and to be happy he must be merry, and all around him should be merry and cheerful; and he ought to have an abundance of playthings, to help on the merriment. If he have a dismal nurse, and a dismal home, he may as well be incarcerated in a prison, and be attended by a gaoler. It is sad enough to see dismal, doleful men and women, but it is a truly lamentable and unnatural sight to see a doleful child! The young ought to be as playful and as full of innocent mischief as a kitten. There will be quite time enough in after years for sorrow and for sadness.
Bright colours, plenty of light, clean windows (mind this, if you please), an abundance of good-coloured prints, and toys without number, are the proper furnishings of a nursery. Nursery! why, the very name tells you what it ought to be—the home of childhood—the most important room in the house,—a room that will greatly tend to stamp the character of your child for the remainder of his life.
167. Have you any more hints to offer conducive to the well-doing of my child?
You cannot be too particular in the choice of those who are in constant attendance upon him. You yourself, of course, must be his head-nurse—you only require some one to take the drudgery off your hands! You ought to be particularly careful in the selection of his nurse. She should be steady, lively, truthful, and good tempered; and must be free from any natural imperfection, such as squinting, stammering, &c., for a child is such an imitative creature that he is likely to acquire that defect, which in the nurse is natural. "Children, like babies, are quick at 'taking notice.' What they see they mark, and what they mark they are very prone to copy."—The Times.
She ought not to be very young, or she may be thoughtless, careless, and giggling. You have no right to set a child to mind a child; it would be like the blind leading the blind. No! a child is too precious a treasure to be entrusted to the care and keeping of a young girl. Many a child has been ruined for life by a careless young nurse dropping him and injuring his spine.
A nurse ought to be both strong and active, in order that her little charge may have plenty of good nursing; for it requires great strength in the arms to carry a heavy child for the space of an hour or two at a stretch, in the open air; and such is absolutely necessary, and is the only way to make him strong, and to cause him to cut his teeth easily, and at the same time to regulate his bowels; a noise, therefore, most be strong and active, and not mind hard, work, for hard work it is; but, after she is accustomed to it, pleasant notwithstanding.
Never should a nurse be allowed to wear a mask, nor to dress up and paint herself as a ghost, or as any other frightful object. A child is naturally timid and full of fears, and what would not make the slightest impression upon a grown-up person might throw a child into fits—
"The sleeping, and the dead,
Are but as pictures: 'tis the age of childhood
That fears a painted devil."—Shakspeare.
Never should she be permitted to tell her little charge frightful stories of ghosts and hobgoblins; if this be allowed, the child's disposition will become timid and wavering, and may continue so for the remainder of his life.
If a little fellow were not terrified by such stories, the darkness would not frighten him more than the light. Moreover, the mind thus filled with fear, acts upon the body, and injures the health. A child must never be placed in a dark cellar, nor frightened by tales of rats, &c. Instances are related of fear thus induced impairing the intellect for life; and there are numerous examples of sudden fright causing a dangerous and even a fatal illness.