While each child possesses an individuality all its own, nevertheless, there are certain general principles of psychologic conduct and family discipline which are more or less applicable to all children. The so-called nervous child, in addition to the usual methods of child culture, stands in need of special attention as concerns its early discipline and training. This chapter will, therefore, be devoted to special suggestions with regard to the management and training of those children who are by heredity predisposed to nervousness, over-excitability, and who possess but a minimum of self-control.
HEREDITARY NERVOUSNESS
The so-called nervous child—all things equal—is the child who is born into the world with an unbalanced or inefficiently controlled nervous system; and while it is all too true that the common nursery methods of "spoiling the child" are often equally to blame with heredity for the production of an erratic disposition and an uncontrolled temper, nevertheless, it is now generally recognized that the foundation of the difficulties of the nervous child reaches back into its immediate and remote ancestral heredity.
I no longer doubt but that many of these babies with a bad nervous heredity, who are born predisposed to Saint Vitus' dance, bad temper, chronic worry, neurasthenia, and hysteria could be spared much of their early troubles and later miseries by prompt and proper methods of early nursery discipline.
These nervous babies are born into the world with an abnormal lack of self-control. Their "inhibition control" over the natural and spontaneous tendency of the nervous system to manifest its inherent impulses and passing whims is decidedly deficient. The child is unduly sensitive, whines, hollers, or flies into a violent rage when its will is crossed in the least degree. Such a child sometimes keeps its mother living in constant terror because, when its will is crossed in any particular, it will scream and hold its breath until it turns black in the face and sometimes actually goes into a convulsion.
In dealing with these unfortunate little ones, fathers and mothers, while they should be firm and persistent in their methods of correction, should also be kind and patient; fully recognizing that whatever undesirable traits the little ones manifest they have come by honestly—these naughty tendencies being the result either of heredity or spoiling, for both of which the parents stand responsible.
EARLY TRAINING
One of the very first things that a child, especially the nervous child, should learn is that crying and other angerful manifestations accomplish absolutely nothing. The greatest part of the successful training of the nervous child should take place before it is three and one-half years of age. It should early learn to lie quietly in its little bed and be entirely happy without receiving any attention or having any fuss made over it. It should not become the center of a circle of admiring and indulgent family friends and caretakers who will succeed in effectually destroying what little degree of self-control it may be fortunate enough to possess.
When the little one is discovered to be nervous, fretful, impatient, and easily irritated early in the morning, it should be left alone in its bed or in the nursery until it quiets down. If it has a good, healthy crying spell, leave it alone. Let it early get used to living with itself—teach the little fellow to get along with the world as it is—and you will do a great deal toward preventing a host of neurasthenic miseries and a flood of hysterical sorrows later on in life.
You must not expect to train the nervous child by the simple and easy methods which are successful in the case of a normal child; that is, you cannot repeat a simple discipline two or three times and have the child learn the lesson. In the case of the high-strung nervous child it requires "line upon line and precept upon precept;" for, whereas a normal child will respond to a certain discipline after it is repeated a half dozen times, the nervous child will require the persistent repetition of such a discipline from twenty-five to one hundred times before the lesson sinks into his consciousness sufficiently to enable him to gain control of his erratic and unbalanced nervous mechanism.