NIGHT TERRORS
Night terrors are probably due to some digestive disturbance, with a coexisting highly nervous temperament. They oftentimes, in older children, follow the reading of thrilling stories or a visit to an exciting moving-picture show. The child goes to sleep and gets along nicely for two or three hours and then suddenly jumps up out of bed and rushes to its mother with little or no explanation for the act. In his dreams the thoughts and the imaginations of his waking moments are all confounded and alarming.
We recall one little fellow who constantly feared big, black birds coming in the window and attacking him—he had been reading about Sinbad the Sailor and his experiences with the big bird. He so feared this big, black bird that he could not go to sleep. For a number of nights he did not have the courage to tell his parents that it was the fear of the big bird that kept him from going to sleep, but finally he confided in his mother and told her of his fear. The mother and father both entered into a conversation with him through an open door which connected the two rooms, after the lights were out; they laughed and talked about the big bird, they openly talked of it and allowed their imagination to work with the child's imagination in planning how he could combat with the bird, should it really come, asking him how big it really was and what color he thought its eyes were and how big an object he thought its feet could carry. They all three planned a fairy story they might write which would rival the fairy stories of the Arabian Nights. In a very short time—possibly a week or ten days—the little fellow felt quite equal to these imaginary assaults, his fears were quieted and his slumbers were no more disturbed by visions of the big, black bird.
Everything should be done to relieve the stomach and intestines of laborious work during the sleeping hours, hence let the evening meal be light and eaten early enough to be out of the way, as far as digestion is concerned, by bed time.
NERVOUSNESS
During the formative period of the nervous system—the first few years—under no circumstances should the children be played with late at night, when they are tired and sleepy, or hungry, for it is at such times that the nervous system is so easily excited and irritated. When the baby is to be played with, if at all, it should be in the morning or after the mid-day nap. Rest and peaceful surroundings are of paramount importance to the nervous child, and he should be left alone to amuse himself several hours each day. It is a deplorable fact that the nervous child—the very one that should be left alone—is the very child that usually receives the most attention, the very one who is most petted, indulged, and pacified; all of which only tends to increase his lack of self-control and to multiply the future sorrows of his well-meaning but indulgent parents.
HEADACHE
Headache attacks old and young alike, and the young infant that is unable to tell us he has a headache manifests it by rolling the head from side to side, putting his hand to his head, or by wrinkling up his brow. Headaches may be occasioned by disorders of the brain and spinal column, such as meningitis. It nearly always accompanies fever, and is often a result of constipation, intestinal indigestion, overeating, as well as eating the wrong kind of food.
The treatment of headache in children (aside from removing any known cause) consists of a hot foot bath, a brief mustard paste to the back of the neck, a light diet—sometimes nothing but water—and the administration of a laxative.