HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 17, 17 October 1944, Page 7

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

NO BREAKFAST (By the Department of Health). Did you go to Avork this morning without your breakfast? This no-breakfast, habit is a bat! habit and business girls who dash off to'the office without the morning meal aren't doing themselves any good. They arc running counter to the rules of right eating—and right eating means having a balanced diet each day. You can't balance your daily diet on two meals. You go to Avork Avithout breakfast and your efficiency must suffer. Mid-morning hungersi common complaint- is staA r ed off by a cooked breakfast of bacon, or small goods } or eggs a when they arc available. Plentj r of milk or cocoa should form part of the breakfast,

each day

Make sure, too, that, your other meals are not. just merely scratch meals. Balanced meals arc Avithin everyone's reach, and they are the basis of health and efficiency.

School lunches that, have; to be bought are not enough for young growing bodies. If the children must buy their lunches., sec that they take a tomato or fruit or , a bottle of milk from home. Homemade lunches are. immeasurably the best —sandwiches of cold meat cheese cucumber, tomatos or other seasonable vegetables, eggs when obtainable, -minced coo'kcd liver. For sweets dried fruits and nuts when you can get them, nut and rasin bread, or wholemeal sweet scones, are suggested. A raw fruit of some kind, or a carrot, and a bottle, of milk always top off the school lunch.

don't walk the floor That overworked joke about father having to walk the floor at night with a recalcitrant baby isn't a joke to those fathers, who have to do it And there's really no need l'or it. If proper sleeping habits arc cncouragecl in the baby early, father can rest assured of undisturbed nights. The first task is to develop independence early. In the maternity home, baby sleeps in a nursery and comes to no harm. When *ie arrives home this good habit should be continued. Baby should have a room of his own though the mother, of course should be within call.

nights

Regularity, the key to baby nurture applies to slee.p as A\ r ell as to bathing and eating. So go by the clock and have regular bedtimes and waking times.

The healthy baby., Avhen put to bed may lie aAA r ake., make noises, bubble a little to himself,, and then drop off to sleep. He may cry a

while. *If he Avakes at night after the last feed, mother is needed. There is soothing, comforting and settling to be. done. If he is left to ory himself to sleep .again he, may develop fears; and the start of bad sleeping habits..

Somehow the child who is allowed to sleep in its parents' room is conscious of the adult lile at. its elbow and is liable; to be ; disturbed by it psychologically. v So besides regularity and mothering at

the right times i see that baby has a room to himself. Bad sleeping habits in the pre-school child often date from wrong habits developed when a baby.