BIGGER CHILDREN.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20495, 14 March 1932, Page 5

BIGGER CHILDREN.

NEW ZEALAND TENDENCY. HEALTH OF SCHOOL PUPILS. "New Zealand children, in height, weight, and freedom from defect, compare 'favourablywith those of any other part of the world/' said Dr. Ada Paterson, Director of School Hygiene, in a paper on "Causes of 111-health in Children of School Age," read to the medicine section of the British Medical Association Conference at Auckland last week. "The New Zealand school child of to-day is actually taller and heavier than in 1913. This increase in height and weight of school children is found also in Great Britain and other countries." About 70,000 primary school children in New Zealand received complete medical examinations, and another 50,000 were examined for suspected defects. The value of rest, both physical and mental, for children was not sufficiently recognised. To leave children to develop their own resources and find interest in small and natural things would be to extend widely their chance of future happiness. An English authority was quoted who deplored the tendency in modern education to attach undue importance to the dramatic and theatrical. The nervous c'ild was often an only child, or at least one of a small family. There were two golden rules for dealing with children—never do for them what they were capable of doing for themselves, and never discuss their peculiarities, desirable or undesirable, in their presence; otherwise one gave distorted mental values. The proportion of children in New Zealand during the past ten years showing perfect sets of teeth had been 4 to 5 per cent. Beturns for • other countries indicated that 20 per cent, and over of children had sound mouths. Approximately 20 per cent. * children suffered from unhealthy nose and throat conditions, but only about 5 per cent, of the complaints were sufficiently severe to warrant notification for treatment. During the past 15 years, however, thero had been a marked decrease in the number of children showing these defects. The pronounced fall in New Zealand infant mortality during the past two decades had not been accompanied by an increase in the death-rate of children between the age's of one and ten years. On the contrary, thero had been a decided fall.