HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Chronicle (Levin), 15 August 1946, Page 8

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

the Department of Health.)

YOUR CHILD AND HIS SLEEP

(By

Medical officers at school medical inspections still go on iinding a proportion of children kept back in deveiopment and ph'ysique by laek of sleep. The tragedy about this is that many parents do not recognise the cause and are inclined to be doubting Tliomases. Nobody has yet solved the growing problem without adequate sleep. But about one parent in every ten in this eountry is careless about the ehild's sleep. The result — too many class 2 children in our land. It is not much use laying down hard and fast rules. Nevertheless, nobody came.to grief by following grandma's injnnction of eight hours' sleep -for grown-ups, 12 hours for growing children, and 10 hours for the early 'teen years. Even if there was not sleep au the time, at least the child was resting in bed. Here is a good way to determine your own ehild's needs. If lie gets out of bed in the niorning full of life and spirits, bright-eyed and on the go, his sleep has been suffieient. If it's hard to get him up, if he's heavy-eyed and lackadaisieal in the mornings, and if he.'s obviously tired in the late afternoons, scratchy and perhaps quarrelsome, then you should wonder if he is short of sleep. He will be unless you see to a regular bedtime. Whether it is light still or not, the child should be in bed at tln proper time. Irregular , sleep means below-par bodies. You may say, "Well, the child doesn't go off to sleep when sent at the proper time. ' ' But he will only get more tired, and he is restiiig while waiting to go to sleep. Regularity of time soon encourages and develops regularity of sleep, and the waiting period soon gets shftrter.