OUR BABIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4510, 3 January 1923, Page 1

OUR BABIES.

TOO LITTLE SLEEP. In .order to impress upon our readers still more forcibly the important part which sleep plays in the proper growth and development of the child, we adopt the following ffrom a communication which, appealed recently in the weekly edition of the London Times: DANGER TO THE MODERN CHILD. (By Our Medical. Correspondent.) There is reason to think that the modern child does not get enougn sleep. This is not a matter of summer time, because the position seems to be no better in winter. According to Dr. Malcolm Gross, who lias studied the subject recently and contributed some figures about it to the Lancet, very few modern children get enough sleep. He -found that in the age group three to six years not a single child obtained a sufficiency of sleep, and 27 per cent, had less than 11 hours. 'He found, too, that notably bright children increabted in number with the increase in hours of sleep. For instance, in the age group three to six yea.ps there were no bright children who had less than nine hours' sleep; of those who slept from 9 to 11% hours 12 pen cent, were, bright; while, those Who slept over 11% hours 29 pair cent, were bright children. Brightness is necessarily a difficult quality to determine. It wa® very unevenly distributed in older groups ; but there were ho bright children when the hours of sleep fell much below the'average. Dr. Gross’s conclusions aire that elementary school children dp not get enough.sleep in winter ; they get still less in summer, though the Summer Time Act need have no ill-effect if parental control is’ exercised. He regards the chief need as increased parental knowledge, with greater control. There is little doubt that what is true of younger children is true also of older ones—the majority of growing boys and girls are to-day “underslept.” As some of our readers may have omitted to keep the table of Averages folr Sleeping and Waking, which was published last week, we repeat it here: Averages for Sleeping and Waking. Time needed Time for sleep, awake.

Insuffiejieincy of Sleep and OverStiniuMtioni.

My main purpose to day is to draw, attention to tihe stunting of growth and proper development of the body*, and the.production of nervousness and all-round instability and precocity that tend to result from robbing a child of its proper sleep and from stimulating it. when it ought to be at rest and growing.

Any kind of over-stimulation or oven-exertion is injurious to children. I have seen a small child made nervous, high-strung, llrrit,able, and capricious by being habitually dragged about of an evening long after bedtime to the point of weariness and fatigue—this being done by parents devoted to tjieir off-,spring, but without any idea as to what a child needs in the way of regularity, early. 'hours, and unbroken sleep and rest. One could better understand this kind of thing as a feature of town life, but I find little children in the country kept up long after they ought to be asleep. Their parents recognise that they are nervous, spindly little shrimps ; but they put this down to Providence rather than to faulty rearing. Our school doctors are drawing attention to the number of weedy specimens they come across; indeed, no observant person can fail to be struck by the fact that the majority of our children are below the standard that we have a right to expect. Education in Parenthood. It will be realised sooner or later that Herbert Spencer was quite right when he insisted that "Education in Parenthood’’ was the foremost, of our duties to the race. When are parents going to realise that, in an ideally heailthy country like New Zealand, almost, every child should be a fine specimen of humanity—powerfully built, well made, broad chested, and provided with sturdy legs, instead of the spindles one so often sees. These matters will never be righted until parents learn to ask themselves the question where there is any short-coming in the child "Wherein are we failing in Our duty ?” As Herbert Spencer says: “When sons and daughters grow up sickly and feeble parents commonly regard the event as a misfortune —as a visiitation of Providence. . . . They assume that these evils came without causes. .. . Nothing of the kind. . . . Very generally parents themselves are responsible ... in utter ignorance of the simplest laws of life and growth, they have been year after year undermining tihe constitutions of their children.”—Frow "Preparation for Parenthood,” in Herbert Spencer’s Essay on "Education.”

Age. Hours. Houra'. 1 month __ 21 3 6 months — — 18 6 1 year __ 15 9 4 years __ 131 11 6 years __ 12! 1'2 9 years __ 11 13 15 years 9 14 25 years 8 16 50 years 7 17