OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 527, 18 December 1912, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia)

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. " It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom."

A NOTABLE ADDRESS.

At the request of Dr Crossley, Bishop of Auckland, Mrs Parkes recently gave the following admirable address on "Home Influence" to a mass meeting of women in Auckland. Dr and Mrs Parkes have throughout taken the keenest influence in the work of the Society for the Health of Women and Children, and to the zeal and untiring energy and devotion of Mrs Parkes, as honorary secretary and chief organiser for the province, working in conjunction with an excellent committee, the Auckland branch mainly owes its great and imand progressive expansion and development. "HOME INFLUENCE." By Mrs Parkes. I am quite at a loss to understand why I have been invited to address you to-day, for 1 certainly feel it is somewhat presumptuous on my part to offer advice on home training to many who, by reason of wider experience, are more competent to speak than myself. At the same time I fell it is a great honour to be allowed the opportunity of expressing a few ideas on the subject of home influence, and if you will bear with me I will promise not to occupy too much of your time. At the outset I would like to point out the very regrettable fact that of late years home influence has been on the wane, and as a result evils are creeping in which seriously threaten the happiness and stability of family life. One of the greatest factors in preventing this sad state of affairs is to teach from the ealiest years the habit of self-control. Without self-control in either boy or girl there will be a lack of that grit or Btamina which stands for individuality and which lifts one out of the common ruck. This teaching of the habit of self-control cannot begin too early, for do we not see, even in the infant, the necessity for it?

Note by "Hygeia": The following extract from the society's book, ''Feeding and Care of Baby," shows the power which regular habits and obedience, firmly established in infancy, have in facilitating self-control and the building character later on:— "Obedience in infancy, is'the foundation of all later powers of self-con-ttol, and yet it is the one thing that the young mother nowadays is most inclined to neglect. Instead of gently, wisely, and firmly regulating her baby's habits, and conduct, she tends to allow him to have hia own way and to rule her and the whole household. No sot the wiser so-called lower 'animals.' The dog and the cat carefully train their progeny in necessary habits of regularity, cleanliness, etc., from the start, and, as has been pointed out by Long, Seton-Thompson and others, they chide, cuff, and punish them, if necessary, rather than allow the formation of bad and irregular habits which would exact far greater penalties later on. All this is done by instinct; and the human mother, with the stronger love and the greater wisdom which should be hers, would have no difficulty in guiding her child alright by firmness and consistency alone, without resorting to punishment, if she would, but start at the beginning. "The formation of proper healthy habits imnitiated by feeding and sleeping by the clock, and the establishment of perfect regularity and system as to outing, exercise, motions, etc., and the absence of weaK indulgence and spoiling, form firm and strong foundations. Given these foundations, the loving care and attention of the mother will readily build truth, honour, helpfulness, and unselfishness into the organism as the child grows.

"Building the teeth and forming a character are parts of construction of the same edifice —standing in the relationship of the underground foundations of a building to the superstructure. "Our dentists tell us that when they insist on the eating of crusts and other hard food the mother often says 'our children simply won't! —simply won't comply with the laws which have a higher sanction and greater antiquity than the authority of man himself. Such children merely exemplify the ineptitude of their parents parents too sentimental, weakly - emotional, careless, or indifferent to fulfil the primary laws of nature. The 'can't-be-so-crueP mother whose baby cries half the night and frets all day, on account of the mother's failure to fulfil one of the first of maternal duties, should not blame Providence or heredity because her progeny has turned out a 'simplywon't' in infancy, and will become a selfish 'simply can't' in childhood and adolescence. Power to obey the Ten Commandments, or to conform to the temporal laws and usages of society, is not to be expected of spoiled babies when they reach adult life. The plain meaning of the word 'spoiled' is worth some reflection. Everyone grasps the full significance of spoiling a dress or spoiling a dinner, but the spoiling of a child is regarded more lightly. "Unselfishness and altruism are not. the natural outcome of habitual self-indulgence. Damaged health and absence of discipline and control in early life are the natural foundations of failure later on—failure thr.ough the lack of control which underlies all Weakness of character, vice, and criminality."