OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 590, 2 August 1913, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

MASTICATION

Last week we published three letters from parents referring to the difficulty of getting children to chew their fool properly. We then pointed out that a baby's natural instinct to bite at something must be satisfied by giving him a bone to munch at when six or seven months old, and later, at ten or twelve months, some hard or tough food as part of his meal. We now indicate how the training may be pursued and the habit of thoroughly masticating food built into the organism. HOW TO FOSTER HEALTHY INSTINCTS. The best way to set about teaching a young child to eat ■ sufficiently is to invoke the imitative or mimicking faculty which is so strong in early childhood. The parents should make the mastication of food interesting by setting the example themselves, and turning the process into a kind of game. In the ease of a young baby to whom speech is .just beginning to appeal the words "bitey-bite, ' illustrated by the action, soon induce active mimicry; while a somewhat older child may be interested by comparing the action of the mouth and jaws in eating to the grinding of corn between mill-stones. "Is the little grist-mill in good order?" at once evokes a show ox white teeth. This, impelled by a keen desire to prove that in one thing at least it can keep pace with its elders, there follows on the part of the child an active demonstration that the "grist mill" is all right. By just such means are young animals taught the simple and necessary habits by the mother —witness the education of the kitten in cleanliness (from the washing of its face to the burying of excrement) or in the catching of mice and birds Seton Thompson and Long have shown us that all the so-called instincts are more or less fortified or fostered in similar ways, and it is. strange indeed that the human mother should usually be so negligent as she is in regard to the training of her offspring in simple habits which are of such importance throughout the battle of life. Instead of lagging behind, our human reason should carry us further than the instinct of the tests in the hygeniic training of offspring. With the ad vance of understanding and imagination there should be no difficulty in thoroughly interesting a five-year-old child in what is needed for preserving is health, provided only that he parents are willing to take as much personal trouble with their offspring as a mother cat does with a young kitten. By means of mere printed advice it is almost impossible to convey exactly how to go about such matters but parents of reasonable intelligence, gifted with ordinary powers of storytelling, should have no difficulty in gradually enlisting the child's hearty co-operation in the establishment of healthy habits if they will provide themselves, for instance, with Coleman's admirable little "Health Primer, - ' published by Maemillan. The following extract is a fair sample of its teaching:— WHAT HAPPENS TO THE UNGRATEFUL. There is no part of the body that is useless. Every part has its duty to perform. Suppose your father gave you a knife, and you laid it on a shelf and did not use it. Suppose you did not even keep the dust off. Do you not think it would be right for him to take the knife away and give it to your brother, who would make good use of it and keep it clean and bright? The hair is given to us to protect the head from cold and to keep off the rays of the sun. Some boys wear fur caps so thick that their hair is useless. Some men even seem to think the hair is of no use. They wear hats everywhere. They wear hats that are as hard as wood and fit so tight that neither air nor fresh blood can get to the scalp. These people are not thankful for their hair, but act as if they think it is of no use whatever. So the hair on the part of the head covered by the hat is taken away from them.

Some children will not eat anything hard. They do not like hard crusts of bread or tough bread, made without lard. You would almost think they had false teeth, and were afraid ot breaking them by eating anything hard or tough. Gums would do a3 well as teeth for the food they eat. They do not use their teeth, so the teeth decay, and are taken away from them.