CHILDREN'S WELFARE EXHIBITION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8354, 14 February 1913, Page 5

CHILDREN'S WELFARE EXHIBITION

Tho Children’s Welfare Exhibition, which is at present , drawing crowds of visitors to Olympia, says the Loudon correspondent of an Australian paper, is a'n exposition of all the latest methods of housing, training, and educating the young. It contains, too, valuable collections of old dolls, and dolls of all tho world; also picture books of long ago. All day long expert lecturers give advice on every possible problem connected with child life, and visitors cannot but absorb an enormous amount of information. The key-note of nearly all the lectures, however, seems to be, "Let the Child Alone/’ which admirable advice seems to work very well wherever it is tired. The poor can afford to be a little contemptuous, for they always do leave their children alone, and turn them out to play in the nearest park or recreation ground, and they, the children, whatever else they may or may not possess, are at least very independent and able to take care of themselves. Another maxim, one of Bernard Shaw's, "Never strike a child except in anger,” is also popular, but it is not put quite so curtly, and, of course, followed to its logical conclusion, means “Ndvcr strike a child at all.” In any case, the mothers and fathers of the coming generation believe that no child resents particularly the hasty smack from a goaded and irritable parent, but it does fiercely resent tho judicial beating given hi cold blood. Another feature of the Exhibition is "The Happy Home,” at which demonstrations are given by Mrs Ernest Scholefield, on how to see a husband off in tho morning, how to greet him on his return, what to give him to eat, what to wear, and what to talk about. She gives some really good advice also to the husband, when she says: ‘‘Many husbands will have a perfectly cheerful expression until they reach home, but the moment they open the door they put on that tired, T have had a day’—-broken-down, overworked expression, which so many wives know too well. A man will walk cheerfully along a street with another man, aud laugh and joke right up to the garden gate, but directly he sees his wife ho puts on his gloomy 'returned homo’ expression. Some men seem to think it their duty to appear tired and worn out before their wives. Apparently they think that the wife would suspect that he had done no work if ho came home brightly and happily: so they collapse into a chair, and expect their wives to sympathise with them as martyrs and suffering heroes."