THE CHILDREN’S AGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 182, 22 October 1927, Page 20 (Supplement)

THE CHILDREN’S AGE

IS YOUR BABY NORMAL? There are certain landmarks in the development of the normal infant with which every parent needs to be acquainted in order that any departure from the normal may be recognised at the first possible moment and easily dealt with. The average full-term baby weighs 71b at birth, and doubles its birth weight in live or six months, weighing 211 b at the end of the first year. To measure the length of a baby one needs to use a tape measure from the heel to the crown of the head, and include all the body folds. Twenty inches at birth and 2Sin by the end of the year represents normal development. THE MASSIVE INFANTILE HEAD It is important to realise that an infant is not an adult in miniature. The sizes of different parts of his body do not bear the same relationship to each other as they do in later life. The circumference of his head, for example, is greater than that of his chest, and it is only much later that the relation that exists in adulthood is attained. Many parents, unaware of this fact, looking at the enormous size of their child’s head (it is 13in in circumference at birth and 18in at a year old!), bring the child, in great anxiety, to the doctor to find out if the baby is suffering from water on the brain. He isn’t. He is blessed with a brain that is undergoing a very useful and rapid development. Another source of anxiety is the soft spot on the skull. And this needs to be adequately understood. In a healthy baby this is closed completely by the eighteenth month. Any failure to close should lead to the suspicion of rickets; undue tenseness or bulging to the presence of intercranial disease; undue depression to the diagnosis of debility. HIS FIRST SMILE At three months the baby should hold his head up unsupported, though many babies, not remarkabl-e in any way, can do this much earlier. Similarly, though many healthy babies do not smile till well in the second month, many normal babies do so as early as the third week. Co-ordinated movements of the hands, and the marvellous discovery that his hands belong to him and are not external objects, have their small beginnings at about the third month; and by the sixth month, when he i§ sitting up, are already advanced to an extraordinary degree. At about the sixth month or so, though it may be delayed to as late as the ninth month, teething begins. By the twelfth month the baby should have six teeth, by the eighteenth 12 teeth, and all milk teeth should be fully formed by the age of three. Crawling usually begins at about nine months, attempts to stand by tho end of the year and successful walking by the end of the eighteenth month. The development of the muscles is of great significance. Flabby, toneless muscles on the one hand, or tense muscles that never relax properly.

should be regarded with suspicion, and be an indication for immediate medical examination. The assessment of normal psychological development is not easy. The suspicious symptoms to note, however, are apathy on the one hand, or excessive wandering of attention from object to object on the other. Talking a few simple words usually begins at the twelfth or fifteenth month, and by the eighteenth month the child has a tiny vocabulary of everyday words. We do not expect parents to take every healthy bouncing baby regularly to the Welfare Centre. But it is as well that they should know' what development may be normally expected, in order to be able to take note immediately there is any deviation from this.