Over-Hardened Children.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43366, 1 September 1908, Page 3

Over-Hardened Children.

A DOCTOR in Sydney has been giving vens to his opinions on the rearing of babies and young children generally (writes “ Cristina ” in the Australasian). It is an erroneous idea to imagine that making children go abont in all weathers with bare legs and feet will make them hardy. 1 “ Regular moonshine, ” he call it, “ for children who can survive such treatment , are already hardy.” Children should never be dumped on cold oilcloth or allowed t to crawl thereon. Bronchitis and catarrh are thus contracted. ClothiDg should allow of free movement, but there l should at the same time be suffident clothing to protect the child. Grown-up people always see to it that they themselves are well and warmly clad iu winter but children are often allowed to become blue with cold. Especially is this the case when the parents are inflicted with the so-called “ poetic ideas. ” This is not so much the case now as formerly. Iu the days of our grandmothers were not hare arms and necks the universal fashion for children? All the photographs and quaint daguerreotypes one has in old albums show our dead and gone greataunts, and even our aunts of a later generation,. as children, weird specimens, ■ with short sleeves and low-cut dresses. Poor mites, how they must have suffered in the English bitter-cold winters, when houses were not, as pretty generally now artificially warmed. Another abomination the doctor objects to is the everlasting hath, in which baby is immersed morning, noon, and night nowadays. Infant chil~ dren run the* risk, he says, of being “ washed away into heaven.” Remember in Monfeney Jehpson’s charming book, “ The Girl He Left Behind Him, ” the kindly old. lQgjdlady, who was afraid she would lose heir best lodger on account of his queer hankering after a bath every day and night. “ He’s alius a-wasbin of - ’imself, ” said she to her neighbour, “ and if he goes on like this he’ll soon bo washed off the face of this blessed earth! ”