Father! Is Your Child Healthy And Well-Nourished?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 127, 28 November 1941, Page 14

Father! Is Your Child Healthy And Well--Nourished?

(Written for "The Listener" by DR.

H. B.

TURBOTT

Director of

the Division of School Hygiene, Health Department )

nourished? What a silly question to ask? Practically every mother and father in New Zealand would answer yes. So long as your boy or girl is attending school regularly, dodging measles, mumps and childish ailmehts, and not being ill from time to time, you presume all is well, and you would be on the defensive immediately you were told you had a Class 2 child. As you sit in your chair I want you to consider your own offspring, and do a little health appraisement; and father, it is you who should do it! Think of your boy! You can run your own yardstick over him. The healthy well-nourished child has a good appetite, has regular bowel movement, is free from worms and "liverish" turns, T your child healthy and well

He plays and exercises vigorously, and doesn’t hang round the house unduly. He also has periods of quiet. He sleeps soundly. He hasn’t got big bluish-dark rings under his eyes. He looks alert, keen and eager or happily contented. Is this your boy? The school doctor has a special yardstick that I’d like you to try out for yourself.'Go into the bathroom when your lad is stripped and be the doctor appraising the healthy well-nourished child. The skin is elastic, clear and smooth — no dullness, no pimples, roughnesses, or rashes. Under the skin there is firmness-firm fat, no flabbiness. Try the muscles; they’re well-developed and strong. He naturally and without effort stands straight. Look at him sideways on-there’s no drooping, no pointed shoulder blades, or flat, hollow

chest, or pot belly. No! he’s a straight, poised boy. His colour is pink (fleshpink) and his lips and eye margins are pinkish too! There’s a bloom on your boy! How does your wife keep him’ so fit? What keeps a child in health and good nutrition? A combination of these things: adequate rest and sleep; a proper balanced diet-plenty of dairy products, eggs, vegetables, fruit, wholemeal bread, liver and fish alternating with meat} sunshine on the body when available, and fresh air day and nightthis means windows wide open at night. Time for play and exercise. Protection from disease-keeping away from others with colds, influenza, infectious diseases, and having artificial protection against diphtheria. If minor defects are pointed out at periodic health examinations at schools or by the family doctor, have these immediately attended to, and never allow dental decay to go any longer than its first detection. It all adds up to intelligent care, given by understanding and sympathetic parents. If There Are Faults If the yardstick reveals faults, they will be from a breakdown in one or other of these cardinal requirements, so simple in themselves that you can (Continued on next page)

ADVICE ON HEALTH (Continued from previous page) hardly believe it. Insufficient rest and sleep alone can turn your boy into Class 2 or 3, even if you have the best of diets. Check up. Remember pictures and the radio session that ate loved! There should be twelve hours sleep till age five, eleven hours sleep till age eleven, and ten hours till fourteen years of age. Of course your diet is important, for that’s the source of body building and protective factors. Father, if there’s a fault in your boy, has your diet enough protective foods? Do you

know what they are and how much your boy should eat of them daily? And do you know that these are the dearest foodstuffs and that your wife often has to cut down on them because of the purse? Think about it, and if there’s a Class 2 boy around, increase the housekeeping allowance! Don’t Overwork Him And please-don’t overload your boy with tasks or let him work for money after school hours if it interferes with his play and exercise, fresh air and sunshine. These things build bodies, too! You had better think of these things if the yardstick fails. Many a boy is kept

thin, pale, stooping slightly, ringed under the eyes, because he’s tied up with work when he should be chasing the sunshine. Work won’t hurt a boy, but it must not cut into his leisure, sleep, and playtime unduly. Lastly, no medical or. dental defects must remain uncorrected. It is hard to believe that having a healthy and well-nourished body depends on such simple issues. Yet it is so. Your boy can be sent up into the first nutrition class in but a few months. Fathers, give it a go! (Next week: "The Cooking of Vegetables,’ by Dr. Muriel Bell)