The Mother's Manual of Children's DiseasesWest, Charles
Science
The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases
West, Charles
Pediatrics -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
If now the suspicion is justified that the child is either greatly
exaggerating or altogether feigning illness, it does not by any means
always follow that he should at once be charged with it, since it is
often of much importance that his self-respect should not be destroyed.
It must be remembered that there is in all these cases a measure of real
ailment underlying all the half-unconscious exaggeration, and that if
spoiling and over-indulgence do much to foster it, sternness and
punishment interfere with recovery. To turn the thoughts away from self,
to occupy the mind with new scenes, new amusements, new pursuits, to
call forth by degrees self-control, and to let the child perceive rather
by your manner than by what is actually said that the parents have not
been duped by all his past vagaries; such are the simple means by which
the little one will be brought round again to health of mind and health
of body. Unhappily, in the minds of too many people the idea of the
doctor is associated with the administration of drugs and with nothing
else; the treatment of disease is of much wider scope; and many of our
best remedies are those which do not admit of being weighed or measured,
and whose names are not inscribed on the drawers or bottles in
Apothecaries' Hall.
Another phase of mental disorder in childhood sometimes presents itself
as the result of overtasking the intellectual powers. This over-work too
is by no means due in all cases to the parents' unwisely urging the
child forward, but it is often quite voluntary on his part. The
precaution too of limiting the hours of work is often inadequate from
the want of some provision for turning the thoughts and energies during
play hours into some perfectly different channel.
In many of these cases Nature happily takes matters into her own
management. For a year or two, or more, the mind has grown apparently at
the expense of the body; the parents take a fearful joy in their
darling's acquirements; and if it should live, think they, of what
remarkable talents will it not be the possessor! By degrees, the extreme
quickness of intellect becomes less remarkable; but the body begins to
increase in robustness; and a year will sometimes suffice to transmute
the little fairy, so quick, so clever, but so fragile, into a very
commonplace, merry, rosy, romping child. I may add that it is well to
bear in mind the converse of this; to remember that body and mind
rarely grow in equal proportion at one time; that the incorrigible
little dunce, though not likely to prove a genius as he grows older,
will yet very probably be found at twelve or fourteen to know as much as
his playmates. A dull mind, and a sickly or ill-developed frame may make
us anxious: but if the physical development is good, the mind will not
be likely to remain long below the average standard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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