The Physical Training of ChildrenChavasse, Pye Henry
Science
The Physical Training of Children
Chavasse, Pye Henry
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene
A nurse ought to be both strong and active, in order that her little
charge may have plenty of good nursing; for it requires great strength
in the arms to carry a heavy child for the space of an hour or two, at a
stretch, in the open air; and such is absolutely necessary, and is the
only way to make him strong, and to cause him to cut his teeth easily,
and at the same time to regulate his bowels; a nurse, therefore, must be
strong and active, and not mind hard work, for hard work it is; but
after she is accustomed to it, pleasant notwithstanding.
Never should a nurse be allowed to wear a mask, nor to dress up and
paint herself as a ghost, or as any other frightful object. A child is
naturally timid and full of fears, and what would not make the slightest
impression upon a grown-up person, might throw a child into fits—
“The sleeping and the dead,
Are but as pictures: ’tis the age of childhood
That fears a painted devil.”
Never should she be permitted to tell her little charge frightful
stories of ghosts and hobgoblins; if this be allowed, the child’s
disposition will become timid and wavering, and may continue so for the
remainder of his life.
If a little fellow were not terrified by such stories, the darkness
would not frighten him more than the light. Moreover, the mind thus
filled with fear, acts upon the body, and injures the health. A child
must never be placed in a dark cellar, nor frightened by tales of rats,
etc. Instances are related of fear thus induced impairing the intellect
for life; and there are numerous examples of sudden fright causing a
dangerous and even a fatal illness.
_Night-terrors._—This frightening of a child by a silly nurse frequently
brings on night-terrors. He wakes up suddenly, soon after going to
sleep, frightened and terrified; screaming violently, and declaring that
he has seen either some ghost, or thief, or some object that the silly
nurse had been previously in the day describing, who is come for him to
take him away. The little fellow is the very picture of terror and
alarm; he hides his face in his mother’s bosom, the perspiration streams
down him, and it is some time before he can be pacified—when, at length,
he falls into a troubled, feverish slumber, to awake in the morning
unrefreshed. Night after night these terrors harass him, until his
health materially suffers, and his young life becomes miserable, looking
forward with dread to the approach of darkness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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