The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health
Whatever may be the age and circumstances of an individual, he ought to retire for rest with a cheerful mind. All anxiety about the future, all regret about the past, all plans even, in regard to the business or amusement of the morrow, should be kept wholly out of the mind. We should yield ourselves up to the arms of sleep with the same quietude as if life were finished, and we had nothing more to do or think of.
SEC. 9. Quality of SleepThe soundness, as well as other qualities, of sleep, differs greatly in different individuals; and even in the same night, with the same individual in different circumstances. The first four or five hours of sleep are usually more sound than the remainder. Hardly anything will interrupt the repose of some persons during the early part of the night, while they awake afterwards at the slightest noise or movement—the chirping of a cricket, or the playing of a kitten.
In profound sleep, we probably dream very little, if at all; but in other circumstances, we are constantly disturbed by dreaming, and sometimes start and wake in the greatest anxiety or horror.
Nightmare is generally accompanied by dreams of the most distressing kind. We imagine a wild beast, or a serpent in pursuit of us; or a rock is detached from some neighboring cliff, and is about to roll upon and crush us; and yet all our efforts to fly are unavailing. We seem chained to the spot; but while in the very jaws of destruction, perhaps we awake, trembling, and palpitating, and weary, as if something of a serious nature had really happened.
In the case of nightmare, it is more than probable that we fall asleep with our stomachs too heavily loaded with food, or with a smaller quantity of that which is highly indigestible. Or it may sometimes arise from an improper position of the body, such as disturbs the action of the stomach or lungs, or of both these organs. Lying on the back, when we first go to sleep, is very apt to produce nightmare.
But distressing dreams often follow an evening of anxious cares, especially if those cares preyed upon us for the last half hour; and also after late suppers, even if they are light—and late reading. Hence the injunctions of the last section. Hence, too, the importance of taking our last meal two or three hours before sleep, and of engaging, during these hours, in cheerful conversation, and in the social and private duties of religion. Family and private worship, in the evening, are enjoined no less by philosophy than they are by christianity; and every young mother will do well to understand this matter, and train her offspring accordingly.
"That sleep from which we are easily roused, is the healthiest," says Macnish. "Very profound slumber partakes of the nature of apoplexy." I should say, rather, that a medium between the two extremes is healthiest. Profound apoplectic sleep, I am sure, is injurious; but that from which we are too easily roused cannot, it seems to me, be less so. Thus, I have often gone to sleep with a resolution to wake at a certain hour, or at the striking of the clock; and have found myself able to wake at the proposed time, almost without one failure in twenty instances where I have made the trial. But my sleep was obviously unsound, and certainly unsatisfying. The desire to awake at a certain moment or period, seemed to buoy me above the usual state of healthy sleep, and render me liable to awake at the slightest disturbance. Were it not for sacrificing the ease of others, it would be far better, in such cases, to rely upon some person to wake us, instead of charging our own minds with it.
The quality of our sleep will be greatly affected by the quantity. But this thought, if extended, would anticipate the subject of our next section; so easily does one thing, especially in physical education, run into or involve another. I will therefore, for the present, only say that if we confine ourselves to a smaller number of hours than is really required, our sleep becomes too sound to be quite healthy, as if nature endeavored to make up in quality, for want of due quantity. On the contrary, if we attempt to sleep longer than is really necessary to restore us, the quality of our sleep is not what it ought to be; for we do not sleep soundly enough.
The silence and darkness of the night tend to induce sleep of a better quality than the noise and activity of day. It is unquestionably desirable that children should be able to sleep, at least occasionally, without absolute quiet. And yet such sleep cannot be sufficiently sound to answer the purposes of health, if frequently repeated.
Hence it is, perhaps—at least in part—that the maxim has obtained currency, that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two afterward. The comparison has probably been made between the quiet and darksome hours of evening and those which followed daybreak, when light, and music, and bustle conspire, as they should, to make us wakeful. No person can sleep as soundly and as effectually, when light reaches his closed eyes, and sounds strike his ears, as in darkness and silence. He may sleep, indeed, under almost any circumstances, when fatigue and exhaustion demand it; but never so profoundly as when in absolute abstraction of light, and complete quiet.
SEC. 10. QuantityOn this point much might be said, without exhausting the subject. But I have already observed that infants, when first born, require to sleep nearly their whole time. As they advance in years, the necessity for sleep; however, diminishes, until they come to maturity, when it remains for many years nearly stationary. In advanced age, the necessity for sleep again increases, till we reach the extremest old age, or what is usually called second childhood, when we again sometimes sleep nearly the whole time.
I have already remarked that much might be said on this subject; but I do not think that the present occasion requires it. If the suggestions which are made in the chapter on "Early Rising" should receive the attention I flatter myself they merit, I do not believe children would often sleep too long. If, on the contrary, they are suffered to lie late in the morning, and then sit up late in the evening, all healthful habits and tendencies will he so deranged or broken up, that nature, in her indications, will by no means prove the unerring guide which she is wont to do in other circumstances.
A few thoughts here, on the quantity of sleep required by the young after they approach maturity, may not be misplaced.
Jeremy Taylor thought that for a healthy adult, three hours in twenty-four were enough for all the purposes of sleep. Baxter thought four hours about a reasonable time; Wesley, six; Lord Coke and Sir Wm. Jones, seven; and Sir John Sinclair, eight. These were the theories of men who were all eminent for their learning, and most of them for their piety. How far their practice corresponded with their theories, we are not, in every instance, told.
But to come to the practice of several persons who have been distinguished in the world. General Elliot, one of the most vigorous men of his age, though living for his whole life on nothing but vegetables and water, and who at sixty-four had scarcely begun to feel the infirmities of old age, slept but four hours in twenty-four. Frederick the Great of Prussia, and the illustrious British surgeon, John Hunter, slept but five hours a day. Napoleon Bonaparte, for a great part of his life, slept only four hours; and Lord Brougham is said to require no more. Others, in numerous instances, require but six hours. But there are others still, who consume eight.
The conclusion—in my own mind—is, that with a good constitution and active habits, men may habituate themselves to very different quantities of sleep. Still I think that six hours are little enough for most persons; and if a child, on arriving at maturity, is not inclined to sleep much longer than that, I should not regard him as wasting time. Most persons, it appears to me, require six hours of sound sleep in twenty-four;—I mean between the ages of twenty and seventy.
Macnish is the most liberal modern writer I am acquainted with, in his allowance of time for sleep. Speaking of the wants of adults he says—"No person who passes only eight hours in bed can be said to waste his time in sleep." Yet he obviously contradicts himself on the very same page; for he says expressly, that when a person is young, strong and healthy, an hour or two less may be sufficient. But an hour or two less than eight hours reduces the amount to seven or six hours. And taking the whole period of life, to which he probably refers—say from eighteen to forty—into consideration, there is a very considerable difference between six hours and eight hours a day. If six hours are "sufficient," it cannot be right to sleep eight hours.
Let us here make a few estimates. If six hours are sufficient for sleep between the ages of eighteen and forty, he who sleeps eight hours a day, actually loses 16,060 hours—equal to nearly two whole years of life, or about two years and three quarters of time in which we are usually awake. This, in the meridian of life, is not a small waste. Permit it to every person now in the United States, and the sum total of wasted time to a single generation, would be 25,649,098 years—equal to the average duration of the lives of 854,970 persons. The value of this time, as a commodity in the market, at a low estimate—only forty dollars a year—would be over A THOUSAND MILLIONS of DOLLARS! And its value, for the purposes of mental and moral improvement, cannot be estimated except in ETERNITY!
Every young mother must derive from these considerations a motive to discourage all unnecessary waste of time in sleep; while no one, as I trust, will forget that to sleep too little is also dangerous to health, and prejudicial to the general happiness.
CHAPTER XV.
EARLY RISING
All children naturally early risers. Evils of sitting up late at night. Excitements in the evening. The morning, by its beauties, invites us abroad. Example of parents. Forbidding children to rise early. Keeping them out of the way. How many are burnt up by parental neglect. "Lecturing" them. What is an early hour?
Some writer—I do not recollect who—has said that all children are naturally early risers. And I cannot help coming to the same conclusion. That they are not so, is no more proved from the fact that as things now are they are generally found addicted to the contrary habit, than the very general neglect of milk among the higher classes of our citizens, proves that they have not a natural relish for it—when every one knows that at our first setting out in life, milk is, almost without exception, the sole article of human sustenance.
One of the great difficulties in the way of early rising, as I have already had occasion to say, is late sitting up. If children are not accustomed to retire till nine or ten o'clock, nor then until they have been subjected to all the excitements pertaining to fashionable life—company, heated and impure air, stimulating drink, fruits, high-seasoned food, and perhaps music—and are become actually feverish, no one but an ignorant person or a brute ought to expect them to rise early. Indeed, whatever may have been the cause, and whether it have operated on high or low life, late retiring will inevitably result in late rising. The current may be turned out of its course a little while, it is true, but not always. It will ere long return to its accustomed channel; perhaps to renew its course with increased pertinacity.
Everything, in the morning, naturally invites to early rising. The pleasant light, the music, at certain seasons, of some of the animated tribes, and the joy which we feel in activity, and in the society of those whom we love, all conspire to rouse us. If we have retired late, however, and especially in a feverish condition, so that when we wake we feel wretched, and, as sometimes happens, more fatigued than when we lay down, other collateral motives may be needed.
I have said that everything invites us, in the morning, to rise early; but it was upon the presumption that our parents, and brothers, and sisters set us a good example. If parents and other friends lie in bed late themselves, can anything else be, expected of children? Admitting, even, that they rise early themselves, if they never speak of early rising as a pleasure, and connect along with it, in their children's minds, pleasant associations, they would be unreasonable to expect otherwise than that their children should cling to the morning couch, till they are fairly compelled to rise as a relief from pain and uneasiness.
But when parents go farther than this, and actually discourage their children from rising early, and use every means in their power short of actual punishment—and sometimes even that—to make them lie still till breakfast, in order that they may be out of the way, what shall we say? And what is to be expected as the result?
There is hope, however, under the last circumstances. People sometimes carry things to an extreme that defeats their very purposes. Thus it occasionally is, in the case before us. This forbidding children to rise early, and threatening them if they do, sometimes excites their curiosity, and leads them to the forbidden course of conduct, simply because it is forbidden. Not a few persons among us possess the disposition to be governed by what has sometimes been called the "rule of contrary."
I might stop here to show that there is nothing so well calculated to develope and improve the mind and heart, even of parents themselves, as the society of those whom God gives them to train for Him and their country. I might show that not a few of those traits of character which render the company of many old persons rather irksome, especially to the young, have their origin in their neglect of the young, and of keeping up, as long as circumstances will possibly admit, juvenile feelings, actions, and habits.
And yet what do we too often witness in life? Is not every effort made to induce the young to lie in bed late that they may be out of the way? Are they not placed, as soon as possible after they are up, with the servants—if unfortunately there are any in the family—that they may be out of the way? Are they not required to breakfast, and dine, and sup elsewhere, if possible, that they may be out of the way? Do we not send them to school, even the Sabbath school, to get them out of the way? Do not some mothers even dose their infants with stupifying medicines to lull them to sleep, in order to have them out of the way? And to crown all, though they are quite too often permitted to sit up late in the evening, to enjoy that society which they are denied so great a part of the day-time, are they not occasionally put to bed early that they may be out of the way, and that the parents may attend late parties, to indulge in immoral or unhealthy habits?
In the last instance, they are indeed sometimes put out of the way, in the result—and with a vengeance. Many a child, nay, many thousands of children, are burnt up yearly, while their parents are gone abroad in the evening in quest of that enjoyment which ought to be found in the bosom of their families. "In Westminster, a part of London, containing less than two hundred thousand inhabitants, one hundred children were thus destroyed, during a single year." And the moral results which occasionally happen are a thousand times worse than burning. But enough of this.
The common practice of lecturing the young on the importance of early rising, may have a good effect on a few; but in general, it is believed to produce the contrary result. It is, in short, to sum up the whole matter, the influence of parental example, and the speaking often of the happiness which early rising affords, with perhaps the occasional indulgence of the child in a pleasant morning walk, which, if he retires early enough, are almost certain to produce in him the valuable habit of early rising.
But what is an early hour? Some call it early, when the sun is one hour high; some at sunrise; others, when they hear of an early riser, suppose he must be one who rises at least by daybreak.
Midnight is, of course, as near the middle of the night as any hour; and he who goes to bed four or five hours before midnight, will never complain of those who insist that he is not an early riser who is not up by four or five o'clock. In summer, no adult ought to lie in bed after four o'clock, and no child, except the mere infant, after five.
Much is said by a few writers, especially Macnish, of the danger of rising before the sun has attained a sufficient height above the horizon to chase away the vapors, and remove the dampness. But I must insist upon earlier rising than this, though we should not choose to venture abroad. Invigorated and restored as we are by sleep, I cannot think that the dampness of the morning air is more injurious than the foul air of some of our sleeping rooms.
CHAPTER XVI.
HARDENING THE CONSTITUTION
Mistakes about hardening children. Their clothing. Much cold enfeebles. The Scotch Highlanders. The two extremes equally fatal—over-tenderness and neglect. An interesting anecdote from Dr. Dewees.
While I have been very particular in enjoining on my readers the importance of thoroughly ventilating their dwellings, I have also insisted upon the necessity of taking children abroad, as much as possible. Not, however, to harden them, so much as to give them a more free access to air and light than they can have at home; and also—when they are old enough—to cultivate the faculties of attention, comparison, &c.
The practice of attempting to harden children by frequent exposure to air much colder than that to which they have been accustomed, without sufficient additional clothing, is open to the same objections which have been brought against cold bathing. Under the management of a judicious medical practitioner, it may do great good to a few constitutions; but its indiscriminate use would injure a thousand infants for one who was benefited.
True it is that if the child is protected against cold, no harm, but on the contrary much good may result, from carrying him abroad into the fresh air, even in very cold weather. But what can be more painful than to see the little sufferers carried along when their limbs are purple, or benumbed with cold? And how idle it is to hope that such exposure hardens or improves the constitution!
It is on the same mistaken principle that many adults go thinly clad, late in the fall. I have seen men in November and December beating and rubbing their hands, who, on being asked why they did not wear mittens, replied, that if they should wear one pair of mittens so early in the season, they should want two in the winter.
Now I cheerfully admit that to put on additional clothing before the severity of the weather demands it, actually produces the effect here supposed; but to endure severe cold, on the contrary, never hardens anybody. Nay, more, it enfeebles. Cold, when combined with the evils of poverty, produces more mischief and destroys more lives than any one disease in the whole catalogue of human maladies.
Adam Smith says that it is not uncommon for mothers in the Highlands of Scotland, who have borne twenty children, to have only two of them alive.
It may be difficult to say whether children are oftener destroyed by over-tenderness than by neglect, and the evils incident to poverty. Both extremes are common; while the happy medium—that of conducting a child's education upon the principles of physiology, is rarely known, and still more rarely followed.
I have been much amused, and not a little instructed, by the following anecdote on this point, from Dr. Dewees:
We were speaking with a lady who had lost three or four children with "croup," who informed us she was convinced, from absolute experiment, that there was nothing like exposure to all kinds of weather to protect and harden the system. By her first plan of managing her children, which was by keeping them very warmly clad, she said she lost several by the croup; but since she had adopted the opposite scheme, her children had been perfectly healthy, and never had betrayed the slightest disposition to that terrible disease which had robbed her of her children.
Perhaps, madam, we observed, you did not, in making your first experiments, attend to a number of details which might be thought essential to the plan. You did not probably take the proper precautions when you sent them into the cold air, or observe what was important for them when they returned from it.
"Oh, yes," she replied, "I took every possible care when they, were going out. I always made them wear a very warm great coat, well lined with baize, and a fur cape or collar. I always made them wear a 'comfortable' round their necks, made of soft woollen yarn. And as for their feet, they were always protected by socks or over-shoes lined with wool or fur, as the weather might be wet or dry."
Do you believe, madam, they were kept at a proper degree of warmth by these means?
"Oh, certainly. Indeed, rather too warm; for they would often be in a state of perspiration, they told me, when in the open air; especially if they ran, slid, or skated."
And what was done when they were thus heated?
"Oh, they got cool enough before they reached home."
And would they receive no injury in passing from this state of perspiration to that of chill?
"Not at all; for when this happened, I always made them take a little warm brandy, or wine and water, and made them toast their feet well by the fire."21
Did they sleep in a cold or warm room?
"In a warm room. A good fire was always made in the stove before they went to bed, which kept them quite warm all night."
Would they never complain of being cold towards morning, when the stove had become cold?
"Yes, certainly; but then there were always at hand additional bed-clothes, with which they could cover themselves."
And did they always do it?
"Oh, I suppose so."
Well, madam, how did you carry your second plan into execution, which you say was attended with such happy results?
"I began by not letting them put on their great coats, except when the weather was so cold as to require this additional covering, and did not permit them to wear a 'comfortable' or fur round their necks. I took away their over-shoes, and if their feet chanced to get wet, (for they were always provided with good sound shoes,) the shoes were immediately changed, if they were at home. If the weather was wet, or unusually cold, they were permitted to wear their great coats, but not without. If they came home very cold, they were not allowed to approach the fire too soon. I gave them no warm, heating drinks, and accustomed them to sleep in rooms without fire."
Who does not recognize, in this second plan for the enjoyment of air and exercise, as judicious a plan of physical education, so far as it goes, as can well be pointed out? We were so successful as to convince this lady, in a very short time, that our own plan of exposing the body was precisely the one she had pursued with so much success.
We also inquired of her what plan she pursued with her children, when too young to be submitted to the rules just mentioned. She informed us that it was the same system throughout, only the details varied as circumstances of age, &c. made it necessary. That is, she sent her children into the open air at very early periods of their lives, provided in summer it was neither too wet nor too warm; in winter, when the air was mild, dry and clear—but always carefully wrapped up, that their little extremities might not suffer from cold. She never suffered them to sleep in the open air, if it could be avoided; to prevent which, as much as possible, she constantly charged the nurse to bring the children home, as soon as she found them disposed to sleep, unless it was when they were very young, at which time it was impossible to guard against it.
And when her children were sufficiently old to walk, she took care to prepare them properly for it, whether it might be in warm, cold, or moderate weather. She never sent them abroad for pleasure at the risk of encountering a storm of any kind; nor permitted them to walk at the hazard of getting wet or very muddy feet.
Were the constitutions of your children pretty much the same? we demanded of this lady.
"No; one of my boys was extremely feeble, from his very birth."
