The Nervous Child | Page 3

body that they do not appreciate the simultaneous growth of the mind, or inquire after its welfare. Yet it is the astounding rapidity with which the mental processes develop that forms the distinguishing characteristic of the infancy of man. Were it not for this rapid growth of the cerebral functions, the rearing of children would be a matter almost as simple and uneventful as the rearing of live stock. For most animals faults of environment must be very pronounced to do harm by producing mental unrest and irritability. Thus, indeed, some wild animal separated from its fellows and kept in solitary captivity may sicken and waste, though maintained and fed with every care. Yet if the whole conditions of life for the animal are not profoundly altered, if the environment is natural or approximately natural, it is as a rule necessary to care only for its physical needs, and we need not fear that the results will be spoiled by the reaction of the mind upon the body. But with the child it is different; airy nurseries, big gardens, visits to the seaside, and every advantage that money can buy cannot achieve success if the child's mind is not at rest, if his sleep is broken, if food is habitually refused or vomited, or if to leave him alone in the nursery for a moment is to evoke a fit of passionate crying.
The grown-up person comes eventually to be able to control this tremendous organ, this brain, which is the predominant feature of his race. In the child its functions are always unstable and liable to be upset. Evidence of mental unrest or fatigue, which is only rarely met with in grown persons and which then betokens serious disturbance of the mind, is of comparatively common occurrence in little children. Habit spasm, bed-wetting, sleep-walking, night terrors, and convulsions are symptoms which are frequent enough in children, and there is no need to be unduly alarmed at their occurrence. In adult age they are found only among persons who must be considered as neuropathic. To make the point clear, I have chosen examples from the graver and more serious symptoms of nervous unrest. But it is equally true that minor symptoms which in adults are universally recognised to be dependent upon cerebral unrest or fatigue are of everyday occurrence in childhood. Broken and disturbed sleep, absence of appetite and persistent refusal of food, gastric pain and discomfort after meals, nervous vomiting, morbid flushing and blushing, headache, irritability and excessive emotional display, at whatever age they occur, are indications of a mind that is not at rest. In children, as in adults, they may be prominent although the physical surroundings of the patient may be all that could be desired and all that wealth can procure. It is an everyday experience that business worries and responsibilities in men, domestic anxieties or childlessness in women, have the power to ruin health, even in those who habitually or grossly break none of its laws. The unstable mind of the child is so sensitive that cerebral fatigue and irritability are produced by causes which seem to us extraordinarily trivial. In the little life which the child leads, a life in which the whole seems to us to be comprised in dressing and undressing, washing, walking, eating, sleeping, and playing, it is not easy to detect where the elements of nervous overstrain lie. Nor is it as a rule in these things that the mischief is to be found. It is in the personality of mother or nurse, in her conduct to the child, in her actions and words, in the tone of her voice when she addresses him, even in the thoughts which pass through her mind and which show themselves plainly to that marvellously acute intuition of his, which divines what she has not spoken, that we must seek for the disturbing element. The mental environment of the child is created by the mother or the nurse. That is her responsibility and her opportunity. The conduct of the child must be the criterion of her success. If things go wrong, if there is constant crying or ungovernable temper, if sleep and food are persistently refused, or if there is undue timidity and tearfulness, there is danger that seeds may be sown from which nervous disorders will spring in the future.
There are many women who, without any deep thought on the matter, have the inborn knack of managing children, who seem to understand them, and have a feeling for them. With them, we say, the children are always good, and they are good because the element of nervous overstrain has not arisen. There are other women, often very fond of children, who are conspicuously lacking in this power. Contact with one of these well-meaning persons,