The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-07-29
PUTTING CHILDRENT0BED
Mothers Should Not Force Timid
Children to Retire With
out a Light.

The mother who puts the timid
child to bed, and takes away the
light, and goes down stairs and leaves
him to his c%oniuring, careless and in
different and d~isbelieving, or bent on
overcoming the mischief forcibly, is
destroying something that one would
think of small worth to her-not only
his nervous fibre, but his love of her.
self; and the day will come when fate
will have it's revenge ON her in his
own indifference to her, and she will
recognize it, even if he behave in all
outward respects like a dutiful son.
1t is her part to examine the matter,
to reason with the child, to comfort
him, to see how far it is pos sibie with
him to subdue the fear. LII she cam
not stay with him herself, she can
at least leave the door open so that he
may hear the cheerful down stairs
voices, the hum of life, not to be shut
into his tomb, as the unfor1mulated
thought of his desperate little mind
makes it; she ear leave a lamp on the
hearth, and so let there be some light
to dispel his fancies and to keep back
the dark and its unshaped visions.
She may regard it as trifiing, but to
him 1t is tremendous, and if she is
wise either in mother love or human
kindness she will not let the imagina-
tive and sensitive child suffer more
than 1t must, remembering that that
temperament, if it has more to enjoy
through life than others, has also
much, much more to suffer.
When a few nights have failed to
bring calm to the little being out OF
the experience, and the last going to
bed alone is as bad as the first, and
all threats have only made the matter
worse, and alireasoning has produced
no good result, when he has tried to
conquer, and the effort has left him
trembling as violently as If he had an
ague-then 1t is something not to be
overcome by harsh or rough or per-
emptory measures, and the mother
should see to it that this child has
some active physical exercise just be-
fore going to bed that will make his
little body glad of rest, and she would
best lie down beside him, or
find some work that she can do
upstairs till he falls asleep, in order to
afford him the comfort of companion
ship and the sense of her embracing
love, and soothe his irritable nerves to
repose instead of rousing them to &C
ton. These nerves would never have
been irritable if she had not insisted
on her own way too long in the be-
ginning, if she had given them nc
chance to get on fire, and then to go
on exciting themselves. If she had
put the child to bed alone from the
very outset of his career, SO that it
was the natural order of things to
him, and he had had the habit estab-
lished of quiet sleep and absence
of fear from the first, in ninety
nine cases out of a hundred there
would never have been any trouble of
the sort. But if through any idiosyn-
Grassy of the child, or any remissness
of her own, the fear has coMe upon
him, she will never in all the years re-
naming have greater love outpoured
upon her than that child will give her
who sees her lowering over his pillow,
moving about his room, or feels her
pressure on the bed beside him till the
drowsy warmth steals over and wraps
senses and Imagination and all to-
gether, and lets her off again to the
duties that are less imperative than
care of that child's nerves, to the
pleasures that are less pleasant than
the love he gives her in return
HaYperiS BasGr.