The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1890-10-25
HINTS FOR MOTHERS.
"a Few Words on the Proper Way
Putting Children to Bed.

"a Few Words the Proper Way OF
Putting Children to Bed.
Tho mother who puts tho timid child
TO bed, and takes away tho light, and
goes downstairs, and leaves him to his
coniuring, careless and indifferent and
.disbclieving, or bont on overcoming the
mischief forcibly, is destroying some
thing that one would think of small
worth to her-not only his nervous
fiber, but his lovo Of herself; and tho
day will come whom fate will have its
revengo on her in his own Indifference
to her, and She will recognize it, oven if
ne behave in all outward respects like
dutiful son. 1t is her part to examine
the matter, to reason with tho child, to
comfort him, to see how far it is posi-
bio with him to subdue the fear. If she
can not stay with him herself, she can
at least leave the door open so that no
may hear the cheerful downstairs
voices, the hum of life not to be shut
into his tomb, as the unformulated
thought of his desperate little mind
makes it; she can 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 1T as trifling, but to him it is
tremendous; and if she is wiso either in
mother love or human kindness she will
not let the imaginative and sensitive
child suffer more than it must, remem-
bering that that temperament, if it has
more to enjoy through life than othors,
has also much. much more to suffer.
When few nights have failed to
bring calm to the little being out of tho
nd ho 1out {0 J,ol
alone is as bad as the first, and all
threats have only made the matter
worse, and all reasoning has produced
no good result; when he has tried to
conquer, and tho effort has left him
trembling as violently as if no had an
agne-then it is something not to be
overcome by harsh or rough or
peremptory measures, and the
mother should see to it that this
child has some active physical
exercise just before going to bed that
will mako his little body glad of rest,
and she would best lie down
beside him, or find some work
that she can do up stairs till he
falls asleep, in order to afford him
the comfort of panionship and the
sense OF her embracing love, and sootho
his irritable nerves to repose instead Of
rousing them to action. These nerves
would never have boon irritable
If she had not insisted on
her own way too long in the be-
ginning, If she had given them no
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 established of quiet
sleep and absence of fear from the first.
In ninety-nine cases out of hundred
there would never have been any trouble
OF the sort. But if through any idiosyn-
Grassy of the child, or any rcmissness of
her own, tho fear has come upon him,
she will never in all the years remain
ing have greater love outpoured upon
her than that child will give her who
sees her lowering over his pillow, NOV
ing about his room, or feels her pres
cnce on the bed beside him till the
drowsy warmth steals over and wraps
senses and imagination and all together,
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. -Harpcr's Bazaar.