Los Angeles herald., 1910-06-26
NERVOUSNESS IN CHILDREN

NERVOUSNESS IN CHILDREN
Nervous children are a. product of
modern life-the result of too much
attention of the wrong kind and too
little attention of the right kind. Rang
ing all the way from fidgettiness or
irritability to st. Vitus dance and cpl
lepsy, and including variable temper,
capricious appetite, indigestion, insom-
mia, nightmare, supersensitiveness, and
many other symptoms and affections,
nervousness marks a large proportion
of American children today, and ac-
cording to the physicians who have
studied the subject the number is in
creasing.
The causes are comprised in the
whole tendency of our late nineteenth
and early twentieth century civiliza-
ton, which is, to spend itself in get
ting rather than in living.
More than anything else today, an
art of living is needed that shall be
based upon Ifs true purpose. What
we live for must always determine
how we live. 1t is to ignore the pur-
pose of life merely to live to get,
whether the object of that getting be
money or fame, learning or lands, au-
tomobiles or flying machines. What
we are here for is, that we may live
and grow; that we may develop from
uniformed, natural-minded infancy and
youth to strong, sweet spiritual-mind-
ed manhood and womanhood For, how
else can we become fitted for the life
that endures? Just as soon as we as
sign all our over-Valued possessions to
their proper place and rank accord
ing to the service they render this
great end, the fever for acquiring them,
which now eats up life, will leave us,
and we shall begin to convalesce from
Ill
speedily disappear will be this ad-
vanced form of disease we call ver-
vousness of children.
The trouble in the first place has
originated in the wrong life of adults,
as just stated, and by adults it is per-
petuated. Transmitted to children by
the inheritance of the nervous temper
ament-large top-head, weak cerebel-
lum, and body correspondingly unbal-
anced-and established and increased
by the environment with which such
parents surround their children, 1t can
be cured only by arousing the parents
to sense of the situation.
High strung, emotional parents and
parents in whom intellect plus emotion
far overtops the body-brain, must come
to know themselves and must stand
guard against the erratic tendencies of
their own natures-and thus in a
measure secure a balance in them
selves; not otherwise can they bring
up healthy children. Such parents
naturally stimulate precocity in their
children, desiring them to shine, morti-
fed IL they fall behind at school, con-
tinually emphasizing the mental and
ignoring the physical-unless to coddle
their young ones and worry about their
health, than which no course is worse
until the health of the children is
ruined.
Instead of all the instructing and en-
tertaining and coddling they receive,
such children need to be let alone, need
from the first to be encouraged in
physical pursuits and outdoor play,
and allowed to learn f1rst-hand from
their own observations and expert
ments in Dame Natures unrival'ed
school and laboratory. They need to
dig in the dirt, to garden, to watch
plant and insect and bird, to build
dams and bridges and reservoirs after
the rain, finding their elixir of life in
the clean, outdoor air.
All letting alone of young children
-or children of any age-implies the
right kind of oversight; the oversight