Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-07-18
YOUR. CHILD'S CHANGE
By H; .Addington Bruce
S your child getting plenty of outdoor
exercise this summer? Have you sent

exercise this summer? Have you sent
- him to the country for the long vaca-
ton? Or, if you cannot afford to do that, are
you seeing to it that he spends much of his
time in the city parks and Fairgrounds?
If you are not doing this, if for any rea-
son he is mostly confined indoors, ~contrive in
some way to get him int the open. You owe
it to his. future happiness and welfare. 1t is
sacred obligation which you are in honor
bound to meet. ~
All through the school term your child has
necessarily been somewhat limited in his OPP
portunities for sunshine and fresh air. Now
that school is done give him the chance Re
ought to have to invigorate himself at the
great fountain of energy which sunshine and
fresh air provide.
Keep him too constantly indoors all the
year round and you need not hope to see
You can count, rather, on his finding place
among the chronically inefficient, the abb
normally predisposed to disease.
All unconsciously You may even be culti-
waiting in him the seeds of some disease
which, coming to fruition in after years will
bring him to an untimely end. Ponder
beseech you, these warning words by one
who has closely studied that modern plague
tuberculosis:
There is the long period of latency in
which, If the child is we'll nurtured and if
he live hygienically, he will be likely t +,
overcome such tendency to disease as he may
have begun life with.
And, from another authority:
1T would seem highly probable that the
increased death rate Of girls at eighteen ana
thereabout from consumption and otkar dis
eases of relatively slow action is the cuImina-
tlon OF an attack begun at thirteen or four
teen.
II we are to diminish this death rate we
must tort1ty the girl against the period of
greatest weakness when she is most likely to
receive hospitality the germs of fatal dis
eases. 10 accomplish this we must not wait
until the twelfth or thirteenth year. but meet
the difficulty in childhood"
And there is but one way to meet the diff
fculty. This is by fortifying the chilli
through the strengthening elements of air,
sunshine, exercise, and nourishing food.
None of these should be omitted. None
can safely be omitted. Yet there are parents
who, providing food abundance, seem to
think that exercise, sunshine, and air are
less essential to growth and strength.
At all events they do not let their children
play in the open as they should. Some among
them even oblige the unfortunate little ones
to toll at an indoor and sedentary occupa-
ton the summer through, or the greater
part Of the summer.
DO not fall into this miserable error. Re-
tuse to allow even the grinding pressure of
poverty to deprive your children OF the ont
door activities that .hould be theirs in the
months between the closing and the reopen
ing of school.
Equally with food, sunshine, air, and ex-
ercise should be afforded the children as a
natural right Make sure that they get them,
and, with them, the chance to develop into
men and women keen of mind and powerful
of body, worthy members of the nation into
which they have been born.
copyright, 1919, by the Associated News
papers,