The Waterbury Democrat., 1932-06-06
TRAINING A CHILD FOR THE NEURoTIc

In this the third session of the school TOT
 nervous imposition the prcccptress begins the | lesson with q brief review of the preceding 'es- son. Remember how 1t went "Yet if I allow her to go without her food she loses color and seems to get thin ner too. (She is a four year old child who dawdles m hour or more over her 1ood and refuses to eat 1t, and If she IS com peIIed to eat it probably ejcctB 1t from her | stomach shortly afterward) never have to scold or spank except at meal-tirne or just before menltime. This affects me dis- | astrousy. l get nervous indigestion be- fore I've even looked at food.
 | So that is nervous indigestion! p In his excellent little book on Nervous In-
 digestion" (Paul B. Hoeber, New York) Dr Walter C. Alvarez first gives an instructive chapter on the effects of emotion on digestion, and then opens Chapter II with candid state ment that "nervOus indigestion is a convenient term with which to designate all those gastro-
 intestinal disturbances for which no organic
 cause can be found" In other words. if you are perfectly normal and healthy, as tho tcach-
 CT declares this little girl is, yet fuss over your
 food or get into quarrel with your neighbor
 or receive little note from the tax office ap- prising you that they're onto your little scheme to dcfrhud the government just before dinner, you are entitled to have nervous indigestion l--though just why to blame 1t on your nerves
 when in fact your own inner consciousness or 1 your own conscience is to blame, perhaps we had better not inquire right now.
 In her first recital the preccptreSS expressed | the anxiety she feels for the effect her quar- | reg with her present pupil will have on new pupil she expects to arrive in September. Sho | is also somewhat perturbcd over the effect of | the pickering on her own digestion right now. She is right about both cases.
 She complains that "the finest pediatricians | in the city offer no remedy for the four vera | old child's habit of dawdling for an hour or more over meal and 0bstinatcly refusing to
 act anything, or if forced to eat then vomiting the food shortly afterward. The pcdiatricians arc generally second rate physcians-thats why they purport to be specialists. It's rac-
 ket, and in this free country 1t has the sane | ton of the medical OrganizatiOn--at least the | organized profession here has taken no step to curb the evil of spccalism. although resolu- | tions have been passed, and committees ap-
 pointed to deal difiidently with the evil. | If quarreling and pickering over the childs diet or appetite or preferences Is tho cause of | the chds habtiual vomiting. the mothers | nervous indigestion and the sad outlook for the little stranger in the ofiing, and thnik 1t | is the cause, then wouldn't the obvious remedy be the best? Why not try it out for q while
 anyway. It can't do any harm. The remedy is simply to cease quarreing pickering. worrying and fussing about what the child eats or does
 not eat. At the proper mcaltimc place suitable
 food on the table and let the child partake or
 eschew it. It is noDody's business to try to de- termine what the child shall like or not like. Nobody with the child's interest at heart will notice or make any comment whateveh on the
 child's disposal of the food served. Of course there are A number of little minor consdera-
 tons to be met, but there's the gist of it. all
 we can crowd into these narrow columns.