The child, his nature and nurture / by W.B. Drummond.

  • Drummond, W. B. (William Blackley), 1868-1937
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The child, his nature and nurture / by W.B. Drummond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Nervous System.—The nervous system of young children is very sensitive to outside impressions, and harm may readily be done by the influence of improper surroundings. It is especially important that the child should have abundant sleep, and that it should not be excited, especially near bedtime, by the attentions of too many admiring visitors. Sleep.—F or the first few weeks of life the infant should sleep twenty hours or more out of the twenty-four, waking only to be fed and bathed. The period required for sleep by children of different ages is shewn in the following table :— Birth to four weeks . : 20-22 hours. One to six months . , 16-18 hours. Six months to one year. : 14-16 hours (11-12 hours at night and two naps by day). One to two years : 12-14 hours (one nap by day). Two to six years. : : 12 hours. Six to ten years. : é 11 hours. Ten to fifteen years : . 9-10 hours. It is of great importance that the training of the child in proper habits of sleep should be begun at birth. This can usually be accomplished easily by attending to two points. First, the child should be accustomed from the very first to being fed at regular intervals by the clock, as explained in the section on feeding. Second, the child should be accustomed from the very first to being put into its cradle awake and left to go to sleep. If the child is well, its appetite satisfied, and its feet warm, nothing more is necessaly to induce sleep than a warm and comfortable bed in a quiet, darkened room. I make the statement in this absolute form of young infants only, and I am assured by experienced nurses that they never find any difficulty in inducing a regular habit of sleep when they have the child to themselves, and it ~ such a habit can be established it will render it more easy to prevent any methods of artificially inducing sleep subsequently resorted to from becoming tyrannous. Children certainly
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