Читать книгу The Care of Children - Sebastian Kneipp Kneipp - Страница 13

Childrens' Cots.

These are of great importance to the bodily growth of children though they are not considered so . by Parents generally, who give all their concern to the intelligence and knowledge of the little ones.

When children sleep during the day they are enveloped and bound up in cushions which have twice as many feathers as they ought to have, and in most German speaking countries the cushions themselves are again tied together, so that the bodies of the children are really forced into feather cuirasses, and only the little faces are left open to the air.

One would suppose that this heavy bed harness was constructed to prevent the child from escaping. Such a proceeding is altogether wrong. Too warm a bed weakens the whole system and makes it so sensitive that the fresh air cannot be borne.

Think of the development of heat when a child is thus smothered in feathers; a heat which, being unable to disperse, remains in the cushion. When the child issues from this debilitating machine into the pure, somewhat cold air, it naturally shivers and catches cold.

This is the way in which catarrh and inflammation of the throat and lungs are so frequently produced; they are natural results of sleeping in an unreasonably warm bed and then facing the cold air.

It is the same with grown-up people who often go to bed at night quite well and are attacked in the night by catarrh or inflammation of the lungs brought on by the intense heat of the bed and the breathing in of cold air, because cold and heat are opposed to each other.

The lower cover of the child's cot should neither be soft nor of feathers, but firm. The upper covering may be a thinly filled eider quilt which is light and not likely to develop too great a warmth.

Children have young vigorous blood which courses quickly through the body causing much heat.

I advised a Mother, who asked me how she should arrange her child's cot, to make for it a mattrass, of good straw, for straw warms well and never harbors too much heat; a rather soft straw bolster and a quilt or covering of eider down very thinly filled. The Mother assured me later that her child slept much more quietly on this straw bedding, woke up less frequently and was in all respects more thriving since using it.

Great care should be taken that the mattrass has no cavities When they exist the child is forced to adopt a crooked position and if for this reason alone the lower part on which the child lies should be always rather firm and quite even.

The head should lie only just so much higher than the body that the small space in the nape of the neck is filled by the pillow or bolster, this enables the child to rest almost fiat in the bed. The nightdress of the child must not be tight nor should the sleeves and collar be closed otherwise a check would be given to the free circulation of the blood.

Many mothers are, I know, anxious to have my opinion of the cradle, I beg to say that I am very glad that its use is dying out, for its misuse has so often caused injury to the child. The cradle is quite unnecessary for the child and an altogether superfluous labor for the mother.

Many a child has been rocked into a dangerous and even fatal illness.

The favorite now is the cheerful basked-perambulator or mailcart, which the Mother gladly draws in the open air with her little ones and for which I have nothing but praise. To accustom the children to sleep in them, simply draw the perambulator backward and forward.

I think it very undesirable for little ones to sleep in bed with grown people, for even if they be not suffocated as has not unfrequently occurred, yet the evaporation from older people is not good but, on the contrary, harmful for the children.