The Nervous Child : Methods of Discipline

The Mother and Her Child
by William S. Sadler, M.D., Lena K. Sadler, M.D.

(Page 33 of 44)

We run into many snags when we undertake to discipline the nervous baby. The first is that it will sometimes cry so hard that it will get black in the face and may even have a convulsion; occasionally a small blood vessel may be ruptured on some part of the body, usually the face. When you see the little one approaching this point, turn it over and administer a sound spanking and it will instantly catch its breath. This will not have to be repeated many times until that particular difficulty will be largely under control.

It will be discovered when you undertake to break a bad habit in the case of a spoiled child who is of a nervous temperament, that your discipline interferes with the child's appetite and nutrition. The delicate little creature who has perhaps already given you no end of trouble regarding its feeding, will begin to lose in weight, and even the doctor often becomes so alarmed that he advises against all further methods of discipline. We think this is usually a mistake. Both the nutrition and discipline should be kept in mind and carried harmoniously through to a successful finish.

It will be necessary during such troublous times to conserve both the physical and nervous strength of the child; it should not be allowed to run about and over-play, as such high strung children often do. It should be given a reasonable amount of physical exercise, and two or three times a day should have short periods of complete isolation in the nursery, where it may quietly play with its blocks and toys, sing and croon or talk as the case may be, but should be left entirely alone.

Wise efforts should be put forth to keep the feeding up to the proper number of calories, and to see, if the child does not gain during this disciplinary struggle, that at least it does not lose; and I give it as my experience that I have yet to see a case in which both the child's nutrition and discipline cannot be efficiently maintained at one and the same time, though it does sometimes require adroit scientific and artistic management. But the game we are playing is worth the effort - the battle must be fought - and it can be fought with the least suffering and sorrowing the earlier the conflict is waged to a successful issue.

I am decidedly opposed to allowing these young nervous children to over-play and therefore wear themselves out unduly. This over exhaustion sometimes renders the training of the child much more difficult, as it is a well-known fact that we are all much more irritable and lacking in self-control when we are tired, more especially when we are over-tired and fatigued.

Let me emphasize the importance and value of proper periods of isolation - complete rest and partial physical relaxation. You can take a child who has gotten up wrong in the morning, whose nerves are running away with him, who is irritable, crying at everything that happens, who even rejects the food prepared for him, and who, when spoken to and commanded to stop crying, yells all the louder - I say you can take such a little one back to its crib, place it in the bed and smilingly walk out of the room. After a transient outburst of crying, within a very few minutes you can return to find a perfect little angel, winsome and smiling, happy and satisfied, presenting an entirely different picture from the little culprit so recently incarcerated as a punishment for his unseemly conduct.

But let me repeat that while such methods of discipline often work like magic on normal children, they must be repeated again and again in the case of one who is nervous in order to establish new association groups in the brain and to form new habit grooves in his developing nervous system.

Respect for Authority

There are just two things the nervous child must grow up to respect; one is authority and the other is the rights and privileges of his associates. The nervous child needs early to learn to reach a conclusion and to render a decision - to render a decision without equivocation - to move forward in obedience to that decision without quibbling and without question; that is the thing the nervous man and woman must learn in connection with the later conquest of their own nerves; and a foundation for such a mastery of one's unruly nerves is best laid early in life - by teaching the child prompt and unquestioning obedience to parental commands. At the same time, endeavor so to raise the child that it acquires the faculty of quickly and agreeably adapting itself to its environment, at the same time cheerfully recognizing the rights of its fellows.

It is a crime against the nervous child to allow it to hesitate, to debate, or to falter about any matter that pertains to the execution of parental commands. Let your rule be - spoke once, then spank. Never for a moment countenance anything resembling dilatoriness or procrastination, let the child grow up to recognize these as its greatest dangers, never to be tolerated for one moment.

False Sympathy

We are aware that many good people in perusing this chapter will think that some of the advice here given is both cruel and hard hearted; but we can safely venture the opinion that those who have reared many children, at least if they have had some nervous little ones, will be able to discern the meaning and significance of most of our suggestions. Sympathy is a beautiful and human trait and we want nothing in this chapter in any way to interfere with that characteristic sympathy of a parent for its offspring - the proverbial "as a father pitied his children" - nevertheless, there is a great deal of sympathy that is utterly false, that is of the nature of a disastrous compromise, for the time being making it easy for both parent and child, but making things unutterably more difficult later on in life when both (or perhaps the child alone) must face the calamitous consequences of this failure early to inculcate the principles of self-control and self-mastery on the mind and character of the nervous child.

We so often hear "mother love" eulogized. It is a wonderful and self-denying human trait; but, as a physician, I have been led to believe that "mother loyalty" is of almost equal or even greater value. All mothers love their children more or less, but only a few mothers possess that superb loyalty which is able to rise above human sympathy and maternal love, which qualifies the mother to stand smilingly by the side of the crib and watch her little one in a fit of anger - yelling at the top of its voice - and yet never touch the child, allow the little fellow to come to himself, to wake up to the fact that all his yelling, his emotion, his anger, and his resentment are absolutely powerless to move his mother. Therefore has the mother - by her loyalty to the little fellow - taught him a new lesson in self-control, and therefore has she added one more strong link in the chain of character which parent and child are forging day by day, and which finally must determine both the child's temporal and eternal destiny.

About the Author

Dr. William S. Sadler M.D. was a well-known American psychiatrist and college teacher in the school of medicine at the University of Chicago. For over sixty years he practiced his profession in Chicago, thirty-three years being associated in practice with his wife, Dr Lena Kellogg Sadler. The doctors were pioneers in the research on the mysterious Urantia Papers.