in their health and growth; and their faults ought
to be corrected by more rational means. The idea of making them suffer
in their health and growth on account of their behaviour, is sufficient
to fill every considerate mind with horror. It is the project only of
extreme weakness, to attempt to correct the disposition by creating
bodily sufferings, which are so prone to hurt the temper, even at an age
when reason has gained a more powerful ascendancy. Eatables usually
given to children by well-meaning but injudicious persons, in order to
pacify or conciliate, are still worse than the privations inflicted by
way of punishment. Sugar plums, sugar candy, barley sugar, sweetmeats,
and most kinds of cakes, are unwholesome, and cloying to the appetite.
Till children begin to run about, the uniformity of their lives makes it
probable that the quantity of food they require in the day is nearly the
same, and that it may be given to them statedly at the same time. By
establishing a judicious regularity with regard to both, much benefit
will accrue to their health and comfort. The same rule should be applied
to infants at the breast, as well as after they are weaned. By allowing
proper intervals between the times of giving children suck, the breast
of the mother becomes duly replenished with milk, and the stomach of the
infant properly emptied to receive a fresh supply. The supposition that
an infant wants food every time it cries, is highly fanciful; and it is
perfectly ridiculous to see the poor squalling thing thrown on its back,
and nearly suffocated with food to prevent its crying, when it is more
likely that the previous uneasiness arises from an overloaded stomach.
Even the mother's milk, the lightest of all food, will disagree with the
child, if the administration of it is improperly repeated. A very
injurious practice is sometimes adopted, in suckling a child beyond the
proper period, which ought by all means to be discountenanced, as
evidently unnatural, and tending to produce weakness both in body and
mind. Suckling should not be continued after the cutting of the first
teeth, when the clearest indication is given, that the food which was
adapted to the earliest stage of infancy ceases to be proper. Attention
should also be paid to the quantity as well as to quality of the food
given, for though a child will sleep with an overloaded stomach, it will
not be the refreshing sleep of health. When the stomach is filled beyond