The Care and Feeding of Children by L. Emmett Holt (epub read online books .TXT) 📖

and should, therefore, be stopped, but only that they should be more thoroughly cooked and more finely divided before being given.

Is it safe to use canned vegetables for children?

Many of the best brands of canned vegetables are quite safe and some, such as peas and asparagus, can be used with advantage. They are frequently better than stale green vegetables often sold in the markets.

What vegetables should not be given to young children?

None of those which are eaten raw, such as celery, radishes, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes or lettuce. Certain others, even when well cooked, should not be allowed; as corn, lima beans, cabbage, egg plant. None of these should be given until a child has passed the age of ten years.

Are vegetable salads to be given?

As a rule salads of all kinds should be omitted until a child has passed the tenth year. Salads are difficult to digest and a cause of much disturbance in children of all ages.

 

CEREALS

What are the most important points in selecting and preparing cereals?

The important things are that they are properly cooked and not used in excess. The ready-to-serve cereals should never be chosen for children, nor should a child, because he is fond of cereals, be allowed to make his entire meal of them, taking two or three saucerfuls at a feeding.

Many of the partially cooked preparations of oatmeal and wheat are excellent, but should be cooked for a much longer time than is stated upon the package, usually three or four times as long. Digestibility is chiefly a matter of proper cooking. Most of the grains,—oatmeal, hominy, rice, wheaten grits,—require at least three hours' cooking in a double boiler in order to be easily digested. The prepared flours,—corn starch, arrowroot, barley,—should be cooked at least twenty minutes. I know of no preparation in the modern market which requires no cooking, which is to be recommended for children.

How are cereals to be given?

Usually with milk or a mixture of milk and cream; always with an abundance of salt and with very little or no sugar, one half teaspoonful on a saucerful of cereal should be the limit.

Cereals should not be served with syrups or butter and sugar.

 

BROTHS AND SOUPS

What broths and soups are to be recommended?

Meat broths are generally to be preferred to vegetable broths,—mutton or chicken being usually most liked by children. Nearly all plain broths may be given. Those thickened with rice, barley or corn starch form a useful variety, especially with the addition of milk.

Vegetable purees of peas, spinach, celery or asparagus may be used for children over seven years old. Tomato soup should not be given to young children.

 

BREAD, CRACKERS AND CAKES

What forms of breadstuffs are best suited to young children?

Fresh bread should not be given, but stale bread cut thin and freshly dried in the oven until it is crisp is very useful, also zwieback, the unsweetened being preferred. Oatmeal, graham or gluten crackers and the Huntley and Palmer breakfast biscuits, stale rolls, or corn bread which has been split and toasted or dried till crisp, form a sufficient variety for most children.

What breadstuffs should be forbidden?

All hot breads, all fresh rolls, all buckwheat and other griddle cakes, all fresh sweet cakes, especially those covered with icing and those containing dried fruits. A stale lady-finger or piece of sponge cake is about as far in the matter of cakes as it is wise to go with children up to seven or eight years old.

 

DESSERTS

What desserts may be given to young children?

Mistakes are more often made here than in any other part of the child's diet. Up to six or seven years, only junket, plain rice pudding without raisins, plain custard and, not more than once a week, a small amount of ice cream.

What should be especially forbidden?

All pies, tarts and pastry of every description, jam, syrups and preserved fruits; nuts, candy and dried fruits.

Does "a little" do any harm?

Yes, in that it develops a taste for this sort of food, after which plainer food is taken with less relish. Besides the "little" is very apt soon to become a good deal.

Does not the child's instinctive craving for sweets indicate his need of them?

That a child likes or craves sweets is the usual excuse of an indulgent parent. Every child likes his own way, but that is no reason why he should not be trained to obedience and self-control; a child's fondness for sweets can hardly be considered a normal instinct. As a matter of fact, supported by everyday experience, no causes are productive of more disorders of digestion than the free indulgence in desserts and sweets by young children. It is a constantly increasing tendency, not easily controlled as a child grows older; and in early childhood, the only safe rule is to give none at all.

 

FRUITS

Are fruits an essential or important part of the diet?

They are a very important part and should be begun in infancy. They are particularly useful for the effect they have upon the bowels. It is important that they should be selected with care and given with much discretion, especially in cities. In the country where fruit is absolutely fresh, a somewhat greater latitude may be allowed than is given below.

What fruits may safely be given to children up to five years old?

As a general rule, only cooked fruits and the juices of fresh fruits.

What fruit juices may be used?

That from sweet oranges is the best, but the fresh juice of grape fruit, peaches, strawberries and raspberries may also be used.

What stewed fruits may be given?

Stewed or baked apples, prunes, pears, peaches and apricots.

What raw fruits are to be particularly avoided with young children?

The pulp of oranges or grape fruit, also cherries, berries, bananas and pineapple.

What precautions should be emphasized regarding the use of fruits?

That they should be used with greater care in hot weather and with children who are prone to attacks of intestinal indigestion.

What symptoms indicate that fruits should be avoided?

A tendency to looseness of the bowels with the discharge of mucus, or frequent attacks of abdominal pain or stomach ache.

Is there any special choice of meals at which fruit should be given?

The fruit juice given early in the morning, upon an empty stomach, works more actively upon the bowels than if it is given later in the day.

It is not, as a rule, wise to give cream or milk with sour fruits. Usually the fruit is best given at the mid-day meal, as a dessert, at a time when no milk is taken. It is in all cases important that the quantity of fruit should be moderate.

What besides water and milk should a child be allowed to drink and what should be forbidden?

Tea, coffee, wine, beer and cider in all quantities and in all forms should be forbidden to young children below puberty. Cocoa which is made very weak, i.e., almost all milk, is often useful as a hot drink. Lemonade, soda-water, etc., should if possible be deferred until the tenth year. A free indulgence in things of this kind should never be permitted with children of seven or eight years.

 

INDIGESTION IN OLDER CHILDREN

What are the different ways in which indigestion shows itself in children?

First, in acute disturbances which last for a few days only; and, secondly, in chronic disturbances which may continue for weeks or months.

Which of the two forms of indigestion is more likely to impair seriously the health of the child?

Chronic indigestion; for since the cause is not recognized it often goes on for months and even years unchecked.

What are the symptoms of acute indigestion?

These are familiar and easily recognized. They are vomiting, pain, undigested movements from the bowels, often fever and considerable prostration.

Such attacks are usually traceable to their proper cause, the removal of which is followed by prompt recovery.

What are the common causes of acute indigestion?

This is frequently due to overeating, to indulgence in some special article of improper food, or to eating heartily when overtired. Acute indigestion often marks the beginning of some acute general illness.

How should acute indigestion be managed?

One should bear in mind that for the time being the digestive organs have stopped work altogether. The important thing, therefore, is to clear out from the intestines all undigested food by some active cathartic, such as castor oil. The stomach has usually emptied itself by vomiting. All food should be stopped for from twelve to thirty-six hours, according to the severity of the attack, only water being given.

At the end of this time is it safe to begin with the former diet?

No; for such a procedure is almost certain to cause another attack of indigestion. At first only broth, thin gruel, very greatly diluted milk, or whey should be given. The diet may be very slowly but gradually increased as the child's appetite and digestion improve, but in most cases a week or ten days should elapse before the full diet is resumed.

What are the symptoms of chronic indigestion?

These, although familiar, are not so easily distinguished and are very often attributed to the wrong cause. There are usually general symptoms such as indisposition, disturbed sleep, grinding of the teeth, fretfulness, languor, loss of weight and anæmia. There are besides local symptoms: flatulence, abdominal pain, abdominal distention, constipation, or looseness of the bowels with mucus in the stools, foul breath, coated tongue, loss of appetite, or an abnormal capricious appetite. Such symptoms are often wrongly ascribed to intestinal worms.

What are the common causes of chronic indigestion?

This is generally the result of a bad system of feeding, either the prolonged use of improper food or of improper methods of feeding.

Examples of bad methods of feeding are, coaxing or forcing to eat, rapid eating with insufficient mastication eating between meals, allowing a child to have his own way in selecting his food, as when he lives largely upon a single article of diet. Things to be considered under the head of improper food are, indulgence in sweets, desserts, etc., the use of imperfectly cooked foods, especially cereals and vegetables, and of raw or stale fruits.

Is it not true that a diet or a special article of food which does not make a child ill is proof that such a diet or such a food is proper for a child?

By no means; with many people the only guide In feeding children is that the article in question did not make the children sick, therefore it is allowable. This is a very bad principle. A better one is to adopt such a diet as will nourish the child's body with the least possible tax upon his digestive organs; in other words, to exclude articles which experience has shown to be injurious to most children.

How should chronic indigestion be managed?

This is a much more difficult matter than the treatment of acute indigestion, for, as it is usually the result of the prolonged use of improper food or of an improper method of feeding, a cure can be accomplished only by a discovery and removal of the cause.

Is chronic indigestion curable?

In the vast majority of cases it is so, but only by faithfully observing for a long period the rules for simple feeding laid down elsewhere. One of the greatest' difficulties in the way of recovery is that parents and nurses are unwilling to follow a restricted diet long enough to secure a complete cure, or to change radically their methods of feeding, but expect the child to recover by simply taking medicine.

For how long a period is it necessary to continue very careful feeding?

In any case it must be done for several months; with most children for two or three years; with some, throughout childhood, for with them the slightest deviation from established rules is sure to provoke a relapse.

Is not medicine useful?

It is