The Mother’s Preparation as Guide and Protector of Her Children.—Safeguards for Tiny Babyhood.—Cleanliness, Regularity, Chafing, Pin Worms, Servants, Nurse Girls, etc., etc.—How to Teach and Guard Them During Childhood.—Safeguarding the Children with Knowledge.—Inborn Curiosity Concerning Physical Mysteries.—How to Meet these Questions.—Sleeping Alone.—How to Correct Vice where it Exists.—The Duty of Physicians to the Public.—Symptoms which call for Parental Watchfulness.—Results of Secret Vice.—Rewards of Parental Vigilance.
How shall the mother prepare herself that she may be the guide and protector of her children past this dangerous shoal, is a question that exercises every true woman’s heart. In view of the myriads of temptations, we are led to exclaim here, as in the contemplation of many other difficulties in child training, “Who is sufficient for these things?”
The carefulness in guarding against the entrance of this evil should begin back in tiny babyhood. Perfect cleanliness, the[238] proper adjustment of the napkin, and great care in the baths, lest by roughness in washing an irritation be set up; all these things must be thought about and watched carefully. The food, regularity of habits, daily evacuation of the bowels, all have their share in keeping the child in a healthy condition that precludes the unnatural state which invites the habit.
A chafed condition of the skin, which causes itching and consequent rubbing of the parts, may be the beginning of the habit before the child is old enough to be reasoned with, or able to understand the wrong and danger involved.
In little girls pin worms, which work forward into the vagina, and cause an irritation, also a leucorrh?al discharge, even in babyhood, may so irritate that the habit is formed before the mother is aware of it. There have been instances of servant girls, who are left in the care of the little ones, or unscrupulous nurse girls, teaching the little ones the habit to keep them quiet, so that they need not be troubled with their care.
Mothers need to be Argus-eyed, to guard their babies from all the evils that beset them; and having carried them past babyhood into[239] inquiring childhood, nothing else is so potent in shielding them from the evil, as wholesome truth taught in a sweet motherly way. While yet very young, they can be taught that the organs are to be used by them only for throwing off the waste water of the system, but that they are so closely related to other parts of the body that handling them at all will hurt them and make them sick. Tell them that little children, sometimes when they do not know this, form the habit of handling themselves and as a result they become listless and sick, and many times idiotic and insane, or develop epileptic fits. This will so impress them that they will not fall easily into the bad way; for it is, more often than otherwise, an ignorant curiosity that leads them into the danger.
When mothers understand what a safeguard intelligent teaching of truth is to their children, they will prepare themselves for it, and will so keep their boys and girls in their confidence that they will have no secret from them. When they feel and know that they can come to mother with all their enquiries, and get honest recognition and teaching, they will not care to go elsewhere when curiosity is aroused and they desire knowledge on any point. This sweet confidence between mother and child cannot be too carefully nurtured.
There is an inborn curiosity concerning the physical being and its mysteries, and the child has a right to be met fairly in its questionings, and to be properly taught at the outset. Do not begin, dear young mothers by turning your children away, no matter how pertinent the question; neither begin with a semi-falsehood, or what is little worse or misleading, an entire one. Your children will learn, and if you do not teach them, some one else less fitted will. As soon as they are old enough to take in at least a part of the great truth, tell them what those organs are for, and how sacredly they should guard them, if they expect to become fathers and mothers, that will be a blessing to the world.
Children very early begin to question and as early they should receive intelligent, honest answers to their enquiries. Oh! that the element of gross impurity were removed from the knowledge of the sexual nature; and it will be when mothers have rightly learned the truth themselves, and s............