You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
BY TAKING the weights of a large number of children it is easy to work out what is the average weight for any given age. In the same way an average can be found for every other measurement of development, and a test of normality is to compare the measurements of a child with the average.
Such comparison may give very interesting information, but there is a complication that can arise and spoil the calculation—a complication not usually mentioned in the paediatric literature.
Although from the purely physical standpoint any deviation from health may be taken to be abnormal, it does not follow that physical lowering of health due to emotional strain and stress is necessarily abnormal. This rather startling point of view requires elucidation.
To take a rather crude example, it is very common for a child of two to three years old to be very upset at the birth of a baby brother or sister. As the mother's pregnancy proceeds, or when the new baby arrives, a child that has hitherto been robust and has known no cause for distress may become unhappy and temporarily thin and pale, and develop other symptoms, such as enuresis, temper, sickness, constipation, nasal congestion. If physical illness should occur at this time—e.g., an attack of pneumonia, whooping cough, gastro-enteritis—then it is possible that convalescence will be unduly prolonged.
Joan, aged two years five months, was an only child till thirteen months ago, when a brother was born.
Joan had been in perfect health till this event. She then became very jealous. She lost her appetite, and consequently got thin. When left for a week without being forced to eat, she ate practically nothing and lost
From Clinical Notes on Disorders of Childhood. London, Heinemann, 1931.
Page 3weight. She has remained like this, is very irritable, and her mother cannot leave her without producing in her an anxiety attack. She will not speak to anyone, and in the night she wakes screaming, even four times in a night—the actual dream material not be