The Coming Man Author:Charles Reade Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER VI. CHILDREN SHOULD BE EITHER-HANDED. To make children as cither-handed as our Creator intended, first fix the word " either-handed" in the minds of... more » the whole household, and never let a day pass without using it aloud to denote the only perfect child. Next impress the word "lop-handed," applying it equally to the mere right-handed child and to the mere left-handed child, and declare them both to be equally imperfect, and on the road to deformity. Language, that great instrument of truth or falsehood, being thus cleared, I offer a few crude but practical hints. Infants are overhandled. Their live pets pine before our eyes from that very cause, and it is a caution. More floor and less lap; more safety- chair, with both arms free, and less hugging, cuddling, and carrying, with one little arm crippled against a nurse's body. Children must be carried out-of-doors for air, but even there the nurse must carry them an equal time on each arm. It is necessary to her own body, and to the child it is vital. Nothing will require more parental vigilance and determination than this. Carrying for an hour on one arm and five minutes on the oth- F er makes the nurse lop-sided and the infant lop- handed. In his chair, or so placed undei1 a watchful eye that both arms are free, bring pretty things opposite his hands, and never let him stretch out either hand across his body. Teach him to throw things down with either hand alternately, and by-and-by with both hands at the same time. Let him be a quadruped and a suckling rather longer than usual, not shorter. When those tender limbs will bear the erect body without the injury a parent's loving impatience has sometimes caused, let him toddle, not to any body's apron, but to a horizontal bar held across for him, and teach him to seize it ...« less