The Environment's Effect on the Child

Fatina is a little girl in the tenth month of her life. She suffered from no organic disease; yet in spite of this she would very often vomit up the food given to her, and often refuse the various foods before they even entered her mouth — even water she would not take. Thus she would show strange, abnormal behavior whenever food or drink was brought: sleeping while eating, or yawning, or clamping her mouth shut against the food for a long while, or throwing it up once it had gone down. The mother was bewildered by this behavior and could not fathom its nature, and she attributed these happenings to internal diseases — which led her to take her daughter to the hospital, where no long time passed before Fatina was eating, drinking, and sleeping under the nurses' care, and no trace remained of the conduct that appeared at home. Her mother rejoiced greatly, thought her daughter cured of all the diseases she had been imagining, and brought her back home; but scarcely had the first two days passed after her return before the child went back to what she had been before.

Who is Fatina's mother? A woman in the third decade of her life — thin of body, hooked of nose, thin of lip, nervous of temper, quick of movement. And her husband was that familiar type known for his long patience and firmness of opinion, mixed with a certain simplicity and love of dominance. Hardly would he set off for his shop but Umm Fatina would send him on his way with screaming, scolding, and criticism of his short reach in trade and the smallness of his earnings, or receive him in the evening with a scowling face, upbraiding him for his lateness. Such was their life: gloom and frowning and screaming and disturbances.

In this atmosphere Fatina grew up, with her abnormal symptoms and behavior. And how great was Dr. Fahmi's triumph when he turned to the study of this Fatina's symptoms and discovered this truth: the truth of the effect of the parents' life on the psyche of children, and the reflection of that life upon the white, gleaming page of childhood.

If we come to analyze Fatina and the environment in which she lives, we see that the child was in urgent need of parents whose relations were ruled by concord, love, and harmony of feeling and affection; thus would they be able to satisfy their children's psychological needs and give them love and tenderness — the first need of all.

Food is a powerful weapon in the hands of children, by which they show their displeasure; very often their abnormal behavior over food is proof of their want of contentment and security in the environment in which they live. So Fatina refused food because, in her unconscious mind, she wanted to be rid of this life full of painful, wounding experiences and scenes; and she would vomit because, in her view, there is a firm connection between food and the environment she lives in — and thus she would be rid of life.

In this sense the two doctors, English and Pearson, have said that many of children's feeding problems are connected, directly or indirectly, with the psychological disturbances the mother suffers, which in some unknown way communicate themselves to the child; for the child senses and feels, in a very deep way, the atmosphere in which he lives and his parents' feeling toward him — and whether disturbances rule the life of the couple.