Parents, Relax!

Off U. S. presses each year roll some 500 books, innumerable pamphlets and magazine articles on how to bring up children. Press, pulpit and radio also have their say. Result of this ominous babel of contradictory advice is to make many a conscientious modern parent a potential nervous wreck. This week one kindly authority raised a tut-tut. "Parents," said she, "relax!"

Mrs Dorothy W. Baruch has had both amateur and professional experience in raising children. The wife of a Los Angeles contractor, she brought up two of her own, Herbert, now 18, and Nancy, 15. She is also director of a nursery school at Broadoaks School of Education, Whittier College in California. While she raised her children, 107-lb. Mrs. Baruch got three college degrees, taught at Broadoaks, wrote 13 children's books (her latest: a Pinocchio based on Walt Disney' s forthcoming movie), scribbled verse, traveled abroad, swam, rode and played tennis

This week Mrs. Baruch published a book (Parents and Teachers Go to School --Scott, Foresman & Co., $3) for parents and teachers, reporting what she had learned as amateur and professional, bumbling manifesto, her book sticks to specific cases, tells in detail how her nursery school straightened out many a little boy and girl, many a mother and father.

Mrs. Baruch's thesis is that most children's troubles arise from their mothers' and fathers' worries. Children, she believes, always sense such worries, feel insecure themselves. When a mother worries because her children disobey, sulk or fight, Mrs. Baruch brings her to school, lets her observe other children and find out that disobedience, sulking, fighting are normal childish behavior. Result: The mother goes home feeling more tolerant toward herself and children, more serene.

Some of Mrs. Baruch's tips to parents:

>Don't worry about disobedience, lying, pants-wetting, thumbsucking, crying, jealousy. Often the best treatment is to say nothing.

>Dawdling is no sin: young children usually take from 30 to 40 minutes to eat, 20 to 25 minutes to an hour to fall asleep. It is sometimes all right to feed a child to avoid a scene even after he knows how to feed himself.

>Don't praise a child when he uses the toilet, lest he feel guilty when he fails.

>Don't be intimidated (by some so-called experts) out of cuddling your baby.

>When a child cuts himself, don't try to tell him "it doesn't hurt."

>When a child shows jealousy of a new baby, don't, say to him "Johnny loves baby." Give him a little extra attention, let him have a doll to jump on.

>When a child makes a painting, don t ask "What is it" (he may answer "a dog," when it isn't a dog at all). Proper form of question: "Would you like to tell me about what you were doing?"

>Music often conquers children's fears. To get a child to jounce on a board, a Broadoaks teacher pipes a jouncing song (see cut).

Not the least useful part of Mrs. Baruch's book is a list of poems, stories, music for children. Mrs. Baruch believes that children should not be told fairy tales until they are able to distinguish between facts and fancies, should never be frightened. Taboo for young children: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Miss Muffet.

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