Paint Eaters

If your child is slow with building blocks, but quick on tantrums, he may be a lead eater. Many a parent knows that baby should not be given toys glorified with lead paint. But not all parents realize that children thwarted in this respect may start chewing lead paint off windowsills and other places. (Parents make a mistake when they carefully repaint cribs with lead-containing paint.) And not many doctors realize that one consequence of the plumbic passion in children may be stupidity. Last week doctors and parents learned the worst from an article in the American Journal of Diseases of Children, by Dr. Randolph Kunhardt Byers and the late Elizabeth Evans Lord, Ph.D., of Boston.

Years ago Dr. Lord had a hunch that there was more to lead poisoning than anemia, constipation, paralysis, loss of appetite, nervous disorders and deposits of lead in the long bones and along the gums. She noticed that some lead-poisoned babies differed psychologically from normal babies, patiently traced the effects in the school careers of 20 children, of whom 18 had been paint eaters.

All but one child, Dr. Lord discovered, were school failures. Only five had normal I.Q.s, and four of the five were so erratic that they could not learn easily. Most of the other ''children were so stupid (I.Q. 69 to 96) and ill-behaved that they had to repeat classes, attend special classes or even give up school entirely. One little girl bit people just to see them bleed, and was expelled from school for dancing on the desks and the piano.

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