Gaby To put it simply, the relationship between the two is "face" and "core anchor" - parenting is the sum of all the actions of raising a child from birth to adulthood, ranging from dressing and eating to personality shaping, all in this category； Children's health is a professional field within the scope of pediatric medicine and public health. It is also the basic bottom line that all parenting behaviors must adhere to.
If you sit in the chat room of the mother downstairs in the community, you can feel the difference between the two in less than ten minutes: some people are chatting about "My child doesn't like to say hello to the children recently, should I sign up for a small host class to practice courage?" "I scored 90 points in the last math test, should I add additional practice questions?" These are typical parenting topics. There is no standard answer, and each family handles it differently.； But if someone talks about, "My baby has been coughing repeatedly for half a month, should I check for allergens?" "Is it because he is 85cm short at 3 years old? Is he lacking growth hormone?" This is the professional field of children's health. You will most likely have to find a doctor to give you a clear answer, and you can't just fumble around on your own.
Many parents have a vague sense of the boundary between the two, and even have two extreme perceptions. There are often quarrels on the Internet because of this: One group believes that the core of parenting is to raise the child not to get sick. As long as health is not important, it is equivalent to treating children's health as the entire goal of parenting. This view is not recognized by many child development experts. After all, invisible growth such as a child's social skills, emotional regulation ability, and resistance to frustration are all parts of parenting that must be covered. It cannot be said that a child who rarely gets sick but has low self-esteem and sensitivity every day is considered well-raised, right? There is another group that is just the opposite. They engage in "elite parenting" and take test scores and interest classes every day. They can't even get their children to sleep for 10 hours a day. They lose the foundation of children's health and end up with children who are nearsighted, anxious, and have stunted growth and development. This is completely putting the cart before the horse.
To use an inappropriate analogy, parenting is like taking care of a small yard. You have to consider what flowers to plant, when to water, whether to build a shelf for vines to climb, and even whether to leave a space for your children to dig mud and play. It all depends on what kind of yard you want. There is no unified standard.； As for children's health, you must first ensure that the soil is free of pollution, pests and diseases, and the roots of the plants are strong, otherwise the beautiful flowers will not survive long. I encountered such an example two years ago when I was working as a public welfare guide on child care in the community. In order to help her child stand out in the interview from kindergarten to primary school, a mother arranged a full week of classes for her 5-year-old child, which even took up the time for outdoor activities on weekends. Within three months, the child frequently caught colds and blinked frequently. She had tic symptoms. At first, she was thinking about buying health care products for her baby to improve immunity. However, when she went to the pediatrician, the doctor's first sentence told her to cut down her extracurricular classes in half, make sure she went outdoors for two hours a day and went to bed before 9:30. This was a typical example of her being preoccupied with landscaping the yard and forgetting to loosen the soil and remove insects first.
Of course, the two are not completely separated. For example, if you teach your child to wash hands before meals, not to be picky about food, and to run for half an hour every day, it is not only the cultivation of living habits in parenting, but also the behavioral intervention in children's health. However, the judgment logic of the two is different: whether the parenting method is good depends on whether the child can adapt to it and whether the whole family can sustain it. Your child just doesn't like to eat broccoli. It's perfectly fine to replace it with other green leafy vegetables such as spinach and rapeseed.； However, there are hard standards for children's health, such as height and weight ranges corresponding to age, daily sleep time requirements, and vaccination schedules. These must be met as much as possible whether the child likes them or not.
To put it bluntly, ordinary parents don’t need to make a clear distinction between the two. They just need to remember: in all parenting choices, do not step on the red line of children’s health. The rest should just follow the rhythm of their own children. There is no need to follow the anxious arguments on the Internet.
