The differences and connections between parenting and children’s health

Parenting is the sum of all parenting decisions and behaviors carried out by caregivers around the growth of children. Its essence is a personalized "action path".”； Children's health is the complete state of children's physical, psychological and social adaptability, and is one of the "core goals" with unified objective standards. The core difference between the two is that the attributes and evaluation systems are completely different, and the connection is highly dynamic and inter-embedded - there is no effective parenting that is divorced from the bottom line of health, and there is almost no child health that can be maintained for a long time without relying on scientific parenting.

Many people tend to confuse the two. In fact, clarifying the differences first can save a lot of detours.

If you think about it, the evaluation criteria for parenting are completely personalized: parents who believe in behaviorism are used to setting rules with rewards and punishments, while parents who believe in humanism value more empathic responses. Some families focus on free-range parenting and let children play as they please, while some families focus on quality education since childhood. You can't say which one does not count as parenting. As long as it adapts to the situation of your own family and does not harm the child, it is a reasonable choice. But children's health is different. It has global hard indicators: WHO's growth and development curves, psychological and behavioral screening standards for each age group, recommended nutritional intake, and the developmental threshold of the visual spine. These will not change depending on what parenting philosophy you believe in. I met a mother at the child care clinic a while ago who insisted on the so-called "European and American natural parenting" and refused to give her child vitamin D supplements. She said that foreign doctors did not allow vitamin D supplements. As a result, the child was diagnosed with early stage rickets, cried all the time at night, and had severe pillow baldness. This is a typical example of individualized parenting choices being placed above objective standards of health, without clear boundaries between the two.

But if you forcefully split these two things into two skins, problems can easily arise.

We are no longer in the era of "being healthy if you are not sick". How can the three-dimensional health standards proposed by the WHO be separated from the details of daily parenting? I once had a little patient with allergic rhinitis. My parents always thought that the child had weak immunity, so they took various imported supplements every day, but the rhinitis still occurred every month. Later, I told them not to take supplements blindly, but to adjust their parenting habits first: iron the sheets and quilts with hot water above 60 degrees once a week to remove mites, wash the nose with saline every morning and night, wear a mask when going out, and don't always say in front of the child, "Why are you having rhinitis again?" With these simple parenting adjustments, the child has not had rhinitis in more than half a year. The previous habit of rubbing his nose and blinking his eyes has disappeared. Even his previously introverted temperament has become much more cheerful.

In fact, we can see the consensus in different fields: Western medicine for child care emphasizes the quantitative management of nutrition, sleep, and exercise, traditional Chinese medicine for pediatrics emphasizes "to keep children safe, three points are hunger and cold", and the positive discipline school emphasizes the impact of emotional value on health. The paths are very different, but the essence is to support the bottom line of children's health by adjusting parenting actions.

Let’s talk about a controversial point that has been particularly hotly debated recently: Will chicken babies affect children’s health?

The two sides were quarreling fiercely. Some people boasted that their children study three sets of papers every day and are tall and versatile. Some people said that the children's short-sightedness, depression, and scoliosis are all caused by chicken babies. In fact, there is nothing absolutely right or wrong? The core thing is whether you take health as the bottom line when making parenting choices. It’s okay if you want your children to learn more, but can you guarantee 10 hours of sleep and 2 hours of outdoor activities every day? Can you catch your child when he is upset instead of just saying "I am doing this for your own good"? If you can do all of these, Chicken Baby is just a personalized choice for your family, and no one can say you are wrong. ； But if you take up sleeping time just to write two more sets of papers, or if you scold your children just to force them to practice piano, then you have misdirected the goal of parenting and put the cart before the horse.

In the five years I have been working in children's health management, I have seen too many parents go to extremes: they either turn parenting into a metaphysics, spend tens of thousands of dollars on sky-high parenting classes, and impose standard answers regardless of their children's physique and personality.； Either you make health a dogma and stare at the growth curve card percentile every day. If you are only 1% off, you will be so anxious that you can't sleep all night, and you can't wait to give your children supplements every day.

To be honest, it's really unnecessary. Parenting is like the hands you hold your children while they walk. You can choose how hard you hold your child, how fast or slowly you walk, and which way you go. ； Children's health is like a curb, a boundary that you cannot step on. Just don't go into the ditch. As long as your child can run and jump, loves to laugh and make noise, is one centimeter shorter than others, and knows two less ancient poems, it really doesn't matter.