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The problem with parenting is sleep deprivation. And honestly, having a high IQ isn't sufficient for attention to detail, like stirring food. I know it sounds

The problem with parenting is sleep deprivation. And honestly, having a high IQ isn't sufficient for attention to detail, like stirring food. I know it sounds dumb, but I know prominent physics professor personally who had made a cake without eggs... and even when it came out looking funny served it and wasn't until people started eating it did they realize, "Wait... I didn't use the eggs on the counter!" Regarding cough medicine, the issue appears to be effectiveness. Most doctors now recommend honey for babies (older than one) as it actually appears to be as effective. See: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/honey/AN01799 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/honey/AN01799 There have also been studies that show that cough medicine may simple have the placebo effect. Unless there are allergies or other conditions, honey just seems like the better choice.

jerf 16y ago
"And honestly, having a high IQ isn't sufficient for attention to detail, like stirring food." Part of the problem here is that if you type it all out it sounds horrible. In reality, the world is not as dangerous as an Internet debate can make it sound. Type out the full description of what's involved in walking down the stairs and you'll make an emotionally-appealing for banning them ("my god, any one muscle fails to work and you can fall to your death!"), but it has no correspondence to reality. In my judgment, I am not even remotely endangering my kids in the real world. You are welcome to your opinions, but in my opinion turning my judgment over to others is itself not a good judgment. "There have also been studies that show that cough medicine may simple have the placebo effect." Right. Kid goes from a hacking cough that kept him awake for three nights straight to fast asleep (and resumed coughing the next day & night, so "he just got better at the same time" isn't on the table either) and it was all placebo, for a kid who can't even talk yet. Sure. Honey's an interesting thought which I may consider, except that there's no evidence that cough syrup is a problem, except vague nervousness because there haven't been any "scientific studies" on the topic. However I consider the abundant real-world experience that preceded the hand-wringing about it not being "properly" studied to trump it; on the scale of evidence scientific studies are not the highest good, the real world trumps it (which is actually a core tenant of any decent theory of science, any theory of science missing that isn't worth anything), and it was extremely widely deployed for a long time before some people got nannyish about it. If it were noticably bad, we wouldn't have to theorize, we'd know. (At best it can have a small below-the-noise-floor effect; widespread experience can't prove 0 bad effect but it can and does put a rather low upper bound on it.) (In fact I'm rather strongly of the opinion that there are numerous real-world examples in the field of medicine and nutrition in which science has "studied" itself into wildly wrong beliefs that nobody would have taken seriously but for the failures in the scientific process and the misapplication of its authority, and as much as I love science and wish I didn't have to do this, I've really deprioritized science in this area.)
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Part of the problem here is that if you type it all out it sounds horrible. In reality, the world is not as dangerous as an Internet debate can make it sound. Type out the full description of what's involved in walking down the stairs and you'll make an emotionally-appealing for banning them ("my god, any one muscle fails to work and you can fall to your death!"), but it has no correspondence to reality. In my judgment, I am not even remotely endangering my kids in the real world. You are welcome to your opinions, but in my opinion turning my judgment over to others is itself not a good judgment. Stairs are fairly dangerous for some people. Our neighbors child has fallen down their stairs three times, and only on the last one did he even need a trip to the hospital. He'll be fine. And probably between the age of three to 85 he's not in any serious danger of falling again. But that's an aside. The real point is that many of the recommendations may not apply to you. That's fine, don't follow them (especially when it comes to your child... that's one place where you have extreme flexibility). But they are meant to apply to a large population, and I don't think IQ is the best metric to apply to determine if you're in that population. Regarding cough syrups, I suspect you are familiar with the various studies, but I'll pass this along for those that aren't: http://www.cfp.ca/cgi/content/full/55/11/1081 http://www.cfp.ca/cgi/content/full/55/11/1081 From the article: "The US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance program reported that OTC CCM preparations were responsible for 7091 visits to emergency departments (EDs) during 2004 and 2005 in children younger than 12 years old. This represented almost 6% of total ED visits related to medication. Of these cases, 66% were due to unsupervised ingestion. A quarter of cases were due to properly administered medications with undesired outcomes. Eight times more children presented with effects of medication errors related to OTC CCMs compared with other medications. While children aged 2 to 5 years represented the largest group in this study, children younger than age 2 had the highest rate of adverse reactions.8 Providing further evidence of the ED burden related to OTC CCMs, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 1519 patients younger than the age of 2 were treated in American EDs in 2005 for problems related to OTC CCMs. The true prevalence of OTC CCMs in pediatric illness might be underreported. Physicians might not consider the role of such medications in various presentations, such as apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). Pitetti et al reported 13 out of 274 (5%) patients presenting with ALTEs had evidence of OTC CCM use on toxicology testing.10 This raised concern about the potential role of OTC CCMs in ALTEs and led the authors to conclude that toxicology screening should be performed in all cases of ALTEs. " In fact I'm rather strongly of the opinion that there are numerous real-world examples in the field of medicine and nutrition in which science has "studied" itself into wildly wrong beliefs that nobody would have taken seriously but for the failures in the scientific process and the misapplication of its authority, and as much as I love science and wish I didn't have to do this, I've really deprioritized science in this area. Science doesn't have the truth. It has the best theory for the data at the time. But I do think in general that I trust "scientists" more than the mom trying to convince me that SIDS doesn't exist from first principles.
ajays 16y ago
"Most doctors now recommend honey for babies (older than one) as it actually appears to be as effective. " Here's something I don't understand. In some cultures, honey is the _first_ thing they give to a newborn. Out of the womb, into the doctor's hand, and the first thing they give the newborn is honey. I don't know why in the US they prohibit honey.
- georgieporgie 16y ago
  I don't know why in the US they prohibit honey. Because unpasteurized honey can contain botulism spores. It's a small enough quantity not to bother an older stomach, but infants can die from it. I guess pasteurized honey is safe, but doesn't taste very good. My question is: why in the world would you give a newborn infant honey? I can't imagine the logic that says, "hey, a baby just popped out of a vagina, let's get some honey into that sucker, stat!"
  - ajays 16y ago
    In India, it's the done thing. It's done to get the newborn swallowing. Typically, a relative who's in the delivery room dips a finger in honey and applies a little bit to the roof of the mouth (of the newborn). In fact, there's a saying, "I gave you honey" (said by an older person to a young 'un), which means, "I gave you life", which comes from this procedure. Look at the population of India. Do you think the "botulism spores" have caused any damage? Compare the rates of allergy in the US (for instance) and India. When I was in India, I hadn't even heard of something called "allergy". And in the US, it's all around.
    - georgieporgie 16y ago
      Look at the population of India. Do you think the "botulism spores" have caused any damage? Besides the obvious, "YES!", what effect does your statement have on the fact that American babies have died from botulism spores found in raw honey? Have you verified that, of Indian infants who died, all were tested for botulism? I suspect you haven't, and it sounds like maybe you're just ranting about the tangential subject of cleanliness and allergy. But hey, maybe a few dead babies and some hookworm (42.8% infection rate) is better than popping a Claratin.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
Honey is also the best cough medicine for adults, especially mixed with lemon juice and decongestant essential oils. Cough medicine is generally to be avoided unless you're trying to get high.

jerf 16y ago

"And honestly, having a high IQ isn't sufficient for attention to detail, like stirring food." Part of the problem here is that if you type it all out it sounds horrible. In reality, the world is not as dangerous as an Internet debate can make it sound. Type out the full description of what's involved in walking down the stairs and you'll make an emotionally-appealing for banning them ("my god, any one muscle fails to work and you can fall to your death!"), but it has no correspondence to reality. In my judgment, I am not even remotely endangering my kids in the real world. You are welcome to your opinions, but in my opinion turning my judgment over to others is itself not a good judgment. "There have also been studies that show that cough medicine may simple have the placebo effect." Right. Kid goes from a hacking cough that kept him awake for three nights straight to fast asleep (and resumed coughing the next day & night, so "he just got better at the same time" isn't on the table either) and it was all placebo, for a kid who can't even talk yet. Sure. Honey's an interesting thought which I may consider, except that there's no evidence that cough syrup is a problem, except vague nervousness because there haven't been any "scientific studies" on the topic. However I consider the abundant real-world experience that preceded the hand-wringing about it not being "properly" studied to trump it; on the scale of evidence scientific studies are not the highest good, the real world trumps it (which is actually a core tenant of any decent theory of science, any theory of science missing that isn't worth anything), and it was extremely widely deployed for a long time before some people got nannyish about it. If it were noticably bad, we wouldn't have to theorize, we'd know. (At best it can have a small below-the-noise-floor effect; widespread experience can't prove 0 bad effect but it can and does put a rather low upper bound on it.) (In fact I'm rather strongly of the opinion that there are numerous real-world examples in the field of medicine and nutrition in which science has "studied" itself into wildly wrong beliefs that nobody would have taken seriously but for the failures in the scientific process and the misapplication of its authority, and as much as I love science and wish I didn't have to do this, I've really deprioritized science in this area.)

kenjackson 16y ago
Part of the problem here is that if you type it all out it sounds horrible. In reality, the world is not as dangerous as an Internet debate can make it sound. Type out the full description of what's involved in walking down the stairs and you'll make an emotionally-appealing for banning them ("my god, any one muscle fails to work and you can fall to your death!"), but it has no correspondence to reality. In my judgment, I am not even remotely endangering my kids in the real world. You are welcome to your opinions, but in my opinion turning my judgment over to others is itself not a good judgment. Stairs are fairly dangerous for some people. Our neighbors child has fallen down their stairs three times, and only on the last one did he even need a trip to the hospital. He'll be fine. And probably between the age of three to 85 he's not in any serious danger of falling again. But that's an aside. The real point is that many of the recommendations may not apply to you. That's fine, don't follow them (especially when it comes to your child... that's one place where you have extreme flexibility). But they are meant to apply to a large population, and I don't think IQ is the best metric to apply to determine if you're in that population. Regarding cough syrups, I suspect you are familiar with the various studies, but I'll pass this along for those that aren't: http://www.cfp.ca/cgi/content/full/55/11/1081 http://www.cfp.ca/cgi/content/full/55/11/1081 From the article: "The US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance program reported that OTC CCM preparations were responsible for 7091 visits to emergency departments (EDs) during 2004 and 2005 in children younger than 12 years old. This represented almost 6% of total ED visits related to medication. Of these cases, 66% were due to unsupervised ingestion. A quarter of cases were due to properly administered medications with undesired outcomes. Eight times more children presented with effects of medication errors related to OTC CCMs compared with other medications. While children aged 2 to 5 years represented the largest group in this study, children younger than age 2 had the highest rate of adverse reactions.8 Providing further evidence of the ED burden related to OTC CCMs, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 1519 patients younger than the age of 2 were treated in American EDs in 2005 for problems related to OTC CCMs. The true prevalence of OTC CCMs in pediatric illness might be underreported. Physicians might not consider the role of such medications in various presentations, such as apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). Pitetti et al reported 13 out of 274 (5%) patients presenting with ALTEs had evidence of OTC CCM use on toxicology testing.10 This raised concern about the potential role of OTC CCMs in ALTEs and led the authors to conclude that toxicology screening should be performed in all cases of ALTEs. " In fact I'm rather strongly of the opinion that there are numerous real-world examples in the field of medicine and nutrition in which science has "studied" itself into wildly wrong beliefs that nobody would have taken seriously but for the failures in the scientific process and the misapplication of its authority, and as much as I love science and wish I didn't have to do this, I've really deprioritized science in this area. Science doesn't have the truth. It has the best theory for the data at the time. But I do think in general that I trust "scientists" more than the mom trying to convince me that SIDS doesn't exist from first principles.

ajays 16y ago

"Most doctors now recommend honey for babies (older than one) as it actually appears to be as effective. " Here's something I don't understand. In some cultures, honey is the _first_ thing they give to a newborn. Out of the womb, into the doctor's hand, and the first thing they give the newborn is honey. I don't know why in the US they prohibit honey.

georgieporgie 16y ago
I don't know why in the US they prohibit honey. Because unpasteurized honey can contain botulism spores. It's a small enough quantity not to bother an older stomach, but infants can die from it. I guess pasteurized honey is safe, but doesn't taste very good. My question is: why in the world would you give a newborn infant honey? I can't imagine the logic that says, "hey, a baby just popped out of a vagina, let's get some honey into that sucker, stat!"
- ajays 16y ago
  In India, it's the done thing. It's done to get the newborn swallowing. Typically, a relative who's in the delivery room dips a finger in honey and applies a little bit to the roof of the mouth (of the newborn). In fact, there's a saying, "I gave you honey" (said by an older person to a young 'un), which means, "I gave you life", which comes from this procedure. Look at the population of India. Do you think the "botulism spores" have caused any damage? Compare the rates of allergy in the US (for instance) and India. When I was in India, I hadn't even heard of something called "allergy". And in the US, it's all around.
  - georgieporgie 16y ago
    Look at the population of India. Do you think the "botulism spores" have caused any damage? Besides the obvious, "YES!", what effect does your statement have on the fact that American babies have died from botulism spores found in raw honey? Have you verified that, of Indian infants who died, all were tested for botulism? I suspect you haven't, and it sounds like maybe you're just ranting about the tangential subject of cleanliness and allergy. But hey, maybe a few dead babies and some hookworm (42.8% infection rate) is better than popping a Claratin.

WiseWeasel 16y ago

Honey is also the best cough medicine for adults, especially mixed with lemon juice and decongestant essential oils. Cough medicine is generally to be avoided unless you're trying to get high.