5 ms·

My partner is a doctor mainly working in early childhood prevention. When she did some recent training on evidence based early childhood care (which is surprisi

My partner is a doctor mainly working in early childhood prevention. When she did some recent training on evidence based early childhood care (which is surprisingly rare, most early childhood care is not really evidence based), she learned a couple of things that she said she really would like to have known when we had our children were born. One is that you get told a lot about averages. So commonly parents get told that babies (should) sleep around 12h a day. What nobody talks about is the variance. There are babies who sleep only 8h a day and others who sleep close to 20h. So you end up with parents who thing they need to get their child to sleep, even though the child is absolutely not tired. Also a lot of people talk about not giving children too much impressions/stimulation. Which is also generally false, giving them stimulation will actually make them tired and sleep better, they also learn stuff. Obviously you don't do that just before or when going to bed.

badcppdev 4y ago
More anecdotally there really seems to be a problem with many 'shoulds' involved in childhood care. I have a good friend who was given contradictory instructions by health care professionals while they were still at the hospital with their child which developed into a situation where 'professionals' were chastising the parents for following instructions correctly. This is a real bind for parents who don't have easy access to second opinions or are in a position where the health professionals misuse their position of authority to prevent discussion of situations.
bruce343434 4y ago
> early childhood prevention What does this mean?
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Lol, I didn't realise how this sounds, I was essentially combining preventive care (measures to prevent disease...) and early childhood care.
seanc 4y ago
My brother gave me some great meta-parenting advice; "You're going to get a lot of parenting advice, but keep one thing in mind. Those folks aren't telling you how to raise your kid. They're telling you how to raise _their_ kid. But you're not raising their kids, you're raising you're kids. So take all that advice with a grain of salt."
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  especially if you already can see the results of their parenting (which is maybe 50% of the equation, genes making up the rest at least in early years) and its not that great. Spoiled, overcompetitve, addicted to phones/tv, eating junk food, no good hobbies, clueless and aimless about life and what they want and so on. I have been at times few of those, and while I love my parents overall, they could have done more in some parts instead of me figuring out everything by myself, took damn too long to realize there are almost no limits to what one can achieve and how to get there
importantbrian 4y ago
Oh man. We just recently had our first and this is so frustrating. So much parenting advice is old wives tales and just so stories. I found people like Emily Oster really helpful for this, and the APA guidelines are generally pretty helpful. But there are so many things where the available research is just bad. Ours sleeps quite a bit more than the average and at first it really concerned us until we talked to our pediatrician and they were like no that falls within the normal range. As an analyst I found it really frustrating that the distributions don't get published.
saiya-jin 4y ago
One problem I see with many many parents, usually the smarter ones, is desperate need to have 100% control. To know 100% what to do, how to react, understand everything. Failure rate should be 0%, since then you are a failure as parent, human and so on. Like parenthood is some github project that can always have 100% test coverage and predictable behavior. The concept of 'science doesnt know yet', 'everybody is unique so this may not be valid for your child' is a sign of incompetence from the doctor, so they just keep searching for one that will sound more confident. In all this, emotions take the steering wheel. And emotions only are bad advice giver in any topic. What you describe is something we with my wife have known and heard continuously from every doctor ever involved with our children. Dont stress out if its behind average curve in this or that. Sometimes they behave completely out of boundaries. If they sleep more/less so be it, there is a reason for that and no I can't tell you what it is. I get the emotion of wanting the best and normal for a child damn too well, but real chaotic life happens and some folks cant grok that. One can see it in this thread so damn well - people having their pet theories, ignoring current science level, being damn sure their opinions are the correct ones. Instead of patiently admitting that we dont know yet, there are some theories and some findings but thats it.

badcppdev 4y ago

More anecdotally there really seems to be a problem with many 'shoulds' involved in childhood care. I have a good friend who was given contradictory instructions by health care professionals while they were still at the hospital with their child which developed into a situation where 'professionals' were chastising the parents for following instructions correctly. This is a real bind for parents who don't have easy access to second opinions or are in a position where the health professionals misuse their position of authority to prevent discussion of situations.

bruce343434 4y ago

> early childhood prevention What does this mean?

cycomanic 4y ago
Lol, I didn't realise how this sounds, I was essentially combining preventive care (measures to prevent disease...) and early childhood care.

seanc 4y ago

My brother gave me some great meta-parenting advice; "You're going to get a lot of parenting advice, but keep one thing in mind. Those folks aren't telling you how to raise your kid. They're telling you how to raise _their_ kid. But you're not raising their kids, you're raising you're kids. So take all that advice with a grain of salt."

saiya-jin 4y ago
especially if you already can see the results of their parenting (which is maybe 50% of the equation, genes making up the rest at least in early years) and its not that great. Spoiled, overcompetitve, addicted to phones/tv, eating junk food, no good hobbies, clueless and aimless about life and what they want and so on. I have been at times few of those, and while I love my parents overall, they could have done more in some parts instead of me figuring out everything by myself, took damn too long to realize there are almost no limits to what one can achieve and how to get there

importantbrian 4y ago

Oh man. We just recently had our first and this is so frustrating. So much parenting advice is old wives tales and just so stories. I found people like Emily Oster really helpful for this, and the APA guidelines are generally pretty helpful. But there are so many things where the available research is just bad. Ours sleeps quite a bit more than the average and at first it really concerned us until we talked to our pediatrician and they were like no that falls within the normal range. As an analyst I found it really frustrating that the distributions don't get published.

saiya-jin 4y ago

One problem I see with many many parents, usually the smarter ones, is desperate need to have 100% control. To know 100% what to do, how to react, understand everything. Failure rate should be 0%, since then you are a failure as parent, human and so on. Like parenthood is some github project that can always have 100% test coverage and predictable behavior. The concept of 'science doesnt know yet', 'everybody is unique so this may not be valid for your child' is a sign of incompetence from the doctor, so they just keep searching for one that will sound more confident. In all this, emotions take the steering wheel. And emotions only are bad advice giver in any topic. What you describe is something we with my wife have known and heard continuously from every doctor ever involved with our children. Dont stress out if its behind average curve in this or that. Sometimes they behave completely out of boundaries. If they sleep more/less so be it, there is a reason for that and no I can't tell you what it is. I get the emotion of wanting the best and normal for a child damn too well, but real chaotic life happens and some folks cant grok that. One can see it in this thread so damn well - people having their pet theories, ignoring current science level, being damn sure their opinions are the correct ones. Instead of patiently admitting that we dont know yet, there are some theories and some findings but thats it.