What are the differences between parenting and child health?

Simply put, children's health is the core bottom line and important goal dimension that must be maintained in the parenting process, while parenting is a systematic parenting practice that covers the entire cycle of children's growth. The two are essentially the relationship between "goal anchor" and "action set", with obvious differences in boundaries and emphasis.

Not long ago, I met a new mother in a community parenting salon who was squatting in a corner and crying. She said that every day when she opened her eyes, she stared at her child's height and weight curve and stool characteristics. She would suffer from insomnia if it deviated slightly from the reference value, and felt that she had "failed in parenting." This is actually a typical scenario where many people confuse the two, mistaking the indicators of children's health for the entirety of parenting.

According to the WHO's clear definition, children's health is not just the absence of disease or weakness, but that the three levels of physical, psychological, and social adaptability are in good condition. There are relatively clear quantitative standards, such as the growth and development curve percentile of children aged 0-6, the score of the ASQ developmental screening, and the social adaptation situation after entering kindergarten. These can be objectively evaluated, which is equivalent to drawing a clear safety line for parenting. If it is below this line, timely intervention and adjustment are required.

But the scope of parenting is much broader. There is no unified standard answer, and there are no absolute quantitative indicators. For example, if your child likes to draw and paint, you take him to paint outdoors two afternoons a week. This does not directly correspond to any health indicator, but it can satisfy his interest and needs. ； Your child is having trouble with a good friend. You squat down and teach him how to communicate and express his emotions well. This is not an assessment item in a certain health screening, but it can help him slowly learn to deal with social relationships. ； Even if you stay in bed with your baby for half a day on weekends and sit on the sofa together eating snacks and watching cartoons, it cannot be said to have any "positive value", but it is also a daily parenting routine for you and your child.

There are always two different voices in the parenting circle. One is that all parenting actions must make way for the health of the child. I have met a parent before whose child particularly likes balance bikes. However, the parent is afraid of falling and breaking bones, or that strenuous exercise will affect his growth, so he refuses to sign up for classes, even if the child has to watch the railing for half an hour every time he passes by the training ground.； Another voice thinks that the core of parenting is to give children a rich enough experience, as long as they are healthy and not seriously ill. I have seen a parent take his 4-year-old child to participate in parent-child activities before, staying up until 11 or 12 o'clock every day to go to bed, and often eating casually on the road, saying that "more knowledge is more important than anything else." In fact, the essence of these two disputes is that the boundaries and connections between the two are not clear. Children's health is the bottom line. You can't just break the bottom line in pursuit of rich experiences, but you can't stick to health indicators and turn parenting into raising children based on tables, which deprives children of the possibility of growth.

My best friend's baby had a severe milk protein allergy. Before he was two years old, he drank deeply hydrolyzed milk powder. He was not allowed to touch even ordinary cakes. This was a rigid requirement for health. She really kept a close eye on the baby during that time and never let the baby touch snacks containing breast milk. A tolerance test after the baby was over three years old showed that it was already allergic. After the allergy was over, the first thing she did was take her baby to eat the strawberry cream cake she had promised him long ago. She also signed up for a baking class that her baby had been talking about for a long time. Now her baby often makes cookies by herself to feed the children in the kindergarten. This not only does not delay her health, but also gives her enough room to grow according to her preferences.

In fact, there is no need to deliberately separate the two, but don't use the set of indicators of children's health to judge the quality of everyone's parenting. After all, there is no standard answer to raising children. It is good to stick to the bottom line of health and slowly raise children according to their temperament.