What are the differences between parenting and child health?

Simply put, parenting is the sum of all-dimensional nurturing actions that cover the entire growth stage of a child from birth to adulthood, while children’s health is a core branch of parenting that focuses specifically on achieving physical and mental status and disease prevention and control. The two are included and included, but the differences in core goals, implementation scenarios, and practical logic are actually quite obvious.

Last week I met the mother of a 3-year-old boy. The baby had just been in kindergarten for half a month. She chewed her nails every day until the nail bed bleeds. Her first reaction was that the baby was lacking trace elements. She hurriedly took her to the pediatrician for a full blood test. The vitamin and mineral indicators were all normal. The doctor only said to supplement more dietary fiber and more. There were no other suggestions for basking in the sun, but the baby still nibbled. Later, he came for a parenting consultation. After ten minutes of chatting, he found out that the problem was separation anxiety when he entered the kindergarten. Before, his grandma took care of him 24 hours a day, but suddenly he was in a strange environment all day. The baby couldn't express his emotions, so he bit his nails to release them. You see, if this matter is only approached from the perspective of children's health, at most it will be to provide some protective advice after checking for physical problems to avoid nail bed infection. But in the context of childcare, it is necessary to adjust the farewell ceremony when picking up and dropping off, bringing a familiar comfort towel to the child into the kindergarten, and teaching the child to say "I miss grandma" instead of chewing nails. All aspects must be taken into consideration.

Nowadays, many parents hold the view that "the core of parenting is to focus on children's health." Especially before the age of 3, as long as the baby eats well and sleeps well and rarely gets sick, it is considered to be well-raised. This statement actually has a certain basis in reality. The growth priority of small-month-old babies is originally tilted towards physiological development. Nowadays, many community child care departments will also teach parents the skills of burping, coaxing to sleep, and adding complementary foods during health follow-up. The boundary between the two is indeed blurred in the younger age group.

To use an inappropriate analogy, if we compare raising children to planting a peach tree specifically for fruiting, children's health is responsible for monitoring whether the tree has insects, whether the leaves are yellow, and whether there is a lack of water and fertilizer. As long as there are no diseases or disasters and the tree can grow normally, it will meet the standard.； There are many things to consider when raising children, such as whether to plant in the sun or in the shade, whether to build a shelf to prevent lodging, when to prune and thin the fruits, whether to dig ditches for drainage during the rainy season, and even whether the peaches that will be produced will be sweet or large, all of which need to be planned in advance.

I have been a front-line parenting coach for almost 7 years, and I have met too many parents who confuse the two. I once had a 2-and-a-half-year-old child who could only speak repeated words. The parents took him to the hospital to find out that his hearing, intelligence, and oral development were all normal. They thought he was "delayed in speech" and just waited. As a result, When I came for consultation, I discovered that the adults at home usually play with their own mobile phones. When talking to the baby, they only use short instructions such as "eat" and "drink water". They rarely even read stories to the baby. This is not a problem of children's health at all. It is entirely a developmental lag caused by insufficient input in the language environment.

Of course, the two are never separated. Children's health is the bottom line of all parenting actions. If the child gets sick every three days, no matter how scientific the parenting concept is, there is no room for implementation. However, if all the problems encountered in parenting are always classified into the health category, it is easy to miss many deep-seated problems hidden behind behaviors and emotions.