Summary of experiences on parenting and children’s health

There is no one-size-fits-all standard solution. The core of all actions is to focus on the individual characteristics of the child and find a dynamic balance in the three dimensions of physical health, psychological development, and social adaptation. Any approach that pursues the ultimate perfection and copies the template will be counterproductive in the end.

It’s true that I can’t just stand up and talk without having back pain. When my oldest son first introduced complementary feeding, I was a standard “guideline believer.” I strictly followed the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics and dared to try any highly sensitive food. As a result, the baby’s face broke out with eczema, which was so itchy that he couldn’t sleep at night and scratched his face with blood marks. I rushed to several hospitals in a hurry. At that time, the advice given by Western medicine pediatricians was to conduct allergen screening first and avoid all high-sensitivity foods for 3-6 months, and then gradually add them after immune tolerance is established. The traditional Chinese medicine pediatricians who often visited said that children’s spleen and stomach transportation abilities are inherently weak. Adding raw and cold fruits such as strawberries and kiwi fruits too early will only aggravate the dampness and coldness, but will slow down the progress of allergy recovery. The two sides seemed to have different opinions, so I didn’t get hung up on who was right and who was wrong. I tried to combine it: I avoided things that were clearly sensitive to milk and dust mites in the allergen test. I also temporarily stopped cooling fruits. I cooked some warm apple water for my baby to drink every day. I occasionally did pediatric massage to replenish the spleen and stomach. Within three months, the eczema was completely gone, and it didn’t recur much later.

Many parents now particularly like card data. I have made this mistake before. When my second child was in the middle class of kindergarten, he was 2 centimeters shorter than his classmates. I was so anxious that a handful of hair fell out. I tried to feed him calcium solution, VD supplements every day, and even bought the "gain height milk powder" spread online. As a result, the baby became constipated and had a bad appetite for half a month. Later, when I went to get child care, the doctor looked at the growth curve and poured cold water on me: As long as it is within the normal range of 3%-97%, 70% of height is determined by genetics. For the remaining 30%, sleeping for 10 hours and exercising outdoors for 2 hours a day is more effective than eating ten cans of calcium supplements. I stopped taking all the supplements dubiously, and ran around the neighborhood with him for half an hour after school every day, turning off the lights on time at 9:30 in the evening. In less than half a year, the height of the child has directly jumped to the middle level of the class, and the food tastes delicious. I used to chase him to feed him, but now I can eat a large bowl of noodles by myself.

In fact, not only physical health, but also the impact of psychological state on children is often underestimated by many parents. In the past two years, "Happy Education" and "Getting Started" were very fierce. When I started Happy Education, my eldest child didn't teach anything in kindergarten for three years. As a result, in the first month of the first grade, I couldn't even read the homework questions. I came back every day and cried that I couldn't keep up. I followed suit and couldn't help yelling at him several times. As a result, the baby frequently complained of stomachache during that period. I went to the hospital for a checkup and found no organic problems. The doctor said it was functional abdominal pain, which is related to emotional stress and stress. I later figured it out, how can there be any black and white way of education? My friend’s child naturally loves to read, and he can read picture books by himself at the age of 3, so it’s no problem to learn early. My child can’t sit still, and if he is forced to read 1,000 words, he will easily get tired of learning. So I spend 20 minutes a day with him to read comic-style popular science books, and he gradually learns. By the second grade, he has kept up with the group, and now he has become a popular science expert in the class.

Oh, by the way, a point that many people tend to overlook: parents’ own emotional stability is the first prerequisite for their children’s health. I was anxious before. Everything about my baby didn't look right. I was scolded for being slow to eat, and scolded for not putting away toys. The air pressure in the house was low every day. During that time, both kids were sick frequently, and they caught cold and fever just two weeks later. Later, I adjusted myself. After get off work, I would sit downstairs for 10 minutes to sort out work matters, and then go in to spend time with the baby. The requirements were also relaxed: wipe up the food if it is spilled, correct the homework if it is wrong, and occasionally just sit at home and watch cartoons if I don’t want to go out. It’s okay. Don't tell me, after the atmosphere at home became more relaxed, the number of times my child got sick was reduced by more than half, and even his previous habit of biting his nails got better.

Nowadays, when friends ask me about my parenting experience, I never give them direct advice. I always ask first, "How is your baby doing?" After all, every baby is a different seedling. Some like sun and some like shade, and the amount of watering must be different. There is no need to follow other people's templates. Stick to the general direction: don't feed blindly, stay up less late, play with you more, yell less, and you really don't have to worry too much about the remaining details. The baby can happily jump around, which is better than anything else.