What are the differences between parenting and child health

The core difference is actually that the scope and orientation of the two are completely different - parenting is the sum of nurturing behaviors covering the entire life cycle of a child from birth to adulthood, while children's health is not only one of the core goals to be achieved by parenting, but also an independent professional field under public health and pediatric medicine. To put it bluntly, one is "the entire process of raising a child", and the other is "the bottom line that must be observed in raising a child + a discipline that specializes in studying this bottom line."

You usually read picture books to your child for English enlightenment, play Lego games with him to practice concentration, teach him how to communicate with children when he has conflicts, and even take him on trips to gain experience. These are all things in the field of parenting and have nothing to do with children's health. But if your child has a cough when the seasons change, his height has not grown enough to meet the standard range of the growth curve in half a year, or his astigmatism has increased rapidly during the physical examination after entering the kindergarten, then all you have to worry about are children's health-related issues.

This does not mean that the two are completely separated. Many parents tend to confuse the two concepts. This is because nearly half of the details in the parenting process are centered on children's health. When making complementary foods for your baby, you need to add red meat to supplement iron and blood, ensure two hours of outdoor activities every day to prevent myopia, and urge him to wash his hands before meals and after using the toilet and rub his eyes less to prevent infectious diseases. These are not only trivial parenting tasks you have to do every day, but also the daily intervention requirements for children's health.

There are always different voices in the industry regarding the weight of the two. Many doctors in the child health department feel that children’s health should be placed at the absolute core of child care. Early childhood education and character development must come after children eat well, sleep well, and have good health. After all, the body is the foundation of everything; there are also experts in child development psychology. Researchers believe that parenting should not be narrowed down to just ensuring the health of the child. After all, raising a child is ultimately about making him an individual who can independently adapt to society. Physical and mental health, a sound personality, and the ability to settle down and live a life are the ultimate goals. The two sides have been arguing for a long time. To put it bluntly, it is because the two categories are different and their positions are different.

I once met a new mother at a community childcare center. She asked the doctor with a dense early childhood education schedule whether attending five classes a week would be tiring for the baby. The doctor glanced at the schedule and asked directly, "Does the baby sleep enough 11 hours a day recently? Does he choose to eat? Has the mild anemia that was checked last time been compensated?" You see, in the mother's eyes, she is asking about the advantages of parenting. It’s a matter of priority, but the first thing doctors should focus on is the bottom line of children’s health. This is actually the most intuitive difference between the two - childcare is a plan of your own choice that you can adjust the priority according to your own situation and the characteristics of your child. It doesn’t matter whether you want to focus more on studying or playing with your child, but children’s health is a rigid red line that cannot be touched no matter how you adjust the plan.

To use an inappropriate analogy, it is like opening a small flower shop. How to select products, decorate, introduce flowers to customers, and do activities to attract customers. These are the things of "opening a shop", which is equivalent to childcare; and how to ensure that the flowers do not wilt, do not rot, and that the temperature and humidity are suitable and can be kept for a long time. This is not only something to worry about when opening a shop, but it is also part of the specialized field of "fresh cut flower maintenance", which is equivalent to children's health. Doesn't this make it much clearer?