Paper sample on the relationship between parenting and children's health

The compatibility of parenting behavior with children’s innate characteristics and the environment is the core variable that determines the three-dimensional health level of children’s physical health, mental health, and social adaptability. There is no one-size-fits-all “optimal parenting plan.” Only parenting choices that are in line with the actual family and match the individual needs of children can minimize health risks and support children’s long-term development.

I have been engaged in clinical work in child health care for 12 years and have seen too many real-life cases with strong contrast. Last month, I met two children who had just turned 4 years old in the clinic. Their height and weight were stuck at the 25th percentile of the development curve, but their status was very different: one was strictly enforced by the mother's "scientific feeding standards", and the daily milk, staple food, and vegetables were accurate to the gram; If you try any highly processed snacks, the child will cry at mealtimes, be constipated all year round, and subconsciously bite his nails, with anxiety written all over his face. The other child is in a dual-income family and has no one to take care of him. He usually eats whatever his grandparents eat, and occasionally eats spicy sticks from the adults. Apart from a slight zinc deficiency, he has nothing wrong with him. When he sees the doctor, he takes the initiative to hand him a sticker, and his personality is as bright as a little sun. You see, the same development indicators fall in the same range, and the health status brought about by different parenting logics cannot be generalized at all.

Controversy about parenting methods has never stopped in the parenting circle, and there is no absolute right or wrong. One group is the "precision group" who believes in evidence-based basis. Everything must adhere to the guideline standards, from the order of adding complementary foods to the selection of social scenes, and they must try to avoid risks. The supporting data of this group is indeed hard: monitoring data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 shows that Families that receive standardized parenting guidance can reduce the prevalence of common diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia in infants and young children by 41%, and the growth retardation rate by 28%. For special children who are premature and have congenital allergies, the benefits of this kind of refined intervention are much higher than that of ordinary children. But the "natural parenting" advocated by the other school is not unreasonable. Many parents have gone to the extreme level of precision and raised their children like flowers in a greenhouse. Problems will occur if they are exposed to the external environment. Research released by Peking University Sixth Hospital in 2022 also supports this: Children who have been strictly restricted in their range of activities and dietary choices for a long time have an anxiety disorder and sensory integration disorder that are 2.7 times more likely than ordinary children.

I encountered a typical example in the past two years. A child was born with a dust mite allergy. The mother followed the online guide and threw away all the stuffed animals at home. She used a dust mite remover to vacuum the bed three times a day. She did not allow the child to play in the sand or touch pets. She even took as much time off as possible from group outdoor activities in the kindergarten. As a result, the child suffered from asthma three times in the first month of kindergarten. In fact, the child suffered from asthma three times in the first month of kindergarten, and the attacks were more frequent than those of allergic children who did not take special protection. Later, we adjusted the plan and did not need to completely isolate allergens. We took the child to the park to play in the sand twice a week, slowly increasing it from 10 minutes to 1 hour. We also kept the old stuffed animals that he had held since childhood at home, so we did not need to disinfect them every day. After half a year, when we checked again, his allergy indicators dropped by more than half, and his asthma symptoms were less frequent. To put it bluntly, no one is wrong, but they just don't meet the needs of their children.

Many people always think that parenting only affects physical health. In fact, the psychological impact is deeper, and by the time it becomes apparent, it has often become a chronic disease. I previously followed up on a second-grade primary school patient who suffered from chronic stomach pain. After three gastroscopy tests, no organic problem was found. Later, after talking to his parents, I found out that his parents forced him to answer questions at home every day. He would not let him eat if he could not score 95 points in the test. They would criticize his learning problems as soon as he got to the dinner table. As time went by, he developed neurological stomach pain, which was not cured after taking stomach medicine for half a year. Later, his parents agreed not to talk about studies during meals and took him out for cycling one day a week. In less than three months, he no longer had stomach pain. This kind of health problem cannot be solved by medical treatment at all. The logic of parenting must be changed first.

Oh, by the way, many parents now especially like to benchmark the KPIs of Internet celebrity parenting bloggers. If other people's children can recite 100 ancient poems at the age of 3, they think their own children are stunted and rush to take their children for intervention. In fact, there is no need. The WHO's child development standards originally leave nearly 30% room for individual differences. As long as it is within a reasonable range, being slower is not a problem at all. I once had a little patient who couldn't speak complete sentences at the age of 3. His parents were so anxious that they took him to a rehabilitation facility every day. After careful investigation, they found out that the adults at home usually played their own games and no one talked to the child. Later, the whole family agreed to set aside an hour every day to put down their mobile phones and chat with him and read picture books. Within half a year, the child could chatter non-stop and greet people when he saw him.

I have been doing childcare for so many years, and my biggest feeling is that parenting is never a math problem. There are no standard answers, and there is no need to copy other people's experiences. The health of a child has never been measured by how much taller and heavier he is than others, or how many more skills he knows than others, but whether he is willing to jump out and play when he wakes up every day, and is willing to come to you as soon as possible when he is wronged. Of course, if you are not sure, asking a pediatrician or child care doctor in a regular hospital is more effective than watching ten parenting videos.

References

[1] Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Research report on the relationship between parenting status and health of children aged 0-6 years old in China [J]. Chinese Journal of Child Health, 2023, 31(05): 489-493.

[2] Peking University Sixth Hospital Children’s Mental Health Center. Cohort study on the correlation between parenting restrictive behaviors and children’s emotional disorders [J]. Chinese Journal of Psychiatry, 2022, 55(12):1087-1092.

[3] World Health Organization. Guidelines for raising children aged 0-5 years (2022 revised edition) [R]. Geneva: World Health Organization Press, 2022.