What are the differences between parenting and child health?

The core difference is that parenting is a family-led, personalized parenting practice that covers all dimensions of a child’s growth, while children’s health is a public health and clinical medical category that is supported by a professional system and focuses on the normal development of children’s physical and mental functions. There is a lot of overlap between the two, but the core goals, implementation subjects, and judgment standards are completely different.

I have been working as a child care worker in the community for almost six years, and I have seen too many parents confuse the two things. Last month, I met a pair of young parents. Their two-and-a-half-year-old baby could only speak refrains. The two of them had been blaming themselves at home for almost half a year, saying that they were too busy at work to spend time with their baby, which was a failure in parenting. When I came to the outpatient clinic for an evaluation, it was found that it was just a simple language delay. After two months of professional intervention, they caught up with the progress of their peers. In fact, the "not spending enough time with the baby" they struggled with before was a reflection on parenting, but the baby's lagging language development itself is an evaluation issue in the field of child health, and cannot be judged by "whether the parenting is done well or not."

Of course, this does not mean that the two are completely separated. You usually give your baby a regular schedule, teach him to wash his hands before meals, and run and jump with him for half an hour every day. These "daily parenting" in your eyes actually hit the key points of intervention in children's health, so many times people will unconsciously equate the two. But when it comes to borderline issues, the difference becomes immediately apparent. The topic "Should physical cooling of a child with a fever" that was very hot on the Internet a while ago is a typical example: Some people say that my baby does not object to rubbing himself with warm water and feels much more comfortable after wiping himself. This is a useful parenting experience I have tried. Some people also brought out the clinical guidelines for children and said that routine physical cooling is no longer recommended. If he does it, he will easily catch a cold and worsen his discomfort. In fact, the essence of the debate is to confuse the personalized choice of parenting with the professional standards of children's health - if your child accepts it and uses it without any harm, then it is completely fine as your family's parenting method. However, if this method is recommended everywhere as universal children's health advice, or even said that physical cooling is enough without taking antipyretics, that is a complete cross-border.

The industry has been discussing the connection between the two. One group believes that scientific parenting guidance should be incorporated into public services for children's health, and parents should be provided with correct feeding and nursing knowledge from birth, so as to reduce parenting misunderstandings from the source. The other group believes that parenting itself is a very personal matter, and each family's rhythm and educational philosophy are different. As long as the child's growth and development indicators are within the child's Above the health passing line, unified standards should not be used to require all families to raise their children. For example, some families are accustomed to letting their children go to bed later and eating fried chicken once a week. As long as all physical examination indicators are normal, there is no need to go up and down the line and say that the family's "parenting is unqualified" and "harming the child's health." There is no absolute right or wrong between these two views, and we are still slowly exploring a balanced approach.

In fact, for ordinary parents, there is no need to be too entangled in the academic definitions of the two. They only need to understand one principle: when it comes to children's growth and development indicators and disease-related issues, first seek evaluation from professionals related to child health. Don't blindly search for parenting experience and deal with it blindly.； The rest of the daily parenting, habit cultivation, and character guidance can be done at your own pace, without being kidnapped by various "perfect parenting standards."