What is the difference between parenting and child health?

The core difference is that the scope and action orientation of the two are completely different - children's health is a clear goal-oriented and professional standard-oriented field, while parenting is a dynamic practice process that includes children's health goals and covers all dimensions of child growth.

I usually provide offline companionship services for parent-child care, and I often go to community child care centers to conduct research. Last week, I met a new mother who had just upgraded. She was holding her 6-month-old baby and asked the doctor. He said that the baby woke up three or four times at night in the past week, and whether he was suffering from calcium deficiency or developmental delays. The doctor reviewed the feeding records she brought, measured the baby's height, weight and bone density, and looked at the lower front teeth that had emerged. He told her that it was a normal sleep regression during the teething period. She just needed to adjust not to play too excitedly before going to bed, and to gently pat and comfort her when she woke up at night instead of picking her up immediately for breastfeeding. She would be able to adjust slowly. This is a typical problem in the field of children's health: there is a unified clinical evaluation scale, all judgments and interventions are centered around "whether the child's physical and psychological development is within the normal range", the conclusions are verifiable, and the intervention paths are supported by clear professional guidelines.

But this mother left the clinic and squatted in the corridor for ten minutes, scrolling through her cell phone. She began to worry again: The doctor just said that complementary food can be added. Should I buy imported organic complementary food puree or get up early every day and make it at home? When I return to work after my maternity leave next month, should I ask my mother-in-law to help with the care or send her to a high-end childcare near home? When the child reaches three years old, should he enroll in an early childhood education class at the gate of the community that focuses on immersive English? These questions all fall within the scope of parenting. No professional guide can give you a standard answer. You have to adjust it based on your family's financial situation, the acceptance of family members, and even your child's own personality preferences. Children's health is only the bottom line for making these choices - -For example, when choosing daycare, you must choose one that has formal qualifications, has a standard teacher-student ratio, and does not force the baby to sleep for two hours. When adding complementary foods, you must avoid those with high sugar and salt content that do not meet the standards for infant and young child feeding. Other than that, there is no absolute right or wrong choice, only whether it is suitable for your family.

Nowadays, many parents tend to confuse these two concepts, and two very representative extreme views have emerged: One group believes that the entire core of parenting is to focus on children's health, and other personality development and interest enlightenment are all IQ taxes speculated by businesses.； The other group regards health as an insignificant part of parenting. In order to catch up with their studies, they casually shorten their children's outdoor activity time and force their children who have just entered elementary school to sit for two or three hours to answer questions. I talked about this phenomenon with the city's maternal and child care director before. She laughed and said that she has been working on children's health for 20 years, but she feels that health is never the end of parenting, but the foundation to support children to explore the world. Her own child had severe dust mites when he was a child. She has an allergic constitution, so she spent almost two years adjusting her diet and accompanying her son to do outdoor sports step by step. The purpose was not so that the son would "never get sick", but so that the son could play his favorite skateboard with peace of mind, without getting out of breath after just two steps or getting hives when touching dust.

To put it bluntly, it's a bit like opening a small community cafe. Children's health refers to the rigid standards of fire protection, sanitation, and business licenses. You must meet the standards before you can open it.； As for parenting, it all depends on your own ideas as to what style of coffee you want to serve in your store, how much to price it, and whether you want to hold a free weekly movie viewing party. There is no unified template. As long as you don’t touch the red lines of safety and compliance, you can do whatever you feel comfortable with.