Highly Trained Child Experts or Just New Parents?
Jesse Lock, MDJune 22, 2009
My wife and I thought we were highly trained child experts. Between us, we have twenty years of medical training and practice, most of which has been focused on pediatrics. We have read the books, taken the psychology classes, and solicited advice from our relatives. As it turns out, we have no idea how to raise children.
This cruel fact was revealed to us a mere 12 hours after bringing our daughter home from the hospital. We had provided her with food (the all-natural variety), shelter, clean undergarments, warm swaddling blankets, Calderesque mobiles, and lullabies to boot. She was unimpressed, and let us know it at the top of her little lungs. At four in the morning. Exhausted to tears, we stood over her crib listening to her cry, powerless to do anything.
Although our capacity to alter our daughter's mood has improved since then, we still have plenty to learn. Last month we brought our daughter in for a well-child checkup. These visits are a little bit awkward, because we always have genuine questions, but don’t want to sound like fools in front of the pediatrician. At the end of the visit, the doctor surprised us by pointing out a plateau in our daughter’s weight curve. It showed that she had not gained any weight in three months. We were politely put on probation and invited back in a month to show that we could, in fact, feed our daughter appropriately.
This came as quite a blow. We had been so focused on preventing childhood obesity, that we had failed to provide our healthy child with adequate calories. We are asked our professional opinion on any number of parent quandaries daily, and we've always had an answer: vaccination (do it), breastfeeding (try to do it), circumcision (no medical reason to do it). As parents, the answers don't come as easily. Now we understand why sometimes our earnest advice in clinic goes unheeded; we're not the only voice parents hear.
Parenthood is a continual exercise in humility. Despite all of our training, we are constantly conflicted about the best approach to everything, from how to feed her in the morning to when to put her to sleep at night. Consulting the experts--the grandparents--yields equally contradictory results. We expect you feel the same. All we can say is this: take comfort in the confusion. If there is no optimal way to raise children, and there isn't, then all we can hope to do is our best. Most of the time our instincts are going to be correct.
Dr. Spock (the pediatrician, not the Vulcan) is still right: you know more than you think you do.
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