Lamenting the Lack of Science in Parenting

I assume most people who read this know me, and know I write software. I really like thinking in terms of code, because it’s unambiguous, and there’s an answer to almost every problem.

Parenting? Not so much.

Most people don’t realize that things that they see babies do, well, they had to be taught to do that. Eat from a bottle? Have to teach them that. Suck on a pacifier? Have to teach them that. Stop sucking on a pacifier? Have to teach them that.

Sleep through the night? Yep, taught. Go to sleep without crying? Taught. Doesn’t hit you in the face (most of the time)? Taught.

The problems come up when it’s time to teach those things. Take, for example, sleeping. There are several different ways to teach a kid to go to sleep. You can abstain, and just feed them until they’re big enough that they sleep through the night (our niece was lucky enough to get this, I’m pretty sure she went to 18 months until the parents changed methods out of necessity). You can go in at increasing timed intervals – The Ferber Method (Nate) – to comfort the child. You can sit in the room and try to comfort from the corner. You can ignore them by turning off the monitor – the Extinguish Method (Evie, after a failed Ferber attempt).

I imagine a lot of kidless people will say that the right thing to do is to wake up with them until they’re ready to sleep through the night. Good for you, and let me know how that works out when you’re going on your 6th month (or 180th consecutive night) of bad sleep.

Of course, whatever choice you make, you worry. If you get up with the kid forever, are they going to have attachment issues? If you turn off the monitor, are they going to have separation issues? Will this affect their growth? Will they turn to drugs at 14 and run away, never to be seen again until they’re 22, wanting drug money and another fix, if you give in and give them ice cream before the last bite of chicken?

(Also, random aside, I never entertain plausible tragedies for my kids. I only think of outlandish ones, convince myself that they’ll happen, and then act accordingly. I won’t drive with my trunk open with kids in the car for this reason, because I know a ladder will fly off the top of a truck and slam the back seat and squish my kids in horrendous ways.)

Discipline approaches cause me similar anxiety. We’ve decided that we will put Nate in time out for anything that we consider to be dangerous or extremely antisocial. For everything else, we raise our voice and talk sternly. Touch a knife, go to time out. Hit, go to time out. Throw something that isn’t a ball, go to time out. But are we over-using timeout? Is spanking really as bad as I think it is? Is yelling effective? Am I damaging Nate’s ears? His ego? His appreciation of acceptable conversational volume?

This lack of science has some parents turning to garbage for advice, and you know what sucks? I have no evidence that they’re doing anything wrong. The number of studies that actually link different child rearing tactics with long term efficacy and child success? Tiny & apocryphal. Instead, for example, parents will do “parenting studies,” and it’s based on, say, the Bible, interpreted through the author’s perspective of how it should be applied. (tl;dr: get the belt).

And, what I think is worse, is that because there isn’t good science for lots of problems that all of us run into, parents will ignore the science when it’s available. Jenny McCarthy has got parents thinking that they know better than doctors, the FDA, the CDC, and the WHO. Those vaccines have toxins! They’re evil! Don’t give them to your kids, they’ll cause autism!

Even though they won’t, and study after study has shown no link between the two.

So, in short, I think I misplaced my kid instruction manual, and if any of you out there have a spare one because you’re on your 18th kid or whatever, we could really use one.

Happy Birthday, Natertot!

Two years ago today, Sara gave birth to Nate. It was a long labor (18 hours), and by the time he actually popped out, it was late (about 10:30PM).

He came out a screamer, which Sara’s mom thought was funny, but we were too tired to appreciate it. Lucky for us, that first night he slept great, barely crying, and providing no clues of the horrible 4 months in store for us.

After that first night, Nate was up randomly throughout the night, didn’t sleep well during the day, and only did more to develop his lungs. He can still let out a piercing scream if you try to put him in his chair and he really, really doesn’t want to eat dinner because OH MY GOD DID YOU KNOW THERE’S AN OUTSIDE TO THIS HOUSE? WITH GRASS?

He’s since developed into one of my favorite people. In the last two years we’ve helped teach and watched him learn to eat, crawl, walk, talk, dance, splash, throw, run, jump, laugh, give hugs, demand kisses, request cake at every meal, bark, meow, squawk, ribbit, tickle, knock on doors, and sleep in his own bed.

He absorbs a lot more than we give him credit for, and every day one of us asks, “how did he know that?”

Happy birthday, Natertot. Hopefully this year we figure out how to use a toilet and get those sentences down. Cause and effect might come shortly after. Who knows.

And the obligatory birthday party pic:

Nate’s Wedding Debut

Two weekends ago, Nate and I were lucky enough to be in Cookseys’ wedding (that’s right, it’s plural now, because there’s two of them). I was a groomsman; Nate was the ring bearer.

Traveling with little kids is tricky. Nate moved into a big kid bed only about 2 months ago, so going to a hotel room or a friend’s house (thanks Meezies!) is scary to him. You have to coax him into going down for the night, and naps are really hard to get at all.

Since the wedding was at night, we decided we’d have to work to tire him out, hopefully give him sufficient time for a nap, and then he’d be good at the wedding. So we took him swimming.

The pool was freezing. Sara didn’t stay in very long, and opted to hang out with Evie, poolside, instead. This meant that I spent an hour with Nate in the pool, so I was his hands-down favorite for the day.

Our plan for tiring him out was moderately successful, and the little guy slept for about an hour as we drove in a loop through a neighborhood in Irving. About the time he woke up, it was time to head to the chapel to get dressed and take pictures.

I don’t think anyone’s quite sure when it happened, but after a while in the chapel, Nate decided he needed to be attached to me. If I put him down, he was grabbing my leg and crying. He didn’t want crackers or a toy, just his daddy.

This would all be fine, except for the quickly arriving ceremony, where I’m supposed to be standing up at the chapel – sans Nate – and he’s supposed to walk up to me and then walk back to hang out with Sara. As we were called to get into positions, Sara decided to take the Natertot off by himself so he could get over some of his poorly timed separation anxiety.

So after we all walked up to the front of the chapel, it was time to let Nate loose. Sara released him from the back of the chapel, and the poor guy looked lost. After he was about ten feet in, I walked in front of Cooksey to try to persuade him to come up front. He noticed the hundred and fifty or so people in the room, and saw me at the altar, but was so tired and upset (though not crying) that he just drifted up to the front.

He finally got to me, and I picked him up, and everything was good again. But (being anal and thinking that, you know, everyone should be in their positions), I motioned Sara over to the side of the chapel so she’d be able to take Nate into the pews.

That didn’t work.

At all.

Nate freaked out, began to scream, so I did as Sara directed and picked him back up. I ended up holding him through the bridal procession and the opening prayer and message.

It was a Catholic wedding, so they were nice enough to let the bridal party sit during most of the ceremony. So I was sitting in the pews and, to the left of me, brushing up against me, was Nate, kicking his legs back and forth and bouncing and pointing to the stained glass windows to tell me that they’re bright. Meezy was sitting to Nate’s left, so he’d occasionally get the leg pat and the same message.

It was great. What started out stressful (this is just how I think, I can’t help it) turned into one of my favorite memories of Nate so far, with us both in tuxes and him eating goldfish and holding his newly acquired tiger from the Fort Worth Zoo while bopping his head back and forth to church music. Every time he noticed something he’d try to tell me about it, and I’d have to say “shhh,” but I was laughing the whole time.

There’s not that many years of that kind of innocence and unadulterated affection, and I’m thrilled that I wasn’t too dumb to keep from looking up and noticing it.

Here, for the record, is how cool we looked:

All dressed up, ready to go