All the parenting studies are not helping

I recently saw this and so appreciated it! There are so many studies out there and with this modern age of access to everything we get constant headlines with new information about how we might be failing as parents. And you just can't keep up. One study says kids who breastfeed are smarter, then another one comes out that says there is no difference, and then another one comes out that discredits the second study, and so on and so forth. D's mom recently visited and we were talking about the differences in parenting now vs parenting 40 years ago. In my mother-in-laws words: "We just didn't know as much back then". But she wasn't saying it's all good. It's good, for example, that we know now how helpful seat belts are. But sometimes having information isn't so helpful. Sometimes it's just a lot of noise to sift through and to try to figure out.

We all can't be experts on everything. We all can't go to medical school and become pediatricians, and child psychologists, and education specialists. But we all have access to these studies and information, but without the education to know if we really have all the info. Nobody has time to know everything! Yet we try to make sense of it all and the challenge is not to trust a headline as a truth.

I've chosen to trust my pediatrician about what's best for my daughter, but of course I also have to trust my instincts. I'm also always working to tune out all the noise so that I can trust. I didn't breastfeed as long as I would have liked, but I have to turn off the part of me that thinks about that study I read that the longer you breastfeed the smarter your baby. If I look at the Pepper, I think she's amazing and plenty smart (already running circles around me)! And playing the "what-if" game on if she would be an IQ point or 2 smarter if I had different priories is futile. Or the new study that kids of stay-at-home moms are healthier. There is no reason for me to worry that my completely healthy daughter (who has not yet even had a fever) isn't as healthy as maybe she would be if I didn't work. But it still takes effort to not worry. Its the nature of modern parenting.

Let's all try to tune out the noise and trust our chosen circle of support, and ourselves!

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