Many parents who have just become parents especially hope that their children can develop faster than other children, such as early teething, early walking, etc., in fact, this is completely unnecessary, the body’s development is the water to the dawn, and sometimes the plucking will even cause harm to the child. Many parents want their babies to be “super ordinary” growth and development, and think that their children eat more than other babies, grow fat, grow fast is good. Some parents think their 6-month-old child looks like a 9-month-old and are proud of it, or that a 9-month-old child needs to wear the clothes of a 15-month-old to fit, which makes parents feel very honored. Whenever faced with these parents, I really can’t bear to tell them that this excessive growth is not a sign of health, but rather a sign of a great possibility of obesity in the future. The World Health Organization has repeatedly emphasized that obesity and growth retardation are both malnutrition. If a child grows too fast, you should consider whether the child has too much protein, too much food, too little activity, etc.; if the growth is slow, you should consider whether the child does not eat enough, poor absorption and digestion, etc. If the growth rate is too fast or too slow, you should consult your doctor and regulate your child’s physical development under the guidance of your doctor according to the growth curve. Using the growth curve as a blueprint, a longitudinal and continuous understanding of the child’s growth trajectory is necessary to make a reasonable assessment. There is a group of children who are growing too fast and another group who are growing slowly, and these children need to be attended to. Each child has his or her own growth and developmental history, and parents’ desire to see their children grow up is understandable, but it is not beneficial to the child to “pull out the seedlings and help them grow up”. The earlier your child teats, the better. Comparing the similarities and differences between children’s growth and development is a daily “job” for parents, both consciously and unconsciously. The early and late teething of children is a topic of great interest to parents. In reality, the teething process of each child is not comparable. Teething starts at different times, the order of teething varies, teething causes different reactions, and the number of teeth varies among infants of the same age. There is also no set sequence of teething, and the pace of teething varies from child to child. Before evaluating a child’s teething, parents must have a comprehensive understanding of the entirety of their child’s growth and development, starting with a longitudinal understanding of recent changes in indicators such as length, weight, and head circumference; tooth eruption, fontanelle reduction; and numerous developmental conditions such as gross motor development, small motor development, eating and feeding behavior, and language. If your child’s other growth indicators are normal, there is no need to worry even if teething is slow. Premature intervention in the child’s gross motor development It is common for sister-in-laws and nannies to give children “early infant training” at home, such as: letting a 1-month-old baby crawl on his or her stomach, pushing his or her legs forward; letting a 4-month-old baby learn to sit with his or her hands propped up on the bed; holding the child’s armpits and letting a 1- to 2-month-old baby learn to walk. These are tests to check the neurological development of infants and toddlers, and are performed by doctors on children. For example, at full term, doctors hold the infant’s armpits with both hands and perform a stepping reflex test to understand the neural firing status. Tests like these are not developmental assessments and should not be used as home training programs. Many hospital tests now flow into the home as training programs, which can actually be potentially damaging to infants and children. It is important to emphasize that “sitting, standing and walking” are not learned, but are things that come with development. Helping children “learn” to sit, stand, and walk too early can cause unnecessary damage to the spine and lower extremities. Some rotundity is the result of premature standing. Remind parents not to be “fooled” by “professionally trained” nannies. Observe your child’s development against the World Health Organization’s timeline of gross motor development for infants and toddlers, which will make parents much saner. For children’s gross motor development, parents are advised to follow the principle of letting nature take its course and give their children some help and push when they are willing to crawl, stand, walk, etc. If necessary, appropriate intervention under the monitoring of a professional doctor is sufficient to ensure the healthy growth of infants and toddlers. Never pull the plug for the sake of parental pride. I don’t agree with the use of walkers and other aids to help children learn to walk, standing, walking, running, jumping, are all natural things with development, not “practice” out. And the walker has a wide band placed between the legs, resulting in the child in the walker can not really stand straight, easy to induce the formation of “O” leg. Forcing a child to walk when he is not mature enough to do so can easily cause damage to the skeletal development of the legs and spine. I once saw a 1-year-old normal baby boy who could stand with his heels on the ground naturally, but walked on his toes. Inquiries revealed that the parents had started him on a walker at 7 months of age, and the child had been walking on his toes since then. The infant’s legs and feet and muscle tone were tested to be normal, but habitual toe walking can cause abnormal arch development and leg joints. It is only through repeated manual interventions that they can gradually return to normal. 7-month-olds can roll over continuously, which is quite good. Individual 7-month-olds are able to stand on their own, and those who can move on their own should be rare. At this time let the child stand too early, while in the walker to practice walking, the development of the infant’s spine and legs and feet is not conducive. Then again, the straps placed between the child’s legs in the walker make it possible to walk only with forked legs, not to obtain a normal walking posture. Another parent reported that her 11-month-old baby was walking sideways and wanted the doctor to determine if the child had a brain development problem. It was observed that when the adult led the child’s right hand, the child walked horizontally with the right leg dominant and the left leg supplementary; when the adult led the child’s left hand, the left leg dominant and the right leg supplementary walked horizontally. After careful examination, it was found that he could not actually stand independently, but could just hold the station and push the cart by himself to walk in a normal position. It turned out that the child was walking sideways as a result of parental coercion, because the neighboring child could already walk. The purpose of the checkup was unclear. When a colleague gave a checkup to a 5.5 month old baby, he saw an IQ test and a bone density checklist issued by another hospital for the baby. The first time I heard that a 5-month-old child could have an IQ test, the comment was “They are neither particularly good nor stupid, but are commonly referred to as average ……”. I have also been asked many times by parents why they don’t test their children’s IQ, bone density, or vision for infants. This shows that parents are generally unclear about the purpose of “medical checkups”. They may question the validity of a health checkup without special measurements or blood draws. In the opinion of many parents, a comprehensive physical exam should include micronutrient, bone density, and vision tests, while infant feeding and growth assessment, motor development assessment, and other items do not feel like a physical exam because no equipment is involved. Therefore, parents are again reminded that the physical examination of infants and toddlers should include questions about eating and living, growth assessment, physical examination, and developmental evaluation (gross motor, fine motor, language, social). The focus is on communication with parents and working together to develop the next step in parenting, not on giving a bunch of lab reports and prescribing calcium, iron, zinc, DHA and other supplements. Parents should be clear that lab tests are always ancillary and supplements are always a supplement to the diet, not the main component. Pillow baldness is considered a sign of calcium deficiency in children Pillow baldness is a common phenomenon during the growth and development of infants, and many infants will develop pillow baldness after 2 months of age, and there is a tendency for it to get progressively worse. Many parents believe that this is due to “calcium deficiency”. In fact, occipital baldness has almost nothing to do with “calcium deficiency”, but rather with excessive local friction between the pillow and the bed or pillow. Parents who observe carefully will find that there are almost no children with pillow baldness within the first month of life, while infants who sleep flat on their backs will almost always have varying degrees of occipital hair reduction from 2 to 3 months of age – pillow baldness, especially after the first shaving of the occipital hair growth will be relatively slow. This is because after the baby reaches full term, the activity gradually increases, but they cannot sit or stand yet, so they can only lie in bed and turn their heads left and right, and the movement of turning their heads repeatedly in bed increases, which of course rubs the occipital area, so it is not surprising that occipital baldness appears. The more they turn their heads from side to side, the more chances they have to rub their occipital area, and the more pronounced the occipital baldness becomes. Generally, after the age of 1, as the baby gets stronger and can sit, stand and walk, the chances of the scalp being rubbed will decrease and the hair will grow out again. 2 to 3 years later, occipital baldness disappears. Children who are used to sleeping on their backs after birth rarely have occipital baldness. Do not link occipital baldness to calcium deficiency. In addition, parents are used to linking calcium deficiency to their children’s excessive sweating, crying at night, late teething, fast or slow growth, deviations in appetite, mild ectopia of the rib cage, rattling of joints when moving, and recurrent eczema. In fact, whether it is breast milk, powdered formula, or nutritious rice flour and other supplementary foods, all contain calcium, so as long as you ensure that infants and children consume 400 international units of vitamin D per day, there is no need to worry about calcium deficiency.