“I just know too much for my own good.”
It wasn’t haughty. It was true.
My wife uttered it looking Sprocket over one evening. Sprocket wasn’t her usual self, and the Unflustered Mother, who works in healthcare delivery, has seen firsthand when things go sideways with kids. It’s hard putting that out of mind when it’s your own. Your mind goes to dark places.
As with most every other sector in life, new parents are newly, as far as generations go, awash in data about our kids. Some significant percentage of this, especially early on, comes in the form of growth charts. Some of it’s pretty helpful. Some of it is not.
You can know too much for your own good.
At some point in your process of parenthood you may be given growth charts with your child’s data plotted on it; these growth charts might be for height, weight, or something else. There will usually be lines drawn on the growth charts, representing the tracks of particular centile. For instance, the middle line on the growth charts denote the 50th centile and would represent the progress of the mythical Average Child.
My advice: Take these accursed things with a lot of salt. Not a grain, like a whole salt lick you put out for cows. Here’s why:
There is no such thing as an average child.
Even if yours manages to ring in exactly at the 50th centile on a particular day, they won’t stay there. They’ll either have a sandwich or blast their diaper when they get home and fall off the fence. Your kid sits on a spectrum for every quantifiable thing in their life, from height to weight to limb length to the number of times they sneeze in a day. Those things may or may not have any actual significance, despite the worrisome-looking plots on growth charts.
Average is not the goal.
The way these growth charts are presented, though, makes you think it is. It seems like the standard for being ‘normal.’ And so when you hear your child is at the 19th centile for weight or the 77th centile for head circumference or the 29th centile for height, a sense of anxiety can creep in. What’s wrong with my kid? Why are they so stunted? What made them so massive? Did my partner sneak cigars and bourbon in pregnancy? I thought the car smelled stale that day!!
Stop, before you hurt yourself. Average is not the goal!
If you’re going to entertain these blasted things, just aim for the meat of the Bell curve (or whatever plot it uses). Some parents get thrown into a tizzy if their little Mortimer isn’t ringing in right at fifty. But logically, somebody’s got to populate each centile on growth charts, and it’s not like you’d consider 99% – or even the slim majority – of kids you see out and about “abnormal” in these immediately observable metrics.
Get wise counsel when interpreting raw data.
Data points do not all bear equal weight. Sometimes something can be “outside normal limits” or above or below “average” and mean little to nothing when it comes to how you manage a particular situation with your kid. When you’re poring over something, make sure you’re formulating questions, not conclusions, and then pin down your pediatrician (or whomever applies) and make sure you’re not coming to the wrong conclusions.
With a little tot, a little’s a lot.
Kids can slingshot on these growth charts in a hurry. After all, when a baby’s not that big to begin with (particularly if your child is low centile on growth charts for weight), it doesn’t take much to change the math. Tater dipped under the 20th centile for weight on his growth charts, and we got in our own heads about it and revamped our formula regimen. It apparently coincided with natural gain, because he skyrocketed up the growth charts to the low 80s.
Growth charts can send you into an analysis spiral if you’re not careful.
(Image courtesy David Schwarzenberg)
We saw he was getting more solid but hadn’t weighed in a while, and after we did the math, the Unflustered Mother and I looked at each other and went, “Oh. Oops.”
He continues to be a bit of a chunk…we may have to start calling him Spud instead.
A picture’s worth a thousand growth charts.
I got a calming bit of wisdom about growth charts from a friend who happens to be a family practice physician with over 20 years of experience:
The question with these growth charts is whether, if you were a stranger to your baby, a quick glance at them would make you say, “Oh, something’s wrong with that baby.”
If not, it’s probably not a big deal.
It doesn’t hold for absolutely everything, but generally, first impressions count for more than an entire ream of growth charts. In particular, pay attention to the observations of people familiar with your child but who don’t see them every day. They’re in the best position to notice drop-offs and spikes from one encounter to another – as direct caregivers, parents can sometimes be too close to notice trend changes.
With the tools we have access to now, you can absolutely overwhelm yourself in data about your kids with a handful of keystrokes. Be informed, stay aware, but stay most vigilant about the actual needs of your kid, not the ones and zeros of the data they produce. Calm down your baby, calm down yourself, and remember you’re doing okay.
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This post was previously published on THEUNBOTHEREDFATHER.COM.
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