Father here. I agree.

So much of the parenting advice I see dips into micromanaging and min/maxing to an almost paranoid degree. Just learn about what could kill them in the first year and avoid that. Really, six months and under is the true window for SIDS with freak occurrences. Definitely be on the lookout for any poisonous cleaning products While you’re at it and put them high off the ground.

The pro parents who did it all before you are super annoying. I’ve had to politely listen to questionable advice many times. I much prefer people like you who get it. You got to trust your instincts about your own kids. There is broad advice which applies to everyone but everyone’s kid is a little different from the norm as well and as a parent we know our kids better than anyone else.

Trusting your instincts is how intergenerational cycles of abuse and neglect happen. If you were raised well, then yes, otherwise you have to work consciously to reject your harmful instincts.

Well, sure but I’m advocating to trust your instincts in terms of their general health and well-being. Abuse or gross neglect are entirely different matters. Abusive parents are probably not going to be online doing heavy research on what is the optimum thing to do as a parent. They probably just feel tired and bitter about their children, or worse.

A lot of modern, new wave parenting to me feels an awful lot like meddling in natural child development. Like too much of a good thing, helicopter parenting.

I'm talking about hardly visible emotional abuse and neglect, not some extreme criminal activity that only really bad people do. For example, not loving your child and going through the motions of looking after it without really caring. Or inconsistently responding to it with dismissal sometimes and kindness other times so it can't really trust you and feel secure. That can lead to harmful attachment styles as an adult.

This is a broader issue, one where it is so extremely unlikely that you will make progress you have to take a step back and think about what the realistic goals for you actually are.

That came out way more depressing than I expected and I'm not sure what conclusion I was going to arrive at.

Yes. I am a victim of intergenerational abuse. My grandmother consistently beat my father to force obedience. Then he and my mother consistently beat me and my siblings to force obedience. I even believed that it was the best way to raise children. Many years later, I realized it is abuse and a source of emotional problems.

Sorry to hear that. There were a lot of best practices just a couple of generations ago that we see as harmful today and I sometimes wonder how humans could have existed for 100,000 years and only in our lifetimes finally realized how to not abuse kids.

Perhaps they really were the best ways to get some kind of outcome like an aggressive man for fighting wars or protecting himself from violence or a hard worker able to tolerate tedium and not be too aspirational despite the personal emotional cost. Or perhaps even the emotional problems wouldn't exist if the rest of society was compatible with those ways?

I think most of our ancestors were miserable. That didn't stop them from having children.

Hey, wait, what is the advice to avoid drowning, other than not leaving them alone? Is there some subtle hazard I’m unaware of?

Not leaving them alone is enough, but to make people actually follow the rule, it is useful to tell them that kids are easily able to drown even in unbelievably small amounts of water, and also in situations where drowning seems almost impossible.

Also, when kids (and especially babies) are drowning, it's usually not obvious. In adults when carbon dioxide levels increase past a threshold a lot of physically obvious manifestations begin, such as thrashing, driven by the autonomic system. And before then there'll often be coughing and other signs of distress, autonomic or otherwise. In small children this doesn't happen. Countless parents have literally watched their child drown before their very own eyes. A coworker almost lost a kid this way--the instant the kid accidentally inhaled water while playing in a hot tub, they immediately went lights out. Fortunately their other, older child was also playing in the hot tub and attentive. The parents had both briefly gone inside, proving the warning that it only takes seconds for tragedy to unfold.

I'm synthesizing here, but AFAICT a catatonic-like state is typical of small children in severe distress. (Anybody remember the Moth Radio Hour story about the man whose kid immediately went catatonic when they were surprised by burglars? IIRC, he was told this response was common of young children.) So if a baby suddenly inhales a large amount of water, they may immediately go from normal to non-responsive (possibly retaining muscle tone?), even though they're not yet physiologically drowning, and even though with lesser amounts of water they would normally cough and cry. This [lack of] behavior may be related, if indirectly, to the phenomenon of SIDS. An infant's physiology hasn't developed the various mechanisms to jump start respiration when something goes awry. (One unproven hypothesis behind SIDS is that an infant's breathing is partly moderated and even induced by their caretaker's breathing, such that if they can't hear, feel, or otherwise sense--some theories implicate carbon dioxide levels--another's breathing their own rhythm may be disrupted, or if disrupted less likely to resume. Thus co-sleeping may be better for infants, reducing SIDS risk, ceteris paribus--i.e. absent counter-indications, such as a parent who smokes or drinks.)

So with babies not only do you have to watch them to make sure they aren't presently, visibly drowning, you have to make sure (to some reasonable, mentally healthy degree) they couldn't possibly be drowning--i.e. they didn't or couldn't have inhaled water; that they're active, attentive, etc.

I learned something today, and ours is about to turn 4 months. None of this was communicated to us, probably because it's expected that you pick up most of this tribal knowledge via, pre-covid, other parents in your socio-age group.

We attended an infant cpr class via zoom, learned nothing. We at least got the message about SIDS, but the lack of tribal knowledge in the first six weeks was pretty brutal as first-time parents.

My first two kids (and especially the first one) we left hospital with a feeling of "why on Earth would they just let us walk out with a baby? That seems crazy, we have no training at all in this!" The feeling was incredibly surreal with my first one.

For my third, they made us watch a series of videos on a range of topics over about 2 hours, which made me think "Yes, of course, this should be the absolute minimum required for a new parent".

The process for getting authorized to care for helpless adults (nursing assistant) requires months of study and a thorough exam. I think children will have better quality of life when all parental guardians pass a thorough parenting skills exam before they are allowed to care for children.

There should be some... parenting Wikipedia... or something like that. But then I imagine how various people would write there all that contradictory advice. :(

We had great parenting lessons, and more importantly, got a phone number "if you have any question or problem, call us".

My wife had a problem breastfeeding: it hurt her, a lot. She asked the nurse what to do, and the nurse was like "dunno, happens to many mothers, use a formula if the problem persists". We used that phone number instead, a lady came to us "show me how you feed the baby... ah, I see, the baby is under a wrong angle, here is how you should do it instead". Problem solved. Lucky us, but less lucky all the mothers who asked the same nurse, received the same answer, and didn't have a friend on the phone. (It also makes me wonder about the utter lack of curiosity with some people. Like, the nurse probably keeps getting the same question regularly for years, and she can't even, dunno, use google, or ask a colleague?)

I recommend trying a child carrier with a little baby. Not the giant type where you wear a huge metallic construction with the seat for the baby, but the ones made from cloth, where your child is on your body, vertically, facing you. -- You can walk around your house, carrying your child with you, and both of your hands are free. You can walk outside in winter, and don't have to worry whether your child is sufficiently dressed. You feel your child's heatbeat and breath, so you don't worry about SIDS. When the child doesn't want to sleep, you can take a walk outside, and maybe read a book. (Then the tricky part is removing the child from the carrier without waking it up. I learned to lay down on my back, unfasten and open the carrier, roll over and leave the child on the bed; still only about 50% success rate.)

Never ever leave them on the bed alone even if they are sleeping and you have cushions around them. They will still find a way to roll and fall off the bed (happened to us). 9 times out of 10 it will be fine but I've read horror stories online so be careful.

Never leave them for even a second in the bath (drowning) and never leave them alone with food (choking).

It sounds so obvious, until your dog gets his head stuck in the ficus tree planter and you can hear him running around, destroying your entire living room. You have to resist that initial urge to go help him until you've cleaned up the 16 blueberry puffs you've been coaxing your child to eat.

This is like saying "don't speed if you don't want a speeding ticket".

Yes, you can use absolute qualifiers like "never" and "always" to stupid proof general advice to a greater extent than you can with phrases like "common sense" and "where reasonable" but that doesn't automatically make the advice any more useful..

I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off and other reasonable allowances like that. Of course I'm not gonna stop and watch TV with an infant in the sink. And if traffic's going 85 I'm going 85 but I won't be the first person going 85.

It's not like that. Everyone knows the risk of a speeding ticket comes with speeding.

Not everyone knows that it takes 20 seconds for a baby to drown in a bathtub.

> I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off

Completely making up numbers here, say you do this for every 20-minute bath, your child bathes 1x/day, and they fall over in such a way that they might drown were you not there once every 10000 baths. Doing the math... 5% chance of being absent at the critical moment * 1/10000 baths * 365 baths/year = 0.18% chance of death in first year of life.

You may be willing to take that risk, but given the 4 million infants born each year in the US, that would be 7,300 infant deaths from drowning in the bathtub annually -- so as a societal rule, saving 7,300 infants a year seems worth the use of the word "never".

The actual number of deaths attributed to bathtub drowning each year is much lower; I'm glad the vast majority of parents appear to take "never" to heart.

You forgot to multiply by the likelihood that the timer (or some other "too small to take the baby out" distraction) goes off mid bath.

When you say "the vast majority of parents appear to take 'never' to heart" I can't help but suspect that missing factor is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

I assumed that it happened once per bath, but this is very context- and parent-dependent too.

If you don't perceive of a 1-minute absence as a problem, presumably you are much more likely to step out of the bathroom.

Not really, it's just the simple advice not to let go of them or leave them is correct, common sense and important in that case.

If you don't know just how little water it takes to drown in, then the risk isn't obvious. A newborn that can't easily move and roll over can drown face down in an inch of water if they manage to get into that position, which even gentle sliding around in a baby tub can facilitate.

Have some advice from this experienced dad with 12 kids: the baby tub is a poor way to clean a baby. The water instantly gets disgusting from poo or whatever it is you are trying to remove, and then that gets all over the baby. Plus the baby tub costs money and takes up space. It's more clutter to trip over in the dark.

Babies can be washed in sinks, with the drain open and the water running. (don't let them kick the water temperature control though) Babies can be washed in a normal shower, held in the arms of a parent.

We did the sink when they were really little, then switched to the big tubs that sit on top of the sink because the kids loved it, the warm water, splashing, or just vegging out as we poured warm water through their hair. But yeah, plenty of times it was a double bath: The 1st one, and then the second one where we got them clean after draining pee water.

Generally agree, except I’m not sure there is a bright line between the obviously-worthwhile precautions you mention and the paranoid overprecautions that might themselves carry harm.

Seatbelts... yes. Choking first aid... yes.

Healthy eating, talking to them frequently... probably?

Lots of sunlight and fresh air... maybe?

About to be a parent and the main conclusion I've come to is that being consistently reliable, caring and responsive to any distress the baby has in the first 6-9 months is number one more important thing to keep in mind. Those physical health things are either obvious or hardly matter but making a kid who grows up to experience a lifetime of emotional suffering due to poor attachment styles or mental health problems is extremely common and bad. The world is filled with these walking wounded who can't function well, can't form stable relationships, commit suicide, become drug abusers, etc. Far more common than SIDS or choking to death.

I'm curious, does your conclusion preclude sleep training, which frequently involves some amount of "crying it out"?

Yes, it precludes it in that early age range. I was taught this in parenting class and read it in a library book. I've never heard anyone advocating for leaving your baby alone to cry when it's that young except as a "least bad" choice if the parent is losing control of themselves and might shake the baby in frustration/anger. It's probably different when they're older but I'm not up to that yet.

To be honest, the baby’s most important resource is the parents themselves. Sunlight and fresh air is good for that at least. Similarly, let somebody else take care of your baby every now and then so you can connect with your partner!

There’s also a right and a wrong way to install a car seat. Some local fire departments will check your installation for you.

For myself, the risk SIDS didn't even enter my calculus. (I confess I am a little skeptical that it exists at all.)

Regardless, I perceived the emotional bonding with the mother & father to far outweigh anything else and so we shared our bed with our children until they were perhaps 1 year old or so. And even after, they moved into their own small bed just a foot from ours in the same bedroom for another year or so.

I guess that was my "instinct". Although we received a crib as a gift, it just sat in another room, empty.

I very much believe SIDS is a real thing. I also think that many cases of SIDS are babies being smothered by soft cloth that bunches up and constricts their breathing and by accidentally smothered by their parents while they're deeply asleep. When kids are small I think co-sleeping is a great thing (where you have a small basinet or something similar next to your bed where you can reach out and touch your baby but they're safe from accidental crushing/smothering.

I knew someone - a co-workers sibling - who lost a baby that got stuck between couch cushions while sleeping. And they told everyone it was SIDS. I don't know if the cause of death was actually recorded as SIDS, though.

I remember listening to an NPR show where a doctor talked a lot about this, and how all of the shaming of co-sleeping might contribute. She claimed a non-obese, non intoxicated parent sleeping with the child on a bed isn't all that dangerous. That same situation on a couch is deadly. But the messaging is more abstinence than harm reduction, so all many people hear is "co-sleeping is dangerous"

Consequently, exhausted parents accidentally fall asleep on the couch holding their babies when they would have been better off just lying down and napping.

If you know the cause it is not SIDS, by definition, right?

> accidentally smothered by their parents while they're deeply asleep

This seems unlikely. 10% of babies share a sleep surface with parents, up from 6.5% in 1993, yet SIDS deaths are down over the same period:

https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20180212/baby-suffocation-de...

https://www.cdc.gov/sids/data.htm

Suffocation from co-sleeping is NOT SIDS.

https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20180212/baby-suffocation-de....

Perhaps the parent comment is referring to a theory that parents reporting the situation around baby deaths as unexplained in order to deny blame or guilt for having placed the baby in the situation. There can't be much worse so it wouldn't surprise me if in the traumatic following days the recall isn't factual and unbiased.

Since the nineties they started advise parents that all infants should sleep on the back, which reduced SIDS a lot [0]. But it means that it is is very hard to draw any conclusions at all about other factors.

[0] https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/research/science/backsleep...

Not in all countries. In my country we lay them on their side supported by a rolled towel. We make sure they equally lay on both sides. Sleeping on the back will give them a flat head.

> Sleeping on the back will give them a flat head.

I'm fairly certain this isn't true. I would expect there to be a lot more flat-headed babies and people around. I don't think I've ever seen one. Not telling you what to do, just pointing out I don't think that part is factual.

It’s certainly true. Our oldest kid had a quite flat head when he was an infant, so we had to get him a special pillow and was advised to try to let him sleep on the side. But it’s nothing that you think about except when you put your hand on the back of his head, and most of it will allegedly disappear when the scull grows.

And if you think my anecdote is enough, Google will provide you with plenty, e.g., [0].

[0] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/plagiocephaly-brachycephaly/

If you look around you will start noticing it. A babies skull isn't even fused and has soft spots (fontanelle) so it makes perfect sense that it can be shaped and molded as it develops and grows.

Smothering is a much bigger problem if the parents in question drink alcohol before cosleeping.

This! My wife did a lot of reading in this when our kids were babies and her takeaway was that alcohol/drugs are responsible for most smothering events and that SIDS is actually reduced by co-sleeping - something about the mother’s breathing training the baby to breathe rhythmically. I believe she found a study on this point - I’ll try to dig it up and if I find it I’ll edit this comment with a source.

Please do, I’d enjoy reading that.

Ball & Russell (2014), SIDS and infant sleep ecology. Evolution, Medicine and Public Health 146. [0]

Not a study, but I believe this was the article that got her started down the rabbit hole of looking more deeply into this research. We were both surprised to learn that SIDS is significantly more prevalent in western societies that do not have cultures of co-sleeping, and that SIDS primarily occurs when babies are alone. I am struggling to find the article that discusses the breathing component directly, but this touches on it with reference to poor neurological development of human babies and associated weak physiological regulation.

This was the a ha! moment:

“SIDS-deaths are a phenomenon of infant sleep in Western post-industrialized cultures, normally occurring while infants are alone. … Immigrant groups who maintain their ‘traditional’ sleep ecology in ‘Western’ environments typically exhibit substantially lower SIDS rates than the host community.”

This UNICEF page compiled good research on co-sleeping too. [1]

[0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2014/1/146/1846850

[1] https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/news-and-research/bab...

I completely agree. SIDS is just another safety thing like not letting it get strangled or stick a fork in the power point. But keeping them close and feeling secure is super important for them to develop independence and self-confidence later. Unfortunately, there's this perverse idea that rejecting your child will make them independent when it typically has the opposite effect.

I think SIDS is a real thing and there is clear evidence that not using pillows or excessive blankets in cribs has reduced deaths.

I think sleeping with or not with your kid, is a much more complicated question and probably one where your instinct is right. After all, with a baby in the bed you can't help but be aware of its comfort, needs and amount of movement.

In the UK the NHS have posters and leaflets about how parents should NOT sleep with their baby as deaths have occurred from parents "lying on and suffocating their new born". Of course this from drugged-up and/or drunk parents.

If you don't fall into the "bad parent" category you'll be fine.

I've woken up to nearly suffocating myself in blankets, completely sober. I wouldn't take that chance with myself in the bed.

Or if you take ambien or something like that it might not be a good idea.

The post you are responding to mentioned drugged-up right there in the conclusion.

We used sleep suits the first year to avoid the whole loose cloth issue