When I had my first baby over seven years ago now, I quickly realized that I was totally out of my depth. Holding your precious, fragile newborn, and realizing that she’s totally dependent on you for her very survival, is a pretty overwhelming thing. In our society most of us spend little time around babies, so the shock is even bigger. I, personally, had probably logged about 60 minutes, total, holding newborns before I found myself holding my own 24/7. I kept waiting around for the real parents to show up, but no one did, so I decided that the answer was to research.

I read book after book after book about parenting. Many of them were very useful. Some of them were not. A very few were downright awful. In the process, I created a rough framework for myself. It wasn’t overly rigid or unrealistic, but having a sturdier place to work from made me feel good. I had sought out information and used reason and logic to create a parenting style. Maybe I could pull this thing off, after all.

Why did I think giving Hannah a roasting pan filled with water was a good idea?

I realize, now, that my first mistake was to use reason and logic in parenting. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my time in the parenting trenches, it’s that small children are completely immune to reason and logic. You can spend your entire life creating parenting systems and thinking of logical consequences when your kid pushes all of your buttons. You can talk until you’re blue in the face about why you don’t run away from Mama in the parking lot, or stuff beads up your nose, or pull the cat’s tail. You can explain what will happen if your kid lets go of the string on their helium balloon, and you can even show them video evidence, but every kid is going to have to lose at least one balloon to really get the message.

Children have their own logic, which is simple and elegant. They rely heavily on experimental evidence, gathered from repeating the same actions over and over and over again. This teaches them how the world works – your words, on the other hand, aren’t so important. What is important, though, is what your young scientist wants. They alone understand how very important it is that you give that thing to them, and they will not hesitate to circumvent any measures you put in place to keep them from getting it. At no point, as they work overtime to figure out how to get past that child safety latch, will they pause to consider the logic of your argument as you try to explain why they don’t actually want to play in the garbage.

Jacob knows what he wants, and its name is cupcake

I have spent untold hours of my life trying to reason with children. I have repeated the same phrases over and over and over again. I have deployed crystal clear logic, and pointed out the benefit of heeding my words to the child in question. “If you eat old food that you find on the floor, you might get sick. It’s not fun to be sick. This is why we don’t eat old food that we find on the floor.” That makes sense to me. I bet it makes sense to most adults. Most eighteen-month-olds, on the other hand, are a different story.

If I had to do this parenting thing over again, I wouldn’t read books about how to talk to your spirited child’s elementary school teacher when my kid was only four months old. And I wouldn’t give long speeches to small children using reason and logic. Instead, I would spend more time following my kids’ leads – relying on instinct, experiment, and a healthy dose of figuring out what it was that I actually wanted. It would have saved me a whole lot of time, and a whole lot of breath.

Have you ever tried to have a logical conversation with a small child, which you later realized was a waste of effort? And did you spend a lot of time trying to create a parenting style based on reason? I’d love to hear all about it!

Back in February I wrote about Natrel Baboo, a product that caused me rather a lot of aggravation one day in the grocery store. Right around the same time that I wrote about it, the company that sells the product issued a press release that contained this line:

As a mom, the first thing you’re going to do when you hear about Baboo is call up your doctor or pediatrician…

When I read that, my first response was, “No, no, I would not call up my doctor to talk about a product that I saw in the grocery store.” Because, really, I wouldn’t. If I’m buying over-the-counter medication for myself or my children I may speak with a pharmacist about it before I buy it, but even then I wouldn’t call up my doctor. In fact, I’m pretty sure my doctor would not even take that kind of call. And if she did, it might not be for the better. I appreciate that my doctor is generally on time with her appointments, and I can only imagine that if all of her patients were calling her up to get her take on Natrel Baboo and chia seeds and multivitamins and saline nose drops that it might put her off her schedule a bit.

As I think about it, I can think of many, many situations where we’re urged to ask our doctor about a particular product. If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, especially, you’re supposed to ask your doctor before you so much as choose a particular brand of toilet paper. Most of the time, I think that these warnings are meant to cover someone’s butt. By stating that you should ask your doctor, it takes the onus off the seller to guarantee that something is safe for you. Instead, the responsibility falls back to the doctor, who one presumes has nothing better to do than clear your decision to opt for two-ply instead of three-ply for your wiping needs.

From time to time I listen to White Coat, Black Art on CBC Radio, which is sort of like Canada’s NPR. The show aims to discuss medical issues from the doctor’s perspective. On one of the episodes, there were a number of doctors talking about “the list”. This is when a patient comes to them for one reason, and then at the end of the appointment pulls out a list with a whole bunch of questions that have nothing to do with whatever else they’ve discussed. The patients save the questions up, because they’re not that pressing. Once they’re at the doctor’s office, though, they decide to cover off everything at once. The problem with this is that, just like a doctor who spends all day fielding phone calls, a doctor who is suddenly confronted with a dozen questions is thrown off schedule.

The conclusion that the doctors on the show reached was that if you have multiple medical issues, or even just a whole lot of questions, you need multiple medical appointments to cover them off. They suggest letting the receptionist know this when you’re booking, so that the right amount of time is set aside for you. It keeps everyone on schedule, which is something that helps you as a patient, as well. No one likes sitting around for an hour because a doctor is behind. This suggests to me that doctors themselves are maybe not so game for fielding dozens of lifestyle questions from their patients, just because someone else is trying to avoid liability.

For myself, though, what it really comes down to is choosing to take charge of my own life. I believe that I am fully competent when it comes to making basic decisions for my own health, and that of my family. Obviously, if my kids or I are actually in need of medical care, I seek it out. I also understand that sometimes you have to go to the doctor when you’re not sick, which is why I’m up-to-date on my pap smears. But when it comes to living my life on a day-to-day basis, I don’t believe a medical opinion is required. I believe that I can be trusted to make good decisions for my family, and so I do. No phone calls to my doctor or pediatrician required.

What about you? How do you decide whether to discuss something with your doctor? I’d love to hear your thoughts!